Tips to keep bears out
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- Created on Friday, 03 September 2010 18:19
- Written by Nathan
TIPS TO KEEP BEARS OUT
• Many bears that enter homes do so through an unlocked or open window or door. Close and lock all bear-accessible windows and doors when you leave the house, and at night before you go to bed.
• If you must leave downstairs windows open, install sturdy grates or bars. Screens don’t keep out bears.
• Keep garage doors and windows closed and locked at night and when you’re not home. Don’t leave your garage door standing open when you’re not outside. Install extra-sturdy doors if you have a freezer, refrigerator, pet food, bird seed, or other attractants in your garage.
• Bears are great climbers — remove any tree limbs that might provide access to upper level decks and windows.
• Replace exterior lever-style door handles with good quality round door knobs that bears can’t pull or push open.
Get rid of attractants
• Bears follow their super-sensitive noses to anything that smells like food, and can follow scents from up to five miles away.
• Don’t leave trash out overnight unless it’s in a bear-proof enclosure or container. Obey all local regulations.
• Don’t store food of any kind in an unlocked garage, flimsy shed or on or under your deck.
Teach bears they’re not welcome
• If a bear comes into your yard or close to your home, do yourself and the bear a big favor, and scare it away. A confident attitude plus loud noises like a firm yell, clapping your hands, banging on pots and pans or blowing an air horn sends most bears running.
• If a bear enters your home, open doors and windows and make sure it can leave the same way it got in. Don’t approach the bear or block escape routes.
• Never approach a bear. If a bear won’t leave, call your local CDOW office. If a bear presents an immediate threat to human safety, call 911.
Visit www.wildlife.state.co.us/bears for more information
OTHER BLACK BEAR FACTS
Description: Black bears tare the largest of Colorado's carnivores. Although called black bears, they can be honey-colored, blond, brown, cinnamon or black. They may have a tan muzzle or white spot on the chest. Although brown or cinnamon-colored bears are sometimes mistaken for grizzly bears, there are no known grizzlies living in Colorado.
Adult females are called sows. Adult males are called boars. Youngsters are called cubs.
Adult males weigh from 275 pounds. Females weight about 175 pounds. Depending on the season, food supply and gender, black bears may weigh anywhere from 100 to 450 pounds. Black bears measure about 3 feet high when on all four feet. They can be 5 feet tall when standing on back legs.
Cubs will stay with the mother bear for their first year, denning with the mother and littermates over the winter. By the time of their second spring, they will be self-reliant and will separate from their mother by the second autumn.
Range: In Colorado, the largest populations of black bears live in areas where there is Gambel’s oak and aspen, near open areas of chokecherry and serviceberry bushes. A black bear may have a range from 10 to 250 square miles
Diet: Black bears will learn to eat natural foods, such as berries, nuts and insects, as they are taught to forage by mother bears. People who live or camp in bear country need to be sure they don’t teach bears to become “garbage” bears by careless handling of food, scraps and garbage. Bears who find human food, even once, can change their habits to seek food from human residences and trash cans. Most bears seen in residential areas near or within bear habitat do not cause any damage. If a bear doesn’t find abundant food, it will move on.
Reproduction: Male bears are capable of breeding when they are 3 years old. Some female bears breed as early as 3 or 4 years of age, but 5 years is more common. After a 2-3 months of gestation, 1 to 3 tiny cubs are born mid-winter, typically while the mother is still in the den. Newborn cubs – weighing less than a pound at birth -- are blind, toothless and covered with very fine hair. When they emerge from the den in early or mid-May, they will weigh 10 to 15 pounds.
SOURCE: Colorado Division of Wildlife
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