For Steve Searles, teaching the mountain community of Mammoth Lakes to co-exist with the American black bear was all about fear. More precisely, about getting rid of fear.
“I just hate fear,” began Searles, 64, during a recent interview about “What the Bears Know,” his upcoming book. “We are unnaturally afraid of (black) bears. In Mammoth, I think we’ve overcome that. We are an example of how people can live with bears and overcome fears.”
The man who grew up in Orange County repairing bikes for resale and surfing in the waves of Newport Beach, got a job in this ski town 300 miles north of Los Angeles in the late 1990s that turned him into the Bear Whisperer — a moniker given him by a reality TV show airing on Animal Planet.
His bear management campaign kick-started a movement of coexistence that turned him into a folk hero in the touristy hamlet in the Eastern Sierra known for hiking and fishing in summer, and skiing in winter — and lots of resident black bears.
“Now, the school bus doesn’t care when they see a bear. People just ignore them and the bears ignore the people. We think it enhances our lives and it makes for a better day,” Searles said.
His lifelong work in Mammoth Lakes and later in Yosemite National Park has legs into Southern California, where folks have embraced urban mountain lions and are learning to live with black bears that amble down from the San Gabriel Mountains into hot tubs and backyards of homes in foothill communities.
Much like the neighbors in Hollywood and Los Feliz who learned to love P-22, the mountain lion who lived in Griffith Park for 10 years until he was euthanized in December, coexisting with bears came down to losing one’s fear of something unknown.
“If we don’t understand things, we fear them. That is a big part of the bear issue. They don’t want to eat us. We are the last thing they want to eat,” said Chris Erskine, 66, the book’s co-author, a resident of La Cañada Flintridge…
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