TahoeLand: Bad News, Bears
In summer 2019, CapRadio examined the impact of climate change on one of Northern California’s geographical gems: Lake Tahoe. In the podcast TahoeLand, reporter Ezra David Romero explores how climate change will affect Tahoe’s color, snowpack, fire season and wildlife.
Episode 4 takes a look at how the changing climate will impact bears. Bears in Tahoe are also hibernating less — if at all. It’s not just black bears feeling the impact of climate change — polar bears, grizzlies and other bears around the world are at risk.
This episode will also look at the ways humans do, or do not, keep bears out of our garbage. People’s leftovers and waste lead to more human-bear interactions, which is ultimately bad news for bears.
Using Fish Skin Bandages To Help Bears Heal
When a few wild animals were injured in California wildfires, it was a chance for doctors to take an innovative approach to recovery and pain management. To help heal the paws of two bears and a mountain lion cub, veterinarians turned to another animal: tilapia.
Dr. Jamie Peyton is the associate director at the UC Davis Center for Advancing Pain Relief and Chief of Integrative Medicine Service at the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. She and her team designed “biologic bandages” using fish skin, honey, oils and beeswax. She partnered with Dr. Deanna Clifford, a senior wildlife veterinarian for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Investigations Lab, to pioneer this technique and track its success.
Both veterinary doctors joined Insight in January 2018 to discuss this innovative therapy.
'Engineering Eden' Examines The Perils of Controlling Nature
Engineering Eden is the title of a book by Northern California writer Jordan Fisher Smith that takes a deep dive into the United States’ history of attempting to manage nature.
The book centers on the story of Harry Walker, a man who was killed by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park as the park celebrated its centennial anniversary. That was in 1972 and, as Smith discovered in his research, a 1975 civil trial in Los Angeles followed. That trial became a proxy for the larger issue of wilderness management and the conflicting approaches at the time.
The author examines the process of people moving into the vast territory of wild animals, the new science that would be needed for the management of the land and the tragic details of Harry Walker’s death.
Smith joined Insight in September 2016 to discuss and highlight parts of that book. Engineering Eden is now out in paperback.
