Bears are as good as the most talented burglars at breaking and entering. So who better to foil their food-foraging habits than prison inmates?
For the past four years, honor prisoners in the Colorado Correctional Industries metal working program in Cañon City have been on a quest to build trash bins that powerful and wily bears can’t breach.
Tina White, a wildlife officer with Snowmass Village, said the prison bins are some of the best available. They are used in parks campgrounds, as well as homes in bear-prone areas.
The inmates design containers that have no grooves, gaps, latches or ridges that can be grabbed by paws. One patent- pending latch automatically relocks when set down by the hydraulic arm on a garbage truck.
“They really get a kick out of outsmarting the bears,” said Dan Veatch, plant manager for Colorado Correctional Industries.
Though inmates can’t see the results of their work, they have seen videotapes of grizzlies bouncing on and prying at their cans at a Yellowstone National Park research station.
Two of their first six designs failed. Since then, all the inmates’ bins, including four submitted to the grizzlies last month, have passed.
The inmates make 300 to 500 of the trash receptacles each year, ranging from 8-cubic-yard industrial bins to 32-gallon cans.
For upscale towns and homeowners who want fancy cans to match fancy surroundings, the inmates do custom designs on the receptacles that feature images of deer, elk and, yes, bears.
