Turns out that humans’ trash isn’t just treasure for bears — it may actually help create more hungry bears.
Dan Cacho, Colorado Parks and Wildlife district manager in Glenwood Springs, said the easy meals might be triggering hormones that cause female bears to produce more babies.
Bears go through a process called delayed implantation, said Cacho. Sows and boars usually mate in mid-summer, then the female will delay implantation of the fertilized egg until she’s back in her den around December. Then the female bear’s hormones will tell her body to either attach that fertilized egg or her body will reabsorb it.
Wildlife managers suspect that bears’ plentiful access to human food is artificially keeping their bodies in a state to reproduce more — even when their natural food source is scarce.
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