{"id":13856,"date":"2026-01-22T15:59:46","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T22:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-city-council-to-hold-public-hearing-about-electric-fences-bear-mats\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:41:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:41:03","slug":"durango-city-council-to-hold-public-hearing-about-electric-fences-bear-mats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-city-council-to-hold-public-hearing-about-electric-fences-bear-mats\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango City Council to hold public hearing about electric fences, bear mats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Bryan
Bryan Peterson, director of Bear Smart Durango, said the organization fielded 367 bear sightings and incident reports in 2025. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Durango City Council will hold a public hearing about electric fencing and bear mats \u2013 popular and effective wildlife deterrents \u2013 on Feb. 3.<\/p>\n

City Council has weighed the benefits of wildlife deterrents with safety and liability concerns since bear activity surged in the summer. It requested a public hearing on proposed revisions to the city\u2019s land use and development code that would make room for wildlife deterrents.<\/p>\n

Bear Smart Director Bryan Peterson said he welcomes a permit process for electric fencing and bear mats within city limits. Bear Smart has advocated for the allowance of such equipment since 2014.<\/p>\n

\u201cElectric fencing and mats have been one of the biggest breakthroughs in mitigating human and bear conflict,\u201d he said. \u201cBears respond very well to these non-lethal deterrents, so allowing the use of electric fencing and mats would be an amazing tool in reducing property damage by bears, keeping residents safe and discouraging bears from lingering around in town.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bear
Bear Smart Director Bryan Peterson said he welcomes a permit process for electric fencing and bear mats within city limits. Bear Smart has advocated for the allowance of such equipment since 2014. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Bear Smart revived the conversation with the city last summer. Peterson said then increased bear activity was \u201ccrazy\u201d and \u201cincredible.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

He said Bear Smart assisted 40 county landowners with electric fence installations and loaner electric mats. There are thousands of electric fences in use across La Plata County.<\/p>\n

Allowing a permit process for the equipment within city limits is \u201ca no-brainer, with nothing but upsides,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPreventing, or mitigating, conflict is much more effective than dealing with a bear simply being a bear taking advantage of human-provided food sources,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bear Smart fielded 367 bear sightings and incident reports in 2025. Peterson said he is still reviewing data collected from Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Durango Police Department and code enforcement, and La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office in addition to internal data, he said.<\/p>\n

He said the 367 incidents recorded by Bear Smart already amount to a 69% increase from 2024 activity and a 153% increase from the previous five-year average.<\/p>\n

City Council is scheduled to vote on whether to approve the municipal code changes to allow wildlife deterrent permitting on Feb. 18. If approved, the new code would take effect March 20 \u2013 30 days after approval, according to city documents.<\/p>\n

cburney@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sightings and incidents surged 153% last year compared with five-year average<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1478,1020,507,28,994,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-bear-smart","tag-durango-city-council","tag-durango-city-officials","tag-headlines","tag-trueanthem","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13856"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19196,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13856\/revisions\/19196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13856"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}