Displaced by deadly wildfires ravaging areas of the Rocky Mountains this summer and experiencing a decrease in food-foraging resources, Colorado's bears have gone on the hunt for food, only to end up getting themselves in trouble -- and losing their lives.
It's no secret that there's been an increase in bear-human encounters in the last few months. A Colorado Springs woman shot a video of a black bear that followed her into her garage, and a teenage camp counselor in Boulder County found himself being dragged by a bear across his campsite in the middle of the night. Bears have even found ways to enter homes -- one spent five hours sniffing around a house, while another inadvertently played a few notes on the family piano. The list of incidents goes on and on. [caption id="attachment_19823" align="aligncenter" width="525"]
Image courtesy of aboutboulder.com[/caption]
In many cases, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife department has ended up euthanizing the bears, once it's been deemed that the animals are a danger to humans. An estimated 17,000 bears call Colorado home, but 34 bears have had to be put down this summer alone. And the number of bear-human encounters per year is increasing more than twice as fast as the Colorado human population.
We’re receiving more reports of bears investigating people, getting closer to people than we normally would expect,” Matt Thorpe, a CPW area wildlife manager in Durango, told The Denver Post. “They’re not demonstrating that natural fear of humans that we usually see.”It's interesting that the bear population is becoming more comfortable with humans, as they adapt to growing urbanization and begin to understand that where people are, there is usually a good supply of food. What's sad, however, is that bears are just being bears -- just trying to survive the only way that they know how. And when they go too far and enter a house or attack a person, it ends up being the death of them.
In general, bears are struggling to find natural sources of food, due to the late spring freeze and dry summer conditions. There's an overall lack of bugs, forbs, berries, and acorns, which makes the readily-accessible trash nearby extremely attractive to a hungry bear.
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Image courtesy of Colorado Parks and Wildlife[/caption]
So what's to be done? If bears and humans are going to share the same spaces, humans are the ones who need to be pro-active and vigilant about safety. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife department is dedicated to finding a way that bears and humans can co-exist. Officials have conducted studies in recent years, tracking bears' eating and foraging habits in relation to reproduction, foods they find addictive, and overall survival. They're still obtaining data and still learning, still working toward that goal.
“My darkest days as a game warden have been those days when I had to put a bear down," Thorpe said, "especially if it could have been prevented if people were more diligent about securing trash and other attractants.”“With higher human population densities, bears can be expected to encounter human food more often unless people change their personal behavior,” CPW spokeswoman Lauren Truitt said in a statement. “The closer a bear, or bears, live to populated areas the more we will have human-wildlife encounters due to the easy source of food available.” So, there you have it. If we're to co-exist with the West's largest carnivore, we need to be wary and do our part in making sure we're as least attractive to bears as possible -- for everyone's safety -- both ours and bears'. For specific tips on how to prevent and handle bear encounters, visit the Colorado Parks and Wildlife website.
