The Brief

The first thing you notice walking up to a dai pai dong, one of Hong Kong’s signature open-air street food stalls, is the smoke. Aromatic plumes billow out from aluminum-covered vent hoods as chefs with decades of experience produce steaming plates of crackled shrimp, juicy mussels, and crisped-up rice by tossing the ingredients in a giant, flame-cradled wok.

As a foodie and avid stir-fry consumer, I love everything involved in wok cooking — the artistry, the bursts of orange under the deep, round-bottomed pan, the incomparable taste. But as a climate reporter, I see just one problem: It typically relies on gas stoves, which release planet-warming methane even when turned off.

Chefs cook at a dai pai dong in the Sham Shui Po district in Hong Kong in November 2018.

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Vivek Prakash

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Climate experts say that we need to phase out fossil fuel use to address the climate crisis, especially in buildings, which account for 35 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Gas stoves also produce harmful air pollutants like carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and benzene, a known carcinogen.

So when I heard that an all-electric food hall on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, featured a pair of custom-made induction woks, I was eager to try out a climate-friendly stir-fry. Unlike gas stoves, induction ranges use electromagnetic currents to heat food, eliminating both the carbon emissions and harmful air pollutants produced by gas. Yet minutes into my lunch with a friend who works at Microsoft, my excitement dissolved. My tofu noodles arrived limp and drowning in vegetable oil.

As I poked at my soggy introduction to induction wok fare, I couldn’t help but think back to a plate of noodles I had eaten at a dai pai dong in Hong Kong just a few weeks before. The two noodle dishes could not have been more different. One was prepared with state-of-the-art climate tech — yet produced lukewarm results. The other was freshly tossed in a kerosene-fueled wok, yielding glossy, chewy noodles bursting with soy sauce, blackened slivers of onion, and, most importantly, that elusive, umami-filled char called wok hei.

There were many differences between the stir-fry noodles I bought from a dai pai dong in Hong Kong (left), and the plate I of noodles I got from Microsoft’s all-electric food hall in Redmond, Washington (right).

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Akielly Hu

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Grist

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Wok hei, loosely translated from Cantonese as the “breath of the wok,” represents the pinnacle of the stir-fry cooking technique most commonly associated with southern China. (While many cuisines rely on the wok, not all strive for that signature aroma.) From street food stalls to high-end restaurants, diners from all over the world seek the intangible flavor that renowned chef and wok whisperer Grace Young described as “a special life force or essence from the wok.”

For all its coveted glory, wok hei — and the question of what exactly produces it — remains somewhat mysterious. The term itself is fairly abstract: while wok refers to the cooking vessel, hei can simultaneously mean “air,” “breath,” “energy,” and “spirit,” leaving room for a variety of interpretations. Many chefs say that fire, and therefore a gas stove, is essential for achieving the aroma, putting it at odds with climate-driven legal trends: Since 2019, more than a hundred local governments across the United States have introduced policies to ban the use of natural gas in buildings, including gas stoves. Others argue that with high enough temperatures and a few adjustments, chefs can switch to induction and still produce foods with wok hei.

In the face of this gastronomic debate, many chefs are asking what an all-electric future will mean for cherished culinary traditions like wok cooking.

When the city of Berkeley, California, enacted its local gas ban in 2019, the California Restaurant Association sued, arguing that gas is essential for certain specialty techniques, including “the use of intense heat from a flame under a wok.” It wasn’t the only attempt to derail gas bans. An investigation by the Sacramento Bee, for example, revealed that the gas utility SoCalGas actively recruited Chinese American restaurant owners to advocate against electrification policies in Southern California.

It would be naive to say gas utility companies were driven by a love of great stir-fry when they turned their lobbying efforts toward wok-based cooking. But the culinary debate around whether wok hei can be achieved over an induction stove has certainly added fuel to the electrification debate.

An employee of the commercial kitchen equipment company Bartscher shows an induction wok at a trade event in 2019. Ulrich Perrey.

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For chefs, the most important consideration when it comes to switching off gas is whether induction can support their livelihoods. In cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, some restaurant owners serving Chinese, Thai, and other Asian cuisines using woks have expressed concerns that local gas bans could jeopardize signature tastes and textures.

