Seeking to become more bear aware
Los Alamos hoping festival will help to make city more bear friendly
Los Alamos is undertaking an initiative to become the first bear friendly community in New Mexico. It’s holding its first ever Bear Festival today, part of an officially declared Bear Month.
Jonathan Creel, director of interpretation at the Los Alamos Nature Center, said the goal is to get people to understand bears better and learn how to coexist in shared territory.
“Last year we had a number of bears in town and incidents of them getting into garbage cans, and then there was the incident last summer in the Valles Caldera,” he said, referring to a woman being attacked by a bear protecting her cubs while the woman was running a marathon not far from Los Alamos.
State Game and Fish Department, per state policy, killed the mother bear because it had attacked the runner. That provoked a failed legislative effort to give officials more leeway when deciding whether a wild animal must be euthanized after an attack.
“So what this is about is getting people to understand the animal and what we can do to live safely and peacefully with bears,” said Creel. “Because we’re living in bear habitat. Our ranges are overlapping.”
Groups putting on the festival include the Pajarito Environmental Education Center and the Land of Enchantment Wildlife Foundation. Representatives from the U.S. Forest Service, Bandelier National Monument, state Game and Fish, Sandia Mountain Bear Watch, and Los Alamos Environmental Services will also be on hand.
“It’s all focused on having people understand what they can do to avoid negative interactions with bears,” Creel said.
There are nearly 8,000 bears in New Mexico, not counting those that roam tribal lands, according to Game and Fish estimates. Their habitat includes the Jemez, Sangre de Cristo, Sandia, and Sacramento mountain ranges. All are American black bears, though their colors range to brown, cinnamon, reddish and blonde.
While some can weigh as much as 400 pounds, the average male weighs about 250 pounds and females average about 170. About 500 bears were killed last year, according to the department’s statistics, their demise primarily caused by state-managed hunting that includes limits, depredation by other bears, automobiles and other accidents.
For the greater Albuquerque area, especially the Sandia foothills, there have been few bear sightings the past couple of years.
Jan Hayes, founder of Sandia Mountain Bear Watch, an advocacy group for bears, said three difficult years from 2011 to 2013 left the Sandia Mountains with a meager bear population, which she estimates number fewer than 40 this year.
“None of us have seen any bears,” said Hayes, an East Mountain resident. “We’re seeing footprints occasionally, but that’s it.”
In 2011, dry weather and a hard freeze in May destroyed much of the food supply and sent dozens of bears into populated areas, where they were either killed or relocated. The following two years were little better for bears in the Sandias, Hayes said. She estimates that at least 130 bears were killed or removed from the Sandias from 2011-2013.
Three decent years of moisture have brought back raccoons, mule deer and other wildlife, “but not bears,” Hayes said.