‘Cute’ bear hanging out in Fresno County vacation spot this summer. Do not feed him

Residents of Shaker Lake have a kind of social media celebrity on their hands — a young bear that’s been wandering around cabins for the past few weeks, going from trash can to trash can and deck to deck looking for food.

Photos and videos of the bear have been widely shared among neighbors and in online community groups.

“You’ve probably seen the bear by now,” says Dan Fidler, a wildlife biologist with the California Department and Fish and Wildlife out of Fresno.

“This one is particularly cute. It’s got that cute and sad thing going,” he says.

Fidler says he has received 40 or so calls from residents about the yearling. Some are sacred to have the wild animal in the area. Others are worried about the animal’s safety and well being.

“The other people just want to feed it a lot,” Fidler says.

Do not do that, he says.

Having bears wander into campsites and wildness communities like Shaver Lake isn’t unique. Fidler says he gets reports of one or two bears around Shaver Lake every year.

“They cause some trouble, but for the most part they’re just looking for food,” he says.

And right now, the bear is just taking advantage of the resources in the area. But the more accustomed the bear gets to being in the area, the more bold he may get with people. That’s when a bear goes from looking for food to actually causing damage by breaking into cars and cabins and the like.

That’s when the department has to come in to either remove the bear, which it would rather not do with a bear this young, or move to the lethal option.

“We don’t want to get there,” Fidler says.

The hope is the department can get the word out so the bear won’t become food conditioned before the end of the summer season, and that the bear will move back into the woods as winter comes.

On Friday, the department put fliers out in the area to remind people to not feed bears and to redouble efforts to keep trash locked up and out of the way.

Fidler also suggests people scare this bear away whenever they see it.

“Draw that line where the bear knows it is not welcomed,” he says.

Loud noises work well, he says.

This bear spooks easily, says Jan Akins, who has had a cabin at Shaver since the 1970s and has lived there full time since 2015. She’s posted several videos of the bear on social media as a way to share fish and wildlife department’s old refrain.

“Do not feed the bears,” she says.

Akins believes there might be more than one yearling making its away around the community from the pictures she’s seen shared on social media. The one she spotted was climbing a tree outside her cabin last week. He was trying to get at a feeder she’d put out for the birds.

She saw him again on Tuesday just walking outside the kitchen window. She started keeping rocks nearby to throw at the bear, but didn’t have to go that far with things.

“I yelled ‘git’ and he took off up the hill,” she says.