Whether individual chefs think that induction can achieve wok hei depends largely on how they define it. Wok cooking expert and food writer J. Kenji López-Alt, for example, defines wok hei as a quintessential smoky flavor. He told Grist that it’s impossible to achieve wok hei without gas or fire — and the reason comes down to the food science.

A number of different elements go into that signature smoky aroma, according to López-Alt. One is the flavor imparted from hot, well-seasoned carbon steel or cast iron, two of the most common materials used to make woks. Another component is the caramelization that happens when sauce hits a searing hot pan. If you “watch a Chinese chef cooking, when they add soy sauce to a stir-fry, they swirl it around the outside of the pan where it immediately sizzles and gets intense heat, and that changes the flavor and gives it a bit of smokiness,” he said.

But the main flavor component flavor of wok hei, López-Alt says, comes from the igniting of aerosolized oil with fire. As chefs toss food up into the flames of a gas stove, tiny droplets of fat suspended in the air catch on fire, dripping back down into the wok to impart a subtle smokiness. “You can’t get that without an actual fire,” he said.

Martin Yan, restaurateur and longtime host of the PBS cooking show Yan Can Cook, has a different take on wok hei, which he defines as an ephemeral, fragrant aroma that lasts a mere 15 to 20 seconds after a dish is prepared. He told Grist that achieving that aroma depends not on fire, but on applying intense, high heat. When fresh ingredients hit the wok’s surface, they undergo a Maillard reaction, in which proteins and sugars break down and develop new, complex flavors. “The wok hei is not created by the gas,” he said. “It’s created by the frying pan and that chemical reaction.”

In theory, Yan said, the heat could come from any source: electricity, gas, even wood or charcoal. “You could use nuclear fusion, as long as you can create that intense heat.”

Martin Yan speaks onstage during the 2022 James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards at Lyric Opera of Chicago on June 13, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois.

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Jeff Schear

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Induction stoves, which can instantly heat to temperatures of up to 643 degrees Fahrenheit, are capable of the intensity Yan describes as necessary for wok hei. Yet some chefs like López-Alt say that the shape of the wok presents another obstacle to using induction. Woks feature a deep, high-walled bowl, which allows flames to curl around the vessel and create varied temperature zones — ideal for moving sauces and ingredients around to optimize flavors and control heat. But induction stoves are typically flat and only activate when directly in contact with the pan’s surface. Lifting the wok to toss ingredients, therefore, would result in an instant loss of heating.

Jon Kung, a Detroit-based chef and TikTok personality who advocates for induction cooking, says that induction stoves designed specifically for woks can help with this issue. Like Yan, he defines wok hei as a “mix of char and caramelization” as a result of the Maillard reaction, requiring high heat rather than flames.

Kung owns two portable induction wok burners that feature a curved heating bowl in which the wok sits, allowing for better temperature control up the sides of the pan. While this setup may not totally replicate the temperature gradient present in a traditional fire-heated wok, Kung said the conditions are sufficient for producing high-quality stir-fry, a task he points out is difficult even for those with gas stoves at home.

“It’s incorrect to assume that the only things you need to achieve wok hei are a wok and a gas burner,” he said in a 2023 video. “The ones in Chinese restaurants have a power output of 150,000 BTUs. That’s way more than the 30,000 that comes out of your Viking range. The fact of the matter is, these induction wok burners do a better job at mimicking the focus of energy into the bottom of a wok that you get from a genuine Chinese wok burner.”

While Kung’s induction models plug into a typical outlet and are designed for home use, similarly shaped and far more powerful commercial induction wok ranges exist on the market — including at Microsoft’s all-electric food court. But the stove itself wasn’t the reason for the company’s substandard stir-fry. The noodles I ate there appeared to have been batch-cooked, an efficient way to feed hungry tech workers but a less-than-optimal method for achieving wok hei, which depends on the freshness of the ingredients. And since I wasn’t present at the time of cooking, I also can’t evaluate the temperature used for cooking.

As of now, I can safely say that my induction-versus-flame-fueled wok hei taste test remains inconclusive. And sadly, I don’t have many nearby options to gather more data. Although Yan reported that some hotels in China like the Hilton and Marriott already exclusively use induction woks, commercial induction kitchens are rare in the United States.

