Original Article | Mar 7, 2025 | by Josie Taris
Frosty spring conditions pushed bears into town last year in search of food, which partially explains why the number of bear reports in the region led the state. But officials say conflicts fell below threshold goals.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife recently released its data on human-bear interactions and the region including the Roaring Fork Valley led the state in reports and sightings.
Area 8 encompasses the Roaring Fork and Eagle valleys, which led the state in most bear reports and sightings to CPW. Pitkin County had the highest number of reports, sightings and euthanized bears.
In Area 8, there were 1,283 reports made to CPW of bear activity and 928 sightings. The area had 17 relocated bears over 2024 and 36 euthanasias. Pitkin County had seven relocations and 19 euthanasias — the highest euthanasia rate.
Because of the area’s high interaction with bears, local CPW officials have their own management plan that tracks human-bear conflict.
Of Pitkin County’s 804 reports, 272 concerned food-source property damage and non-food property damage in 2024. That’s up from 430 total reports and of those 190 reports for food source property damage and non-food property damage in 2023.
For 2024, they tracked 431 incidents of property damage involving a food source, 81 incidents of property damage involving a non-food source, 41 incidents of aggressive behavior and zero attacks.
Per the management plan, the goal is to stay under 450 conflict incidents.
Matt Yamashita, area wildlife manager, said the high level of interaction comes down to ideal bear habitat and high population.
“We pair that good quality bear habitat with high numbers of people,” he said. “We have a lot of people that either live here (and) more that visit here. There’s just a ton of people focused in the same habitat types as where these bears would naturally occur otherwise, and that’s different from a lot of the other areas of the state that have reasonably good bear habitat.”
Daniela Kohl, founder of Roaring Fork Bear Coalition, concurred. Her nonprofit has been out educating the community about living among bears safely since 2019, giving out bear straps for trash cans, encouraging people to contact CPW and more.
She said with the population boom in the area since the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to interactions. New folks who don’t know how to live among bears have questions about trash storage, bird feeders and how to secure their homes.
People frequently express concern about the welfare of a bear that tries to enter their homes, and Kohl says she encourages contacting CPW as early and often as possible.
“Sometimes people see an ear tag. It doesn’t mean the bear is going to be put down, because it’s just a location of where the bear was maybe from, or maybe one day he was caught somewhere. It doesn’t mean something is going to happen to the bear,” Kohl said.
Yamashita stressed that while the area has the highest euthanasia count, it is a last resort.
“That’s not best practice. That’s not what we’re charged with doing. That’s not how we’re trying to manage the populations. We do that as a last resort,” he said. “Any animal that’s being euthanized is being euthanized primarily because it’s a danger to public safety.”
A contributing factor to high interactions and conflicts was the decline of naturally occurring food sources.
“This past year was a food failure year. Locally, our natural food sources were at a minimum and we were seeing a lot of bears that were getting really desperate to find food sources when Mother Nature wasn’t providing,” he said.
CPW saw instances of bears going through open windows and doorways, even some instances of bears tearing down infrastructure to access a food source.
Frosts well into June, Yamashita said, stunted the growth cycle for things like berries, acorns and other food sources.
That constrained food supply prompted some sows to abandon their cubs, in a cruel reality of nature. The mother bears had to choose intentionally to abandon their cubs to increase their own chance of survival for the next season’s reproductive cycle.
Occasionally CPW will intervene in the situation of an abandoned cub, but it’s a balance between letting nature run its course and preventing a “desperate” cub from being a threat to humans.
“The last thing we want is for a desperate cub to come in contact with a human and swipe the person, bite the person or anything else. We’ll try to step in before that occurs,” he said. “But it happens a lot, and there’s a lot of times where people hear the not awesome, not popular answer of ‘Yeah, let nature be.’”
Still, Yamashita estimated that 90% of CPW bear-related interactions with the public are education based.
In Area 8, CPW counted 54 roadkill instances of bears in 2024, outpacing the euthanasia count.
In the past year, Kohl said Redstone, Holland Hills and Glenwood Springs were particular hot spots for her organization.
In this season, Kohl said she’ll continue her work with homeowners associations and other groups to secure garbage and prevent bears from going too far.