BOULDER — As soon as wildlife officers get the chance, they will kill her.
It could happen today, or tomorrow, or next week — that depends mostly on when she’s exposed enough for a clear shot in daylight.
They might use a gun, or maybe tranquilize and then lethally inject her, but this much is all but certain: Unless she skips town and stays out for good, her days are numbered. If and when she is dead, the officer will be crushed. No one with Colorado Parks and Wildlife likes to kill, but sometimes they’re ordered to.
“It’s devastating,” says Larry Rogstad, a 34-year CPW veteran. “It’s a sentient creature, a magnificent animal. It’s an animal we spend our entire life admiring and trying to do good things for.”
Throughout the Goose Creek and Edgewood Drive neighborhoods of north-central Boulder, many residents will shake their heads and remark on what a shame this was. Some will be angry with the officers, and some may even cry.
“Nobody wants to see this happen,” says Edgewood’s Dustin Buck, “but nobody wants to feel endangered in their own backyard, either.”
Once the bear is dead, her two offspring, both about 7 months old and, at 35 pounds, hardly developed, will be taken to a rehab facility and later moved miles and miles into the mountains. They’d be wise to stay there, lest they subject themselves to the same fate of their mother, Boulder Bear No. 317.
“The alternative is to let her do what she does, and maybe nothing ever happens,” Rogstad says. “But maybe the wrong person comes around the wrong corner at the wrong time, and she attacks. That’s a realistic scenario.”
The sow and her two cubs were first spotted in mid-August, near the intersection of 19th and Folsom streets. That appearance wasn’t a big deal for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, because, for one, this is Boulder, and bears, along with mountain lions, elk and moose, occasionally wander into town.
Big year for bears
But this year, because of a food shortage, has been the most active bear season in decades, and maybe ever recorded, across the Front Range, CPW says.
The city has gone on high alert, ramping up enforcement of a trash ordinance put in place early last year. Bear-resistant trash cans are no longer optional for city properties west of Broadway and south of Sumac Avenue. Police say 94 people have been ticketed to the tune of at least $250 this month alone, with hundreds of others skating by with warnings.
Given a CPW policy that calls for intervention only on rare occasions, when the sow showed up with her little ones in tow at 19th and Folsom, officials monitored but didn’t act. Then, over the next few days, the calls trickled in.
Typically effective hazing techniques, such as throwing small rocks or making loud noises, were working neither for residents nor CPW.
The sow, undersized at 230 pounds and at 4 years old a relatively young mother, started acting fussy, snarling at people and standing her ground.
Officials decided the mother and her cubs had used up strike one (of two), so they decided to tranquilize the mother and relocate the family.
On Aug. 26, CPW officers spotted the sow in a tree near 19th and Balsam Avenue, low enough for a clean shot. They tranquilized her and put her in a cage. One of the cubs ran into the cage after the mother, and the other cub had to be tranquilized as well.
All three were marked with green ear tags — the cubs were tagged 315 and 316, and mom was 317 — then hauled to the mountains.
But tagging and relocation rarely works, and on Sept. 16 the family resurfaced.
Once an adult bear has been tagged, CPW is required to kill it if disruptive behavior persists. Many residents know this and refrain from reporting tagged bears for fear of causing a death. Along Edgewood up to Goose Creek and east to Folsom, neighborhood listservs and message boards have exploded in recent weeks with notes from horrified homeowners intent on preserving 317’s life.
Fear sets in
But as the confrontations mount, and the stories pile up on the listservs — one man chased down a sidewalk, another charged at from his porch — reality is setting in.
“It’s all fun and games, and it’s cute to watch,” says Darren Alberti, who lives at Folsom and Bluff streets, “but you’ve gotta figure at some point someone is going to get attacked. The fact is there’s wildlife in a residential area where there’s a lot of kids around. And if something happens, we’ll be asking, ‘Why didn’t we take action sooner?’ “
As soon as one of the neighbors calls to report the bears, and they’re low enough to the ground and in clear enough sight, Rogstad or one of his fellow officers will kill 317.
It’s not negotiable at this point. CPW has fielded countless calls from concerned residents who would rather see the bear live, and one man even offered cash to cover the cost of relocating the bears hundreds of miles away, but Rogstad declined.
But the prospect of making the first kill in what might be Boulder’s busiest-ever bear season is as wrenching to him as to those who are scared to call his office.
“I wanted to be a wildlife officer since I was in third grade. I wanted it because I had a deep and abiding love for the outdoors and for making the world a better place. Now, we’re relegated to this position because people don’t care enough to store their trash.”
