It is 3.30am, bear time in the back alleys of compact, restaurant-dense downtown Aspen, Colorado. I hurry to catch up with Stewart Breck and spot what just made him shout and throw up his hands in exasperation: two fat trash bags ripped open, with food scraps spilling out onto the pavement.
The sound of Breck’s approaching SUV must have scared off a bear mid-scavenge. Compost and garbage are known in the parlance of human-bear conflict as “attractants.” Aspen municipal code requires both to be secured in bear-resistant containers.
“Give me a break,” Breck says, quieter now, hands back at his sides. “We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this.” This equals: multiyear, multicity research into how best to get people in the midst of bear country to properly lock up attractants, and how much difference it makes when they do.
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Between January and June of this year, there were more than 700 such encounters with black bears in Colorado – not hugely out of the norm in recent years. What is out of the norm, though, is the nature of these run-ins. “It just seems they are a little more brazen this year,” Christy Bubenheim from the state’s parks and wildlife service recently told The Denver Post. When bears get too bold, it often doesn’t end well, mainly for them: between 2015 and 2021, in Colorado alone 775 black bears were euthanised.
As we encroach further into their territory and climate change alters their hibernation habits, these types of run-ins will become more common. So how do we solve a problem like black bears in the backyard?
The question doesn’t just apply in typical North American bear country. In recent months, black bears have been making a ruckus in residential neighbourhoods everywhere from the suburbs of San Francisco to the commuter towns of New York City.
To some extent, this is a reflection of conservation success. There are now some 900,000 American black bears (Ursus americanus) across North America, up from a low of 200,000 before 1900, but well shy of the estimated 2 million before European colonisation and the hunting and habitat encroachment that came with it.
But climate change may be boosting bear conflict too. A 2017 study of 51 adult black bears found that for every 1°C (about 1.8°F) increase in temperature, hibernation shortened by about a week. Based on current climate change projections, black bears of the year 2050 will be hibernating 15 to 40 days less than they are now. That’s 15 to 40 more days out on the landscape looking for food.
In a year of plentiful food, bears hibernate for shorter periods too. For bears that start relying on human-sourced foods, every year is plentiful. That 2017 study showed that bears that forage mostly urban areas hibernate a full month less than bears that forage the natural landscape.
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