Hungry bears may venture further into neighborhoods in search of food this year as the drought depletes their natural dining hall, but so far the animals’ activity is normal for this time of year, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Arvada police officials that the city had seen an uptick in bear sightings, and at least one bear has been .
Still, it’s likely too early to connect those sightings to the ongoing drought, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Public Information Officer Kara Van Hoose said.
Colorado wildlife officials have seen an influx of bear sighting reports this month, but the numbers are fairly close to this time last year, Van Hoose said. Beyond the mountains, bear sightings are common in Jefferson, Douglas, Adams and Arapahoe counties, she said.
“We live at this confluence of open space and development,” Van Hoose said. “Bears use open space, and if it’s next to a neighborhood that has trash sitting out, they’re going to venture into that neighborhood. … We kind of all live in bear country.”
But drought is a concern, she said. It can affect bears’ natural food sources and pull them further into the metro as they search for a meal, she added.
“Bears have to eat, and they normally would be eating things like berries, cherries, nuts — things they can find in the wild,” Van Hoose said. “When you have drought that’s affecting the bounty of all of these, … the easiest food sources are things like human trash, bird feeders, pet food.”
Colorado’s bears start to wake up in late March or early April, and reports of sightings typically increase in May, Van Hoose said. With only a few weeks of data, it’s too soon to tell if there’s an increase in sightings or trends across different counties, she said.
State wildlife offices receive the most bear sighting reports when the animals are in and trying to eat as many calories as possible to put on weight before winter, typically spanning a period between September and November, Van Hoose said.
“Drought is certainly a concern when it comes to bear habitat and food availability, but we can’t definitively say yet that because of drought we are seeing more bears,” she said. “That’s something we’re going to keep our eye on throughout the year, but it’s too early to tell right now.”
Another concern for the bears’ food availability is the recent swings in temperatures between balmy summer weather and overnight freezes, she said.
Late-season deep freezes can wipe out fruit — and have already destroyed harvests from orchards in the North Fork Valley on Colorado’s Western Slope.
The drought and abnormally warm winter exacerbated the damage from the freeze because the fruit was growing ahead of schedule. Now, wildlife officers are concerned that the wild fruit that bears depend upon may also have been affected, Van Hoose said.
“We’ve had this snap back to rain and snow that puts those berries in jeopardy, because if they’ve started to bloom and then you get the really cold temperatures, then they die off,” she said.
Previous years with late-season snowstorms and post-Mother’s Day cold snaps resulted in lower food availability for bears and more sightings in the metro area, Van Hoose said.
Residents should lock their trash away, clean their grills, take down their bird feeders and clear other sources of food from around their homes to prevent attracting bears, Van Hoose said.
“It’s everybody, it’s not just the people who have seen bears before,” she said. “We take reports from people who have lived in their house for decades and have never seen a bear, and then all of a sudden they see one and they didn’t know that was a possibility.”
Also, she said, despite trending social media posts she’s seen encouraging people to leave water out for wild animals during the drought, the best thing to do is leave the animals alone.
Leaving out food or water encourages bears to come closer to the home, which can lead to conflict, Van Hoose said. It can also spread disease because it attracts numerous animals of different species to congregate in the same spot.
“Wildlife don’t need our help,” she said. “They’ve lived through drought years before, they know where to find resources and we should remove things that … teach them to rely on us for food or water so they’re able to find what they should be eating and drinking naturally.”
