{"id":32480,"date":"2023-08-06T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-06T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bears-are-back-in-town-as-summer-passes-its-peak\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:58:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:58:33","slug":"bears-are-back-in-town-as-summer-passes-its-peak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bears-are-back-in-town-as-summer-passes-its-peak\/","title":{"rendered":"Bears are back in town as summer passes its peak"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A bear lounges in a tree on Wednesday in Durango along the Animas River. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

As the summer passes its peak, the mind wanders toward winter, and bears are no exception. Bruins are out and about, stocking up on food for winter.<\/p>\n

That means it is also time for the perennial warning in bear country: secure your trash cans, remove tasty bear treats such as dog food from your porch and keep your door and windows locked.<\/p>\n

Save for a mid-July bear attack<\/a> that left a sheep herder with serious injuries, it has been a relatively normal season for human-bear encounters, said Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman John Livingston.<\/p>\n

A lasting high-country snowpack provided water to grow foliage, which kept many of the bears out of Durango trash cans early in the season.<\/p>\n

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A bear lounges in a tree on Wednesday in Durango along the Animas River. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

However, the dry July means the acorns upon which black bears often feed are small.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could really benefit from some good monsoonal moisture to boost those acorn crops that do look to be abundant this year,\u201d Livingston said.<\/p>\n

Trash does kill bears, he said.<\/p>\n

Bears can find ways even into locked dumpsters, such as a bear in Ouray that managed to circumvent a steel cable lock in a video posted to CPW\u2019s Twitter account.<\/p>\n\n

The bear in the video accidentally pulled a dumpster onto its cub the week before, killing it.<\/p>\n

Livingston is optimistic that the arrival of monsoon season will keep bears out of trash cans and bird feeders as they enter hyperphasia, eating in excess to prepare for winter hibernation.<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"A
A bear lounges in a tree on Wednesday in Durango along the Animas River. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

those trash cans, as bears are fattening up for winter, officials say<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1478,1332,950,28,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-32480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-bear-smart","tag-bears","tag-durango","tag-headlines","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32480","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=32480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81809,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32480\/revisions\/81809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32480"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=32480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}