Famously dubbed the Rodeo Drive of the Rockies, Aspen, Colo., is home to gourmet restaurants, fine jewelry stores, luxury hotels and, for a few months in the summer, bears. “Once a bear gets into a human environment they quickly realize the fried chicken you or I had for dinner last night and may have put in the trash can is highly caloric,” said Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton.
Bears need nearly 20,000 calories a day to bulk up before hibernating and feed for 20 hours a day to get it.
Officials are now concerned that across Colorado too many wild bears have developed a tasted for human food and are getting used to people. They are now actively telling residents to be, literally, mean to the bears. Yell at them, throw rocks and if they charge you, stand up to them. “You want to be as big, as large as possible, and you always want to fight back with a black bear,” said Hampton. Black bears tend to be timid and are generally not aggressive.
“When they are utilizing our environment as their habitat in that manner, they are also very likely to defend that territory, ” said Hampton. “And so it can be a dangerous situation when bears get to the point where they are breaking into homes to get food.” In Aspen, three people this summer have been attacked in their own homes, including Maureen Hirsch. A bear came into her house through locked French doors.
From the bears POV the headline should read…Toni Colorado Town Overrun by tasty SNOBS!!!
Bears. Natures answer to insufferable rich kids.
Eat the rich!
Black bears are timid? All I’ve read about them says they’re the lest predictable of all bears, making them rather dangerous. Maybe they have different black bears out there.
Western black lo-calorie biodynamic probiotic Gucci bears.
That reminds me, I’ve got some bear steaks in the Freezer. It is a two way street.
This is exactly the type of advice that will get someone killed.
If the bear is not interested in you, avoid it, period.
If there are cubs, back away slowly and get the hell out of there,females with cubs are EXTREMELY dangerous and will charge just for being in the general area of her cubs, a swipe from a black bear can rip open a 45 gallon drum with ease, you don’t have a chance.
Bears are NOT the cuddly creatures portrayed in the media.
To the morons in the article advocating throwing rocks and hitting with sticks, grow a fucking brain.
Ladies, finally here’s a chance to put your anti-rape training to good use. Kick the bear in the nads and blow your rape whistle
I am an Aspen resident. We had a bear out at our building all summer. He figured out that the dumpster was a great place to get a quick meal if it wasn’t locked. Many of the residents forget to lock up. One morning in August he had tipped it over on its side. Granted, it isn’t a very big dumpster, but I still wouldn’t want to run into a pissed off bear that can do that! A few days later, the cleaning lady’s car was left open and the bear started looking around for a meal. She went out into the parking lot and didn’t see it. We started yelling at her to go back inside, but she didn’t understand English. Luckily one of my friends realized this and was fluent enough in Spanish to let her know what was going on.
A few people have been attacked, and I think the one in our neighborhood was caught/killed by the DOW. One guy was attacked in his basement at 6:00 at night… the bear climbed in through a small (for a bear) window. They are very aggressive this year and the DOW should be actively going after the ones in town, but of course they aren’t. Relocation is the best solution, but if it comes back, it should be put down.
As for how to defend yourself, I’ll keep a deer slug handy near the shotgun. Bears have little ears and big mouths, not good if you want to reason with one.
I’ve seen this before. Black bears start to appear, people think they are cute and start to feed them. The bear population climbs and the bears begin to associate houses with food and lose their fear of people. Bears start breaking into peoples houses.
One guy in NJ decided to wrestle with a bear because it was sitting in his backyard making his dog bark. The bear won.
First you need to eliminate the food source. Garbage, bird feed, etc.
Some of the rural neighbors use a round of rock salt in the rear end. The bears remember it and stop coming around.
You are nothing but a meat popsicle to them.
Oh, cute cuddly widdle bear!
and remember ALWAYS carry your ‘bear spray’ with you … the bear appreciate a bit of pepper on their meat ….
Read this warning sign from a British Columbian park, pretty much sums it up well:
Ahhhh! How CUTE!
An adorable, would never hurt you EVER little bear-kitten!
Me and my PETA friends will shoo them away with kind words and fluffy feathers!
The population of these animals needs to be better managed. They could be given sterilization vaccines. Works against all mammals: that includes you.
Just make sure someone uploads the video of the people following this advice to YouTube.
It’s important!
I think the bigger question that needs to be asked is what part of their food chain has changed (or disappeared) that would warrant them to come into town.
I forget it if was in canada or alaska, but this year only about 600,000 of a normally 6mil-10million
strong run of salmon came upstream to spawn this year.
Large quantities of dead fish and birds are showing up all over the place.. (set a Gmail alert and you see how bad it is in short order)
Anyway, its a good bet that a major [food] disruption happened in this case as well.
I know that the sun cycle is responsible for the fertility cycles in many animals [if not all) (esp human females) and that the sunspot cycle is responsible for mutations.
-with low (or no) sunspot cycles producing the most mutation (and
the least offspring)
So again…what food source did not reproduce enough this past year in CO
to drive the bears in.. find that out and you have your reason.
The free “Hi-Cal chicken/dumpster” story is a time honoured media cover story that is always used to mask the real reason..
I’m not buying it as the sole reason the bears are “shopping in town” this year..
-s
#15 Soundwash -
We had a really cold spring this year, so the plants didn’t get going until late June/early July. Making matters worse, 2-4 years ago we were in a drought, so when these bears were cubs they learned how to get food out of a dumpster.
Wolf packs are smart enough to leave bears alone, you should be too. Don’t carry open food in the woods. A granola wrapper in the forest is still liter and an attractant.
Colorado bears on crack?
Democrats long ago made guns and sticks illegal in Colorado so what are they thinking?
From the make-up-your-mind department…
“Black bears tend to be timid and are generally not aggressive.”
“…three people this summer have been attacked in their own homes.”