According to a 2022 survey by the National Restaurant Association, 76 percent of restaurants in the U.S. still use gas. That proportion goes up to 87 percent for full-service restaurants, or sit-down eateries that provide table service. Meanwhile, less than five percent of U.S. households currently use an induction stove — though wok expert Grace Young has said she’s often asked which wok to buy for induction and glass-topped ranges.

A big reason for the lack of commercial induction uptake is the cost. Yan noted that induction wok burners for restaurants remain prohibitively expensive in the U.S., especially since the technology is still maturing. Upgrading a gas kitchen to accommodate all-electric appliances to begin with can require up to tens of thousands of dollars, an exorbitant price for businesses operating on thin profit margins. Commercial induction ranges also typically cost three to four times as much as gas-powered ones.

Kung told Grist that he is not aware of any restaurants in the U.S. achieving wok hei with induction — although he believes that with a few tweaks in technique, it’s “absolutely” possible. The problem, beyond the cost of induction ranges, is that chefs might also simply prefer the tactile experience of cooking with fire, or generally feel resistance to adopting new techniques. But Kung maintains that if governments want to take the climate crisis seriously, they need to pass policies to incentivize and help businesses switch to electric.

“Chefs are problem-solvers by nature,” Kung said, and will likely innovate and relearn how to achieve wok hei on induction at a commercial level.

Although López-Alt says achieving wok hei is not possible without a flame, he isn’t against induction stoves in general. He initially felt wary of switching when he first came across the debate over gas stoves a few years ago. Yet he eventually concluded that, for most Western cooking and home cooking, the technology can be just as good as gas if not better — not just for climate and health reasons, but also in terms of efficiency of cooking.

“It’s a topic that gets a lot of knee-jerk, immediate reactions,” he said. But “for most things it actually makes sense to get rid of gas.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/induction-wok-hei-stir-fry-electric-stove/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The Los Angeles mayor’s office says it has chosen a plan for a hotly debated road safety project on Forest Lawn Drive, but it won’t say how the plan will slow speeding cars on the deadly thoroughfare.

In a statement Friday to LAist, the mayor’s office said L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ plan for the busy road near Griffith Park will “improve traffic, cycling and pedestrian safety, and keep traffic flowing."

The office said the plan includes adding a protected left-turn lane and protected bike lanes to the 1-mile stretch of Forest Lawn Drive and maintains the roadway's four existing lanes.

The mayor’s office did not respond to additional questions from LAist, including whether Bass’ plan will reduce speeding on the road, whether there’s a timeline for implementation and how soon the community will be informed about specifics.

A city official who spoke to LAist on condition they not be named because they weren't authorized to speak on the record confirmed that the safety design approved by the mayor includes widening portions of the road. Road widening was first proposed by a consultant for Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mortuaries.

Forest Lawn Memorial Parks operates a chain of cemeteries, including one in the Hollywood Hills that can only be accessed along Forest Lawn Drive. The company was a longtime opponent of a prior proposal to reduce lanes on the roadway that Bass halted in May.

City transportation officials had said the lane reduction would slow cars down and make the thoroughfare safer.

Forest Lawn Memorial Parks worked to block that plan due to concerns that it would increase traffic congestion and impede access to its Hollywood Hills cemetery.

The company spent nearly half a million dollars lobbying against the lane reduction at the state and local levels between 2025 and 2026, according to an LAist review of lobbying activity.

The exact price tag for Bass’ latest plan announced Friday is unclear.

City transportation department records obtained by LAist show a proposal to widen the road developed by a consultant for Forest Lawn Memorial Parks would cost nearly five times more than the plan to reduce lanes on Forest Lawn Drive.

City transportation staff said in an analysis that the consultant’s road widening plan would have “low” potential to slow speeding cars, according to the public records.

The L.A. Department of Transportation said in a statement that it is “coordinating with the Bureau of Engineering on advancing the Mayor's direction.”

The main goal of the Forest Lawn Drive Safety and Mobility project is to slow speeding cars on the road, and it also aims to protect bike lanes with plastic posts.

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Details of the original plan Bass halted in May

The proposal that almost went ahead before Bass halted it would have cut the number of lanes from four to three, transforming the road into two through-lanes and one center turn lane. The bumpy, cracked, pothole-ridden road would also have been resurfaced.

