ASPEN, Colo. – Celebrity sightings are old news in
the place known as “Glitter Gulch.” New this summer and fall were
black bear sightings. “The number of nuisance bear calls was the
highest it’s been since I moved here 20 years ago,” says Randy
Cote, Colorado Department of Wildlife’s Aspen-area district
manager, who received more than 100 bruin-related calls a week
between mid-July and mid-August.
It’s like a
twisted version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Families of
bears have been frequenting houses, sitting in cars, falling asleep
in backyards, and eating much more than porridge. As a result, they
have traded “we can’t get enough of you” appeal for “we’ve had too
much of you” rancor.
Five bears from the
Aspen/Snowmass area were destroyed this summer under the
“two-strikes’ rule, a state edict established in 1994 that punishes
repeat raiders with death. Six more bears were killed by cars,
while others received buckshot in the rear
end.
Local residents such as Dottie Fox,
chairperson of the Aspen Wilderness Workshop, say this is no way to
treat bears. The fault, she says, often lies with homeowners who
leave out trash, pet food or birdseed – all prime enticements for a
hungry bear.
The solution? “Educate people on how
to co-exist with bears – they were here first,” says Jim Kravitz at
the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies. Or, as state wildlife
division staffer Mike Reid puts it, remember that, “You don’t have
a bear in your backyard; the bear has a house in his front yard.”
* Melissa
Coleman
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Bears flocked to Aspen.
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