National Geographic issue features South Lake Tahoe's urbanized bears
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Sun, 07/17/2022 - 3:18pm
People around South Lake Tahoe already know him for his knowledge of local urbanized black bears, now people around the globe are taking notice.
When the July issue of National Geographic came out, the article about wild animals adapting to city life in surprising ways featured Toogee Sielsch of South Lake Tahoe. Professional photographer Corey Arnold spent three years exploring urbanized animals across the country as he created his story, "Why Cities Are Going Wild."
"What an experience," said Toogee of his three days with the photographer.
Corey, who was featured on the first two seasons of the Deadliest Catch, called Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care for referrals in getting photos of South Lake Tahoe's urbanized bears. They connected him with Toogee, the two met and spent about 40 hours together over three days in search of bears that could be watched and photographed for the story.
It takes a while to professionally set up a photo with the needed cameras, lighting, and special angles, so it is a much different experience than those of us who catch a quick photo of our neighborhood bears with our cell phones. It was Toogee's job to find the bears, and Corey's job to take great photos.
In Toogee's favorite photo (as well as Corey's), in the magazine photo above, the bear was under the building as they set up outside. In all, Toogee found Corey 25 different bears to photograph, all within the city limits of South Lake Tahoe.
Finding the bears wasn't all fun and games though as they were "bluff charged" eight times. Toogee climbed into pipes to move bears out, as well as under buildings.
"In other towns, he couldn't get the shots due to the time it takes to set up," said Toogee of Corey. "Got more in his three days in South Lake Tahoe than any other city during the three years of work on urbanized animals."
Now their work is for all to see in print.
Toogee taught himself about bear behavior as he watched them during his daily early morning two-hour walks in the late 1990s. From those walks to today, Toogee helps many different agencies move bears without lethal weapons with different techniques he has learned over the years.
"They are so mysterious. I went on a quest to learn," said Toogee of the bears. "It is best to learn in the field with observations."
In his daily life, Toogee is a senior vector technician for El Dorado County. For 11 years he has learned to mitigate vector-borne diseases.
In his non-paid life, Toogee watches bears, helps move bears from spaces they do not belong, and is a go-to person for news agencies about urbanized bears from NPR to the BBC. In October, he will be a speaker at the 6th International Human-Bear Conflict Workshop which happens to be at Lake Tahoe this year.
The workshop is for anyone around the world who is involved in reducing human-bear conflicts on public lands, private lands and in communities, including field biologists and technicians, wildlife managers, community organizers, human dimensions researchers, conservation officers and the heads of government agencies. The theme of Toogee's accepted abstract is "bear managers working with locals."
Those in South Lake Tahoe can catch Toogee at the Lake Tahoe Historial Society's Tahoe History Talks on the Beach on August 26. He will speak on the history of the black bear at Lake Tahoe at Lakeview Commons at 7 p.m.