The goal was to slow cars and address the nearly 100 traffic collisions, including four deadly ones, the road has seen since 2013.

Brian Taylor, a research professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, told LAist that research on how so-called road diets improve safety is “unequivocal,” adding that there is a significant reduction in crashes and injuries when lanes are reduced.

The plan to reduce lanes came with a $618,000 price tag that would have covered the costs of repainting new lanes on the road and installing plastic posts to fortify the bike lanes. Those costs would have been covered through the city’s existing resources for road improvements, according to the city’s transportation department. 

The road has become an issue in L.A.’s tight mayoral race

The future of Forest Lawn Drive has become a touchpoint in the L.A. mayor’s race, where Bass is facing L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, whose district includes this portion of Forest Lawn Drive and whose office initiated the project in 2022.

At an August campaign event about Forest Lawn Drive, following a fatal collision on the road, Raman said one reason she’s running for mayor is so “lifesaving street safety improvements are not stymied and are not politicized.”

The road is the sole point of entry to two major cemeteries, the Hollywood Hills locations of Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mount Sinai Memorial Parks.

The cemeteries, neighborhood groups and state legislators opposed the lane reduction plan, citing concerns about traffic congestion, especially during funeral processions, and ease of access.

In a joint statement to LAist in August, the cemeteries praised Bass’ decision to find a new approach for the road, saying it “demonstrated responsive leadership and a willingness to get this right.” The cemeteries did not respond to LAist’s requests for a follow-up.

After the mayor paused the lane-reduction plan, the city delayed resurfacing Forest Lawn Drive.

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The one-mile stretch of road is covered with cracks, potholes and bumps.

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The state’s involvement

State legislators representing L.A. had pressed the mayor in a letter in April about the project, saying traffic lane reductions would be “disastrous to the operation of key cemeteries” in the area and calling for more review of alternatives.

In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that makes it more difficult to reduce lanes on Forest Lawn Drive.

Streets for All, which has advocated for reducing Forest Lawn Drive from four lanes to three, said that the original plan for the road could still move forward if Raman becomes L.A.’s next mayor.

“We will get the extra bureaucratic hurdles done and get the project in the ground anyway under Mayor [Raman],” the transportation advocacy group said in September in an Instagram post, referring to the additional steps the state legislation signed by Newsom requires.

In September, Streets for All announced its political action committee is contributing $1.2 million to get Raman elected.

The board that oversees the California High-Speed Rail Authority voted Friday to rein in Chief Executive Ian Choudri's contracting authority following a state investigation that showed consultants billed the agency $600,000 in questionable travel expenses.

The investigation by the office of inspector general for the high-speed rail project found that some consultants flew first class, hailed luxury rides and traveled to a night club, a cigar lounge and numerous restaurants, bars and residences, sometimes after hours, on taxpayers’ dime.

Investigators looked at travel expenses submitted by four consulting firms over a two-year period and found that most of the trips were unauthorized, poorly justified — at times at the agency’s top executives’ request — and that agency staff failed to sufficiently vet the requests before approving them. In some cases, agency staff didn’t even know about the trips until they received invoices.

The board on Friday voted 7-2 to strip Choudri of his sole authority to sign and manage contracts under $25 million and to require the agency’s in-house attorneys to approve or change any new or existing contracts. The board already has to vote to award any contracts over that amount.

Board chair Steve Kawa told reporters afterward that the decision “adds additional eyes and ears and authority” over issues exposed by the investigation.

“We are not just gonna sit back and ignore that we had this travel issue,” he said. “Not one dollar of California taxpayer dollars should be misused.”

“I am outraged that we would be treated like a piggy bank for these kinds of expenditures.”

Several board members slammed the consultants for the travel expenses. Lynn Schenk, who has served on the board since 2003, said the spending suggests a troubling pattern and deserves a deeper dive.

“I am outraged that we would be treated like a piggy bank for these kinds of expenditures,” she said during the board meeting. “And it says to me that there are other expenditures that are being treated this way.”

Board member Henry Perea suggested the travel payments are so egregious that the state should end its contract with the firms right away, something Gov. Gavin Newsom has also floated. However, Perea said he worried that doing so could set back the long-delayed rail project even further.

