Woman receives minor injury in bear encounter

Nevada wildlife officials are looking for the bear that struck a woman in the leg over the weekend.

The 25-year-old woman received minor injuries to her leg after she startled a bear that had broken into a cooler during a trip to Lake Tahoe over the weekend.

The woman reported that she was standing by a picnic table, unaware of the bear roughly 15 feet from her, when the bear walked up to her and hit her in the leg. Game wardens handling the call believe that the bear was most likely defending the food it had just discovered in the group's cooler.

"We were very fortunate that his only ended in some torn jeans and an injury on the leg," said Game Warden Captain Jake Kreamer. "Coming between a bear and its food is a dangerous place to be."

Staff has noticed a significant increase in these sorts of encounters over the past few years, with the bears around the Tahoe Basin becoming increasingly habituated to people and human food sources.

"Coexisting with wildlife is fraught with numerous challenges," said NDOW Director Tony Wasley. "It takes effort on our part to do everything we can to keep these animals wild. That means storing your food properly when you're camping. It means keeping your trash cans inaccessible to bears and rethinking those bird feeders in your yard. The bears here are becoming increasingly habituated and increasingly emboldened. When we leave food accessible to them, we know why they show up in our campgrounds, on our doorsteps, or in our garages."

Wasley said that unwillingness to report bear interactions has resulted in increasingly dangerous situations where bears are breaking into homes and putting people in danger.

“My fear is that if this situation does not change, these types of encounters will only escalate in both frequency and severity," he said.

Bears have been sighted in Carson Valley and are looking for food after losing habitat to fire.