Jan Landers

The following article in our local paper last week exemplifies what is going on here in our town and I imagine other places as well….humans behaving in an unconscious manner with sickening results…..
I am feeling so angry right now and so frustrated with the human race….my heart is aching and I just needed to vent and to share this, for what it’s worth…..it’s a long read, I know, but maybe some of you will take a few minutes of your time and will feel this and maybe, just maybe, it will create some further awareness….

Unchanging Human Habits Pull the Trigger on Unlucky Bear
The price of human food costly to bears
By Juley Harvey Trail-Gazette
Posted: 08/05/2009 02:19:58 PM MDT

There`s a reason, it turns out, that wildlife officials tell you not to feed the bears/wildlife. It corrupts the animals, and then wildlife officers must intervene and destroy what they have signed up to protect. The chain of events leaves a lot to be desired. But it can be easily changed.
District Wildlife Manager Rick Spowart of the Colorado Division of Wildlife just came from a killing last Friday, and brought the bear carcass with him to the Trail-Gazette. It`s not a happy bearskin rug. A picture may get the grim point across, he said. There are consequences to everything—even something as simple or good-hearted as feeding the hummingbirds. When bears are about, they pay the consequences for intractable human behavior.

Division of Wildlife officer Rick Spowart examines a euthanized bear on Friday. The 4-year-old female had become habituated to breaking in to homes, as well as bird feeders and garbage bins. ( Walt Hester )Spowart is not a happy camper. He had to kill (not euthanize, not put down, but kill) a healthy adult female bear that was about three to four years old, in the vicinity of the YMCA of the Rockies, for just being a bear among humans. The bear is gone forever, taking one piece of the wilderness with her. It`s simple, really—spare the bear and secure the food. Food kills.

Bears are attracted by human food and garbage—humans are culpable in their death. Wildlife officials ask why not be positive, guard our garbage and keep the bears alive?

Maybe you`re thinking it will never happen to you—colliding with a bear. But it will surely happen to the bear, and it won`t be a happy ending.

Just listen to Spowart, he has many sad tales. A week ago, a bear broke into a cabin in which there was a two-year-old child.

“The bear wasn`t looking at the child as a food item. This one was after human food, but it was a danger and the people were upset,” Spowart said. “This bear wasn`t afraid of people.”

The bear had a big, white mark on its chest that made it easy to identify. Wildlife officials tried to give the bear a negative human experience, before the ultimate one. They don`t relocate bears because the bears find their way back or just cause problems in other locales once they`ve caught onto the idea of feeding from our freezers and shelves.

“There`s no place to take the bears,” Spowart said. “We`ve trapped them and moved them to Wyoming. They came back to Pinewood Springs. It`s a hard sell to take them to another area…. It`s a no-win situation. If you move them, you have to tag them and try to move them as far away from town as possible, moving the problem to somebody else, where they will probably cause damage or injury. This is the end result of feeding.”

There are several bears in town this year. A little gingerbread bear is now in the crosshairs. The little bear has traveled Moraine and entered houses on Aspen, by the hospital and in the general vicinity of Laura`s Fudge shop. He`s been up and down main street.

Spowart has approached town officials about the problem and about providing bear-resistant garbage cans. The town needs to start cleaning up its own garbage, he said. The shop owners need to ask the town to better manage the garbage. Raccoons have been getting into it, as well as the bears. Spowart said wildlife officials have had to shoot some raccoons with distemper.

“We euthanize raccoons every week,” he said. “They get into the garbage and spread the disease, right downtown.”

The town council should consider bear-resistant garbage cans. There is a regulation requiring mitigation of garbage and different options are available.

“Once a bear`s had a good meal at your house, he`ll come back. Take away the attractions,” he said.

He suggested using bear pepper spray and air horns to signal the bears are not welcome.

“It`s in the best interest of the bear,” he said. “I`m the guy that gets stuck with pulling the trigger and killing the bears…. It made me feel terrible and frustrated. This is going on all over the state. It`s a shame. If people would do a better job of coexisting, we wouldn`t have to kill the bears. Once a bear starts down this road….”

The little gingerbread bear in town is on his last legs, a “hair`s breath away” from the bad end of a gun.

“I`m almost for sure going to have to trap him,” Spowart said. “We`re trying to turn around behavior, but people just are not getting it. I`m frustrated. The bears graduate from garbage to bird feeders to houses. They`re trained by people.”

Leaving a bear any opportunity is dangerous. An open garage door invites him in. Spowart said he`s known bears to knock holes in garage doors, if they smell food.

“It`s best to be proactive,” he said, “and not have any attractants. Don`t leave windows and doors open…. Bears are getting trained to enter houses. They`re rewarded. They become corrupt. They go house to house. You can`t expect people to live with their houses being broken into. I had no choice (but to kill this bear).... This bear would continue its behavior.

“We have to educate people to coexist with bears, to manage their garbage and pet food,” he said.

He told of one bear who jumped into a kennel to get pet food. Anything that smells good in a car is also at risk. Bears seem particularly attracted to vanilla air freshener in cars. They break into bathrooms because of “good-smelling toiletries,” he said.

The unfortunate bear last week had broken into at least nine homes or cabins and created a mess in one place, after a dinner of pizza, watermelon and peaches.

“It`s easier than foraging in the forest,” he said.

However, fast food is death on a stick.

Spowart said the bear killed last week could`ve been in better shape and you could feel the ribs on her. A Y employee reported the same bear broke into a house last year. She had broken into several places in recent weeks, emptying refrigerators. He and Bear Aware volunteer Jim Boyd (who works at the Y) treed the bear 50 to 60 feet up a blue spruce Friday morning.

“I darted it,” Spowart said. “It fell asleep in the tree. We lowered it to the ground with ropes.”

Then, he shot the bear. “I don`t feel good about it,” he said. “I didn`t sign up to kill…. You can`t blame the bear.”

However, he was under pressure to remove the bear.

Spowart gave the Y and Boyd credit for obtaining bear-resistant garbage cans. However, the more that people “don`t get it,” the more frustrated he becomes.

“I`m the one that pulls the trigger,” he said. “They`re (people) the cause of it. Some people feed the animals intentionally, to get pictures.”

He has a photo of a man with a can of pork and beans held out to a bear, who has his nose in the can.

“I gave him a ticket and had to kill the bear,” Spowart said.

There are at least five bears currently foraging in town.

“One big male has been pushing over dumpsters,” he said. “There`s the little gingerbread bear a hair`s breath away from euthanizing, a sow and two cubs and another sow and a cub.”

They have been seen from the Catholic Church to the hospital to Davis Hill. They`re spending a whole lot of time in downtown Estes, he said.

“It`s a pretty bad year for bears,” Spowart said. “It`s really discouraging. We`ve had a nice, wet summer. There`s natural bear food out. I`m hopeful that when the chokecherries ripen, they`ll switch to natural food, and with negative conditioning from humans, they`ll go back to being honest bears.”

Spowart also hopes to turn the people around. The same people are causing the problem repeatedly and we “need to clean up our back yard,” he said.

“Wherever there are people, there are bears,” he said.