The tumultuous tale of Eagle County’s Bear 935 and its unfortunate fate

It has been a particularly busy year for bear encounters in Eagle County. Since Jan. 1, 2023, 91 bear-related calls have been made to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, compared to only four calls during the same time frame in 2022. While it might seem as though these calls indicate a dramatic increase in the number of bears in the area, most of the calls were tied to an individual bear that has been lingering in the West Vail area. West Vail residents, and much of Eagle County, know this bear by its ear tag number, 935.

Low bear year

According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s current bear management plan, bear mortality in the Roaring Fork and Eagle River valleys has been increasing over the last two decades.

“Our 10-year average of annual bear mortality is 118 bears per year. The three-year average when this plan was created (in 2022) was 135 bears per year,” said Layton Stutsman, the Edwards district wildlife manager. The bear mortality totals include every documented bear death, whether the cause was euthanasia due to direct conflict with humans, a car striking a bear, or another reason. The broader cause of these bear deaths is increased human-bear conflict due to population growth for both humans and bears, greater availability to bears of human food sources, and less successful natural food production.

In 2022, no bears were relocated from Eagle County, and just one bear was euthanized. The pattern has held so far in 2023: Colorado Parks and Wildlife has not yet relocated any bears from Eagle County, and no bears have been euthanized yet. 2023 is a low bear conflict year for the region, likely in part due to the wet spring. Bears have access to a plethora of natural food sources this year and do not need to rely on scavenging human food to feed themselves.

Eagle County also draws fewer bears than neighboring counties because the natural environment does not provide a great home for bears. Optimal bear habitat involves food sources such as grasses and sedges in the spring and early summer, berries in the mid-to-late summer, and oak brush in the late summer and early fall, all of which are much more often found in the Roaring Fork Valley than in Eagle County’s towns and metro districts.

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“Ultimately, if and when we have bear conflicts within municipalities in Eagle County, a lot of the time they are conflicts that are not as severe in nature, they are not as frequent in nature (as in the Roaring Fork Valley), and so we’re able to resolve them,” said Matt Yamashita, the Area 8 Colorado Parks and Wildlife area wildlife manager. “If we do get a spike in bear conflicts in Vail, it’s typically attributed to one or maybe two bears in town, and we are generally successful with some of our hazing efforts, or some of our public awareness and education efforts.”

Bear 935

Bear 935 earned its ear tags after being relocated near LEDE Reservoir in Gypsum on June 4 of this year, following human-related conflict in Kremmling. The hope in relocation is always that the bear will make a new home far from people. However, many relocated bears do not remain where they are placed.

“Often what we see with relocated bears is that one, either they have a high fidelity to their home range, so they return right back to where they were captured instead of staying where they were released, or two, they end up exhibiting the same behaviors elsewhere, in some other urban setting,” Stutsman said.

The second option is what has happened with 935. It made its way from Gypsum to West Vail, and has been paying visits to backyards and homes in the area.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife always puts two numbered ear tags on bears that are relocated, meaning that the bear has exhibited one-time behavior in conflict with humans, but not to the severity of an attack or a home invasion. The tags are a way for Colorado Parks and Wildlife to track the so-called “conflict bear.”

“In our state, through our management, if a bear has been involved in human conflict, it gets ear tags. It gets one in each ear, and then relocated. If it comes back into conflict again, then that second time is when it gets euthanized,” Yamashita said. “That comes with some caveats, in that, we try to be reasonable about what the degree of those conflicts are. If the bear was wandering through town and was sighted passing through a municipality, then generally we don’t constitute that as a true conflict.”

After becoming aware of Bear 935’s presence in West Vail, officers with Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Vail Police Department made many attempts to encourage the bear to move out of town, a process called bear hazing. Officers deployed less-lethal shotgun rounds, pepperball guns, and tasers on the bear, all in the hopes that it would be deterred from coming into contact with humans, but the bear continued to return to West Vail.

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As of Friday, July 28, Bear 935 was still alive, but at some point since arriving in Eagle County, it entered a home, and caused separate property damage. According to state policy, if Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers encounter the bear, they will be forced to euthanize it.

“For us, that’s a human health and safety-related issue. We’re not willing to take the chance that it’s not going to replicate the same behavior,” Yamashita said.

Bear 935 is not the only bear that has found its way into an Eagle County neighborhood this year. In June, a bear frequently sighted on porches and in backyards in East Vail was hit and killed by a car. In July, an EagleVail resident captured on video a bear without ear tags that entered his home.

How to protect bears

The story of Bear 935 can serve as a lesson for future bear sightings in Eagle County: The best way to keep bears safe is to actively keep them out of human communities. This involves trash management, communication with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and bear hazing.

“The decision to euthanize, or not euthanize, relocate, all of the above, that’s never based on the number of calls that come in. It’s always tied to the severity of the calls and the significance of the calls,” Yamashita said.

The earlier Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers know about a bear’s presence in a human community, the earlier they can intervene to encourage it to move on to a more appropriate place to live. The earlier a bear is hazed, by Colorado Parks and Wildlife and by the public, the greater the chance that it will leave the human community and never return.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers care about preserving bears’ lives, and quality of life. They prioritize hazing bears to keep them out of human-populated environments because bears survive best away from people.

“We don’t want to trap and ear tag and relocate a bear,” Yamashita said. “We don’t want to have to euthanize a bear that already has ear tags. If we can go through and haze a bear out of town, we will 100 percent of the time exercise every tool in the toolbox, in order to prevent having to take some of those other actions.”