By admin 
The drought-driven crisis of bears clashing with humans is escalating in scale and emotion, as law enforcement killed two bears, including one irreversibly ill from eating trash in Durango and a mother bear shot after charging an officer in front of dozens of people in Vail
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In Durango on Saturday, people reported a lethargic and groaning bear behind a home, and responding officers found a 300-pound male bear apparently bloated on trash. The bear was tranquilized and given a health exam.
On top of the obvious physical distress of the bear, the animal matched the size and color of a bear that had broken into multiple nearby homes a month earlier. Homeowners had photos of that bear that Durango wildlife officers used to conclude the sick bear was the one that had broken into homes. Colorado Parks and Wildlife had previously set a trap at a home five houses away that a bear had broken into three days before.
Colorado wildlife guidance is to euthanize bears that are breaking into homes and can’t be deterred.
After the bear was euthanized, “the officers conducted a field necropsy and discovered the stomach and upper intestine were completely blocked with trash, including entire plastic garbage bags and at least 10 nonflushable cleaning wipes,” a CPW statement said. “The lower intestine was empty, which further indicated that the passage was fully blocked above.”
Wildlife managers concluded the compaction was so severe, the bear would not have been able to digest any food in the prehibernation period, when the animals consume up to 20,000 calories in round-the-clock foraging to prepare for winter. The bear would likely have starved to death, over months.
“This is the sad reality of bears eating trash,” Durango District Wildlife Manager Luke Clancy said. “We had not seen this bear since 2012, when it was caught during a research study in Durango. We estimated this bear was now 18 years old. It’s a pretty horrible way to die for a wild bear that we hadn’t seen involved in any conflict or nuisance behavior in all these years.”
The Colorado Sun reported last week that Colorado wildlife officers had euthanized 294 bears this year through Aug. 31, up sharply from 83 bears killed by the same time last year. Drought and wildfire damage have robbed many of the state’s 20,000 bears of the crucial berries and acorns they typically gorge on this time of year. They seek easier food at campgrounds and in towns.
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In Vail on Aug. 24, Eagle County Sheriff’s officers responded to calls of a bear in the parking areas and trash sheds of the River Run apartment complex, and found a sow and two cubs. There were about 40 adults and children around, recording the bears on phones, the officers said.
Bears have been coming to River Run multiple times this summer, including an incident where a man was injured Aug. 17 by a bear protecting cubs near the complex’s laundry room. The sheriff’s office does not know if it was the same bear family.
Because the bears were not scared by the humans around them and had apparently been in the area multiple times, times, deputies resorted to hazing, meant to drive animals out of an area and deter them from coming back. Deputies first yelled at the bears, a common tip for deterrence. Instead, of running away, the sow charged at the deputies.
A deputy fired a nonlethal, rubber round that hit the adult in her back legs, but the bear turned on the deputy and began pacing. The deputy moved behind a boulder, and the bear charged again. Body camera video shows the deputy firing a handgun multiple times, killing the bear as the cubs followed.
CPW officers took the cubs to a rehabilitation center in Silt.
“We are heartbroken that a bear was killed in self-defense. We do not take lightly the responsibility we have in Eagle County to cohabitate with wildlife or the duty we have to protect both citizens and visitors,” the sheriff’s office statement said.
CPW is also reminding homeowners and campers that some communities, including Durango, have fines for people who don’t secure trash adequately against animals. State law has also changed recently, lowering the standard for being fined for feeding animals from intentionally feeding them to a failure-to-secure or should-have-known-better standard.
“Our community’s tepid approach to trash management got a bear killed,” Bryan Peterson of Bear Smart Durango said in the CPW release. “Thankfully, its pain and suffering was ended.”
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