r/ColoradoSprings • u/Techie4evr • 13d ago

News PSA:Bear Alert(brown)

Be Carefull, Brown bear spotted just past Austin Bluffs Pkwy & Union. Seen him @ 6:03am

0 Upvotes

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31

u/Old-Climate2655 13d ago

Thanks for the heads up!

Sometimes black bears have brown fur. And that's probably what you saw. They are still dangerous tho

7

u/Blucifers_Veiny_Anus 13d ago

Probably?

19

u/TreyWriter 13d ago

Listen, grizzlies go on vacation too! Maybe he just wanted to see the Garden of the Gods.

5

u/Old-Climate2655 13d ago

Zoos, the circus downtown, a professional animal handler in the area. There's always the wierd off-chance.

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u/EM05L1C3 13d ago

The odds of this actually happening are not 0

1

u/Old-Climate2655 13d ago

Exactly! Even Dennis gets loose from time to time.

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u/Blucifers_Veiny_Anus 13d ago

I suppose that's fair. The chance is greater than zero

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u/okeydokeyannieoakley 13d ago

Black bears are rarely aggressive and are not any more dangerous than other wildlife in the area. They will go out of their way to avoid confrontations and interactions with humans. Please stop spreading misinformation.

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u/Old-Climate2655 13d ago

Barking dog + mother and cub. Yes, black bears are dangerous. In April of 2021 a woman in Colorado lost her life this way.

2014 a 14 y.o. had a black bear force itself into the boys tent and bit him near Loveland.

In June of 2025 a black bear attacked a campground full of children near Aspen.

While yes, there is an established behavior of avoidance -IN NATURE, black bears entering urban environments are often desensitized to human presence to varying degrees. ALWAYS treat encounters as though the animal could be aggressive. They will attack dogs, children and even adults if threatened (by their perspective, not yours) or even if they're hungry enough.

I love the wildlife here, that's why I both respect and never underestimate it. Nor do I spread "misinformation" about it.

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u/Abject_Egg_194 13d ago

Barking dog + mother and cub. Yes, black bears are dangerous. In April of 2021 a woman in Colorado lost her life this way.

The woman who died in Durango did have dogs, but we don't actually know what happened that caused the attack, only that a black bear mother with cubs were found (and euthanized) and had been eating her.

The truth is that black bear fatalities are exceedingly rare in Colorado, rarer than people being struck by lightning. If we exclude the 2009 case where someone had literally been feeding bears, then it was ~30 years from the 1993 fatality to the 2021 fatality. Before that was the 70s. Before that was the 30s at a zoo...

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u/Old-Climate2655 13d ago edited 11d ago

A bear avoided gets to live, a bear that attacks does not. It's not just about protecting people. An idiot will try to pet the bear while taking a selfie, get attacked, and the bear gets punished. Infrequency does not eliminate possibility or the consequences.

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u/Abject_Egg_194 13d ago

Hunters legally kill ~1000 bears in Colorado each year. CPW kills ~100, but I don't know if those are due to livestock issues or human issues. I don't know about NPS.

I definitely think the education on bears needs to be about food sources and camping. And that education is relevant for all animals, not just bears.

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u/Old-Climate2655 13d ago

Absolutely. "Most" hunting of them is livestock-related though some still hunt for fur. There is -sadly- even a market for their gallbladders is some states.

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u/IDownVoteCanaduh 9d ago

But yet people upvote these stupid posts telling everyone where the bears are.

Just ignore them.

-1

u/okeydokeyannieoakley 13d ago

There have been only about a handful of fatal attacks in Colorado since 1960. When you label the bears as "dangerous", that leads people to believe that CPW needs to be called to remove them and that's basically a death sentence for the bear. It's important to be respectful of the wildlife here and realize that as long as we continue to encroach on their homes, we will see them more often in urban and suburban areas.

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u/Old-Climate2655 13d ago

When CPW is called on a individual bear for the first time it gets tracked. Repeated problems generally gets the bear relocated to the wilderness. Only after that does euthanasia become a possibility.

Yes I agree that a balance must between our city and it's surroundings, esp given the volume of open spaces and the unintentional wildlife corridors that cross town. I believe that CPW should only be called when there is a true problem (not a bear stealing Edelweiss's dumpster lol) and that local "off-channel" information sharing through reddit and other localized SM accounts are better 90% of the time. However, that balance can only be truly achieved through the full acceptance of what that wildlife is capable of. I don't pet the bighorn and I don't try to take close-ups of the bears, esp If I can't tell if it's a mommy or not. Regardless of their infrequency, attacks do happen and should always be considered a possibility. As much as I hate Euthanasia and acknowledge that it's largely us to blame, sometimes there isn't much else that can be done.

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u/okeydokeyannieoakley 13d ago

Relocation almost never works. The bear will return to where it knows it has a steady source of food and shelter.

https://www.coloradobearcoalition.org/state-wildlife-management

Wildlife encounters here in Colorado Springs are going to be inevitable and it's clear people don't take the time to educate themselves about these animals (or any wildlife for that matter)--they just post hysterically on social media which usually results in negative attention on the bear.

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u/Old-Climate2655 13d ago edited 11d ago

But the OP simply stated the sighting, the time and location with an advisement of caution. Literally nothing "hysterical" in the op. My advisement that Black bears are dangerous is factually verified and simply stated -also not "hysterical" my reminding people that they are dangerous (which they absolutely are) is to keep people from trying to find it to take pictures, selfies or pet it, which could result in the bear getting put down. Your use of the word "hysterical" is in and of itself hysterical.

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u/IDownVoteCanaduh 9d ago

Dangerous? Nah.

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u/Old-Climate2655 9d ago

They kill people