Boulder, Colorado talking sensible steps to reduce conflicts and promote living-in-harmony with Bears and Cougars.................Education and outreach programs to area homeowners and business establishments are on tap with potential mandatory bear-resistant garbage can legislation in the offing

Boulder City Council to discuss human conflicts with bears, mountain lions

Strategy will be part of Urban Wildlife Management Plan

By Laura Snider

For more information: bouldercolorado.gov______________________________
Black bears and mountain lions by the numbers:
208 Number of bear sightings in Boulder in 2009 and 2010
7 Number of bears killed in Boulder by the Colorado Division of Wildlife since 2003
7 Number of dogs likely killed by mountain lions in Boulder since 2007
7 Number of cats likely killed by mountain lions in Boulder since 2007.
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Options for reducing trash that could attract berars
Option 1: Build community awareness about the problem through education, outreach and voluntary incentives. If the bear activity does not decrease in two years, revisit options below.
Option 2: Require bear-resistant containers on all properties where a bear or wild animal has accessed trash.
Option 3: Require bear-resistant containers in areas with unsecured trash along western alleys.
Option 4: Require bear-resistant containers on all properties along most of the western urban interface.

In the past two years, Boulder staffers have recorded 208 bear sightings, and the Colorado Division of Wildlife has killed two bears and relocated five others that wandered into the city.
The Boulder City Council will discuss options for reducing conflicts between residents and bears -- and between residents and mountain lions -- at its Tuesday meeting. City staffers are asking the council to approve a strategy for dealing with both animals that would rely heavily on education and outreach to change resident behaviors.
The final policy approved by the council will become part of the city's Urban Wildlife Management Plan, which grew out of council's passage of the Wildlife Protection Ordinance in 2005.
"The Urban Wildlife Management Plan was developed in two phases," said Val Matheson, the city's urban wildlife conservation coordinator. "The first phase was back in 2006, and it identified the plan's guiding principles and vision. Phase two is more of the species-specific components."
So far, staffers have developed a management plan for prairie dogs, and now they are completing work on the component that addresses bears and mountain lions.
Because the Colorado Division of Wildlife is responsible for directly managing the state's wildlife -- which includes killing, hazing or relocating nuisance animals -- the city's options for addressing conflicts between humans and animals is mostly limited to changing people's behavior.  In large part, that means convincing or compelling people to reduce wildlife "attractants" around their homes. In the case of bears, attractants include trash, food wastes, fruit trees and even bird feeders. For mountain lions, attractants may be urban landscaping that appeals to deer, raccoons or other animals that mountain lions eat. Pets running free in yards are also attractants.
Staffers researched four options for reducing trash and food wastes that attract bears, which ranged from an approach relying entirely on education and voluntary incentives to an ordinance that would require bear-resistant containers on most properties along the western edge of town.  But ultimately, staffers recommended the least restrictive option, though they said they would support a more mandatory approach in a couple of years if the education efforts don't have an impact.  "We had a series of public meetings where we collected feedback on some of the options," said Heather Swanson, a wildlife ecologist with Open Space and Mountain Parks. "We just didn't hear a lot of support in the community for actually requiring bear-proof trash cans."  In a letter commenting on the four options presented by staff, Larry Rogstad of the Division of Wildlife said that his agency would prefer the second option outlined by city staff, which would require bear-resistant containers on properties where a bear or other wild animals have gotten into the trash in the past.
"Option 2 would allow residents the flexibility to address how they handle garbage in relation to wildlife, but provides an avenue for enforcement with residents who do not appropriately secure their garbage in areas of town where it can be demonstrated that bears will take advantage of such attractants," Rogstad wrote.
The city has even fewer options for reducing the things that lure mountain lions into the city, and those available are often controversial. The city could approach the Division of Wildlife about culling dear populations, for example, or the City Council could require dogs to be in covered dog runs when left unattended on private property. But neither of those options has large public support, according to a memo prepared for the City Council.  "We have fewer tools available to us for mountain lions," Swanson said. "Really what we're doing with mountain lions is just trying to inform people of what to do if they have an interaction with a mountain lion and how to best manage their pets."