Bear Season Begins

It is bear season, here's what to know as bears begin waking from hibernation. You're watching the Local News Network brought to you by Serious Texas Bar-B-Q in the FLC Center for Innovation. I'm Sadie Smith. With the snow melting early and spring in full swing, bears around Durango are waking up a little ahead of schedule.

We're already starting to see a little bit of bear activity around Durango. We had a pretty unseasonably, dry and warm winter, and because of that, I think we've seen some bears start poking their heads out of the den a little bit earlier. They're not seeing that snow and starting to see a little bit of early grasses and insects that they want to feed on this time of year.

With bears looking for food, Colorado Parks and Wildlife reminds residents that the best way to avoid encounters is to properly secure your trash.

We know the number one cause of human bear conflict is unsecured trash. So the best thing people can do is make sure they're securing their trash, and that means not putting it out until the morning of pickup. That can greatly reduce the incidents of bear getting into your trash. If you're not putting it out the night before, but you're waiting until that morning of your trash pickup.

Bird feeders are another major attractant and CPW recommends taking them down during active bear season. And if you're camping, secure your food.

For campsites, if you have bear boxes available, make sure you're utilizing those. Always safely secure any kind of food source at a campsite. And if you cook in clothes at a campsite one night, take those clothes off wear something different when you sleep in your tent at night so you don't have a bear trying to get into your tent.

If a bear wanders into a residential neighborhood, CPW advises residents to haze the bear away with loud noises by banging on pots and pans, or setting off car alarms. The noise not only serves human health and safety, but also protects the bear's safety as well.

We always encourage people to call our Durango office if you see a bear or if you're having bear conflict, but even just for a sighting, that data really helps us. We have a Human Bear Conflict Reduction grant that we offer about a million dollars to local communities all across the state every year that are dealing with high levels of human bear conflict. And that data of how many bears we have in our area really helps our local community get some of that grant funding. So even if it's just a sighting call the local CPW Durango Office.

Additional details may be found on the Colorado Parks and Wildlife website. For more information about this and other stories, visit durangolocal.news. Thank you for watching this edition of the Local News Network, I'm Sadie Smith.