{"id":93635,"date":"2019-06-07T14:04:03","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T20:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/traps-set-for-bear-suspected-in-durango-area-burglary\/"},"modified":"2019-06-07T14:04:03","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T20:04:03","slug":"traps-set-for-bear-suspected-in-durango-area-burglary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/traps-set-for-bear-suspected-in-durango-area-burglary\/","title":{"rendered":"Traps set for bear suspected in Durango-area burglary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A black bear found a bird feeder north of Durango in 2013. Wildlife officials have set traps north of Vallecito Reservoir in an effort to capture at least one bear that has been breaking into cars. Bird feeders are an attractant for bears.<\/span>Courtesy of Donald Bruning file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A bear destroyed the interior of a vehicle early Thursday near Vallecito Reservoir. It is at least the second incident in two weeks in which a bruin has broken into a vehicle near the lake community northeast of Durango.<\/p>\n

Traps have been set in an effort to catch the bear burglar, said Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman Joe Lewandowski. A bear broke into another vehicle May 21 for an empty pizza box<\/a> but did not damage the interior.<\/p>\n

Lewandowski said he could not comment on the damage done to the vehicle in the most recent break-in. A La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office spokesman did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.<\/p>\n

The owner of the vehicle did not have food in the vehicle but did recently return from a long trip, Lewandowski said. He suspects the bear got a whiff of whatever food had been in the vehicle and broke in for an easy meal.<\/p>\n

\u201cBears, they wander, they cover a great distance,\u201d Lewandowski said. \u201cIf they see a spot for an easy meal or catch a scent \u2013 they have sensitive noses \u2013 and they\u2019ve gotten a food reward from one car, they might look at other cars for reward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials believe a bear and her cub have been wandering the neighborhood north of Vallecito for weeks. They believe the sow and cub were responsible for some missing chickens last week and may have broken into other vehicles, Lewandowski said.<\/p>\n

If the bear is trapped before it causes more trouble, officials plan to release it somewhere else, Lewandowski said. If she causes more trouble, she may need to be euthanized, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt only takes one or two things if bears are in the neighborhood to start causing problems,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

CPW often gets calls about bears around Vallecito \u2013 in recent weeks there have been reports of bears knocking over garbage cans, Lewandowski said. The best way to keep bears out of vehicles is to lock doors and spray disinfectants to remove lingering odors.<\/p>\n

Bird feeders often attract bears, too; a bear that bit a hiker near Aspen was found with a belly full of bird seed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in prime bear country, and bears are among us,\u201d Lewandowski said. \u201cWe have to try to do everything we can to not give them food rewards.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

into at least two vehicles within two weeks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[1332,4259,1500],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-93635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-bears","tag-newsletter-sign-up","tag-vallecito"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93635","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=93635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93635"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=93635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}