{"id":93519,"date":"2019-06-12T15:56:08","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T21:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/despite-cold-spring-bears-should-have-good-natural-food-supply\/"},"modified":"2019-06-12T15:56:08","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T21:56:08","slug":"despite-cold-spring-bears-should-have-good-natural-food-supply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/despite-cold-spring-bears-should-have-good-natural-food-supply\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite cold spring, bears should have good natural food supply"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Bears
Bears should have plenty to eat in the forest this summer despite the cold spring, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A wet winter and spring should help keep bears fed and out of neighborhoods across Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the bears are able to make an honest living,\u201d said Matt Thorpe, area wildlife manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, a late frost hurt natural food sources, which resulted in many bears venturing into neighborhoods and urban areas looking for trash and other food sources. A record 60 bears were euthanized that year.<\/p>\n

Despite cold weather this spring, plenty of natural food sources, such as chokecherries and service berries, should keep bears well-fed, Thorpe said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings still look really good, with having a banner moisture year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But the number of bear sighting reports have gone up during the last 10 days, he said.<\/p>\n

In Vallecito, northeast of Durango, wildlife officers have been trying to trap a mother bear and her cub who are responsible for breaking into vehicles<\/a> and snatching chickens.<\/p>\n

In recent days, wildlife officers trapped a nuisance bear near Vallecito, but it wasn\u2019t the mother bear responsible for raiding cars, Thorpe said. The sow and her cub may have moved out of the area, he said.<\/p>\n

Thorpe encouraged residents who observe bears looking for food near residences to call CPW right away. Wildlife officers can potentially keep a bear from facing euthanasia if they can intervene early by relocating or tasing the animal, or using other tools, he said.<\/p>\n

Facebook posts that have shown bears in neighborhoods are concerning, he said. Tolerating bears that raid trash cans or cars makes those bears more dependent on non-natural food sources, Thorpe said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s critical that people let us know about some of these bear issues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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

Reports of nuisance animals trending up in some neighborhoods<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[1332,1500,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-93519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-bears","tag-vallecito","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93519","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=93519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93519"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=93519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}