“I’d terminate these four [contracts] tomorrow or today, but I understand there’s a question of operational needs that we have with these folks,” he said.

But the board did not grill the authority’s top executives for failing to catch the behavior, even though the probe revealed that consultants told agency staff many times that they were traveling at the request of the agency’s top officers, including Choudri.

In response to the investigation, the authority paused all travel payments to the four consulting firms in question and has started reviewing their claims and training staff, executives and consultants on travel policies, said the authority’s Chief Financial Officer Jamey Matalka.

One legal consultant was paid $40,800 in travel reimbursements and an additional $86,500 in “travel time” for 30 trips between Denver and Sacramento in a year. When questioned about whether he needed to attend the meetings in person, he said Choudri had requested his presence so he did not need to justify it and that it would not be appropriate for him to question Choudri’s direction, “as other consultants in other Authority offices are learning the hard way.”

In response to the investigation, the authority paused all travel payments to the four consulting firms in question and has started reviewing their claims and training staff, executives and consultants on travel policies, said the authority’s Chief Financial Officer Jamey Matalka. The firms are: KPMG LLP, a global financial consulting firm; Nossaman LLP, a national law firm; AECOM-Fluor Joint Venture, which manages and coordinates the authority’s projects, and SYSTRA/TYPSA Joint Venture, which provides tracks and systems design.

The agency is seeking to recoup all questionable travel payments, he said Friday.

“We remain committed [and] we take full responsibility and accountability to fix if there was something broken in the system,” Choudri told the board.

Choudri also told board members that the agency has taken “disciplinary actions” against some consultants but did not clarify what they were. Choudri did not speak to reporters following the meeting.

Assembly Minority Leader Alexandra Macedo, a Visilia Republican, called for Choudri’s firing in a Thursday letter to the board. She accused him of demonstrating a “pattern of misuse of taxpayer dollars and abuse of public trust.”

“At a time when California families face unbearable financial pressures to cover essential household needs including rent, utilities and transportation, the routine approval of improper consultant expenses represents a severe breach of fiduciary responsibility,” she wrote.

‘They should all be here’

Of the four consulting firms investigated, only one sent representatives Friday.

Veronica Siranosian, an executive at AECOM-Fluor Joint Venture, told the board the company reviewed its travel invoices and found “no substantive departures from the established public processes.”

The inspector general’s investigation found nearly $380,000 in travel expenses by the company’s consultants that were not allowed under state regulations or the company’s contract with the state.

Nevertheless, another AECOM executive, Mike Burns, said the company has identified only about $1,000 in expenses it overbilled the state, including for an Uber ride, parking in a garage that charged a higher rate than surrounding buildings and a flight that was on an international carrier instead of an American airline.

Steve Kawa, chair of the board of directors of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, speaks during a special board meeting at the California Natural Resources Agency in Sacramento on Oct. 9, 2026

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In some cases, Burns stressed, the dollar difference was small. He said the company’s consultants once took an $86 Uber ride in an electric vehicle whereas the standard policy would require an $84 Uber X instead. “It was a $2 differentiation,” he said. “There’s some nominal incidences like that.”

Schenk gasped.

“Surely you are not saying that we are sitting here for these hours going through this … for a $2 difference,” she said. “And surely you will at least acknowledge that these instances show a disregard at the very least for state and high-speed rail requirements.”

“It’s gonna take a lot of $2 differences in Uber rides to get to the $380,000 that you guys billed the state of California,” said Vice Chair Anthony Williams.

Board member Emily Cohen slammed the consulting firms that did not appear Friday.

“They should all be here. Unbelievable.”

Authority to step up training, improve policy

Matalka said the authority would implement all the fixes the inspector general’s office recommended. He said the authority would, by the end of the year, create a new travel approval form requiring more details.

By the end of March, he said, it would establish a “consistent, uniform process” for advance travel approvals, ramp up training, create a list of approved office locations for consultants, recoup misspent state funding and use AI to flag travel requests that potentially violate policies.

But much of the steps seems like “basic oversight,” Schenk said. “Why weren’t we doing this at the outset?” she asked. “What is the root cause?”

Matalka said some questionable travel requests slipped through the cracks because staff did not review them deep enough.

