In Incline Village, Nevada, on Lake Tahoe, a group has created a Facebook page to post photos of local businesses who leave their garbage bins unlocked. The town had been plagued by bears earlier this year, leading to the controversial killing of one bear. The Facebook group believes that the unsecured dumpsters were the main thing that were attracting the bears into town.

Apparently, the idea has worked, and the page is now more focused on stopping a local bear hunt and on residential garbage lapses. A status message on the page says that local businesses have not protested or given the group a hard time about the public shaming.

Here’s the Associated Press story, as it appeared in the Deseret News (which, yes, is in Utah, but the story is the same no matter what publication you read it in).

Here’s the background on the large, unstoppable bear that was creating havoc earlier this year, again from the AP, as posted by Fox40.

And finally, here’s the Lake Tahoe Wall of Shame Facebook page. 1,013 people liked it when this item was posted.

Will public shaming work for your unsecured garbage problem? The fact that this is a citizens’ group, and not an government entity makes all the difference, I think. I’m actually surprised that this worked at all, but all the more power to this group for solving the problem quickly and with seemingly few hard feelings.

Photo: Just a random black bear, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service