Dangerous signs placed around South Lake Tahoe that encourage feeding bears

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - A dangerous message was distributed through South Lake Tahoe on January 3, giving the wrong message about bear safety and spreading the narrative that bears need to be fed through garbage and composting.

Local urbanized black bear expert Toogee Sielsch was informed of the flyers and spent two hours Wednesday morning removing them from the poles along US50 from Lodi Avenue to Wildwood Avenue.

"I was completely startled by the content of this flyer," said Toogee. "The content is not only UTTERLY false, it's a very dangerous narrative to be spreading about our local black bear population."

Bears are coming out of their natural habitat and becoming urbanized because of people not securing their trash and providing a food year-round food source to the bears. A bear's diet is made up of berries, fruit, sedges, and insects. They will also occasionally consume fish, and when found, honeycomb. Trash is the worst thing a bear could eat.

The flyer found on a traffic signal pole in South Lake Tahoe on January 3:
(Spelling/grammar errors were not corrected)

There's something every citizen of Lake Tahoe needs to know about our Black
Bear population. They are offering considerably.
The Black Bears of Lake Tahoe are some of the most marginalized and oppressed species of life, I have ever seen. A Black Bear requires a certain
amount of calories every single day, just to provide it with the energy to
survive.
Where do I begin speaking about this tragedy. If you see a Black Bear they
are always walking real slow. This is because not only are they not recieving enough calories to operate properly. But because they are eating nasty rotten disgusting things that human beings throw away in the garbage, which is making them sick.
If they are even lucky enough to find garbage. As they spend most of their
life going from garbage can to garbage con finding it locked, due to selfish
heartless human beings.
The horrendous "Don't feed the Bears" campaign, was dreamed up by people
too lazy to sweep up garbage supposedly created by an animal. If you still cling to this concept, you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself.
The so-called scientific reasoning is they don't want Bears to become reliant on people for food. However that argument was no longer rational as of 100 years ago when we started dominating their home.
When a beautiful Black Bear breaks into your house looking for food. It is
directly the fault of everyone locking up their garbage. Leaving the Bear with absolutely no choice but to starve to death, or attempt a home invasion.
I really just want to say one more thing. Similar to the mortally dangerous
vaccine. People will tell you all day long. that torturing these magnificent
creatures is the right thing to do. And they will praise themselves for sending a mother they called "Hank" to Colorado and her cubs to the California coast.
But I want you to step outside your fake conceptions for just a moment, and
ask yourself what it would be like to be one of these Bears.
And then you will realize that the answer to this equation. Is to actually feed the Bears. This should be done by creating a small organic compost, food trash only bucket. And setting it open in front of the garbage cans, so our friends the animals can have a nutritious meal without injuring themselves, and minimal cleanup.
With love and respect, Sincerely Steven
Young People always remember to feed
the animals. You are not your parents

"I implore anyone who sees one of these flyers posted somewhere to please REMOVE them," asked Toogee. "We need to do all we can to KEEP OUR BEARS WILD!"