“Training needs to be done so that we make sure you are not just looking at the labor hours, you are not just looking at the lodging rate,” he said. “You need to actually Google the address, look at the timestamp, look at some of the very small print on the fare class.”

The authority frequently approved expenses with vague justifications, such as “typical M-F week” trips, and approved travel at the request of executives without asking why. One consultant flew to California from Denver 20 times during the two-year period to “meet with the executive team” or attend executive meetings, without explaining why the meetings couldn’t have been remote, the investigation says.

The high-speed rail project is already long delayed and over its projected budget: In 2008, voters approved a $10 billion bond to build a high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2020 for an estimated $45 billion. The project is now estimated to cost between $126 billion and $231 billion, with a full buildout expected by 2040, according to the authority’s latest business plan. Current plans call for building a first leg linking Merced to Bakersfield.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

It’s that time of year when black bears are beefing up, often on trash, in Southern California’s foothill communities.

From fall to early winter, bears quadruple their food intake in preparation for the cooler months — bears here don’t really hibernate given our mild weather and plethora of resources, but they do slow down during the winter (as we all should). And right now, mother bears are looking to find a safe place to den and have their cubs.

Bears aren’t just roaming the roads of mountain towns either. They’re in suburban neighborhood streets along the 210 Freeway corridor — including Altadena, Sierra Madre and Monrovia — and even in Encino and Tarzana.

A black bear walks along an Arcadia street earlier this month.

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This time of year is when humans and bears might come into conflict more frequently, says a former biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“You're going to see those bears just eating ravenously, foraging all day for food, and then also they're going to start looking for these potential denning sites under our crawl spaces, unfortunately,” said Jessica West, a human-wildlife conflict specialist who over the last five years worked for the state on bear coexistence efforts from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

Nearly 60,000 black bears are estimated to live in California. Here in Southern California, the estimate is around 2,000, according to the latest count by the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife.

State resources to help communities coexist with bears have been cut. That includes West, who was the sole wildlife conflict biologist serving Southern California counties. Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed a bill into law that aims to bring some of those resources back, but in the meantime, the need remains.

“More than ever, people and bears are sharing space,” West said.  "The fact is that they're here and they're not going anywhere, and we're here as humans and we're not going anywhere.”

Neither did West’s passion for wildlife coexistence when she was laid off. That’s why she just launched her own business to help fill the resource gap: Wild Neighbor.

Jessica West, a bear biologist, installs an "unwelcome" mat at a home. The electrified mat helps keeps curious bears away.

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An "unwelcome" mat with bear prints outside of a home in Ojai.

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She offers detailed property assessments and recommendations for $150. She focuses primarily on prevention, such as strategically placing electric wiring and “unwelcome” mats to secure crawl spaces, trash and other vulnerable areas, which can cost $350 to around $900 depending on the home. She also rents such equipment if residents prefer. West works with manufacturers of electric bear-resistant tools that have been vetted for fire safety and bear conflict.

“We really want to avoid potentially orphaning those cubs,” she said.

It’s best to avoid allowing a bear to get into your crawl space or trash in the first place, West said. When bears become too accustomed to humans and eating human food, the risk of injury to people and pets rises. And the bears themselves are more likely to be euthanized.

In 2023, California hit a tragic milestone: It was the state’s first documented killing of a human by a black bear, in Northern California. In Southern California, foothill communities such as Sierra Madre have seen several bear-related injuries in recent years (more on that in our 2024 podcast on this topic). Several bears, including a well-known one in La Cañada Flintridge, have also been euthanized in recent years.

In the vast majority of cases, this is preventable, West said, if residents take a little responsibility for securing their own properties. That can also save thousands of dollars in damage caused by a bear.

Since West is no longer with the state, she can’t trap bears that have risen to the point of becoming a problem — for example, those that learn how to regularly get into homes or cars, or have lost their fear of humans. She does encourage her clients to share sightings and any concerning conflicts with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, but she doesn’t share anything herself without clients’ permission. (Learn how to report bear sightings or human-bear conflict here.)

West said that in lieu of state resources, companies like hers may become more common.

“What [clients] can expect is someone who is going to listen to them, and someone who is passionate about their job and really wants to help them,” West said. “Because at the end of the day, I'm a bear biologist by training. I love bears, but my whole goal in all of this is to help people. Because if we help people, we're also helping bears.”