Aaron Berscheid is a district wildlife officer for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Aaron covers the “wild” side of Northeast El Paso County, including Black Forest, Falcon, Peyton and Calhan. He also covers some of Elbert County, north of U.S. Highway 24 and south of State Highway 86, including the towns of Elbert, Kiowa, Ramah, Simla, Matheson and a small portion of the Limon area.
Editor’s Note: This is a regular monthly column from Colorado Parks and Wildlife about wildlife issues in the Falcon area by a career wildlife officer.
BF Festival — a venue for wildlife discussions
By Aaron Berscheid, District Wildlife Manager, CPW
Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting so many friendly people as they stopped by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife booth at the Black Forest Festival. It was a great place to meet readers and deliver important wildlife messages
Over the course of the day, more than 200 people stopped by to check out the bear hide and model skulls on the table.
I was so thankful for the turnout at our booth, and I am humbled by the attention that you all had listening to my message on behalf of the wildlife in the area.
Many of you shared your own wildlife experiences and allowed me to weigh in on how the animals involved in those interactions viewed the situation, and provide best practices to avoid any negative interactions that may arise.
Many kids who stopped by were fascinated with wildlife and asked how I can tell so much by just looking at a skull. In these youngsters, I could see myself as a boy. Animals have always piqued my curiosity, and I am always so glad to see the excitement in the faces of the next generation.
It’s especially gratifying when they are eager to learn the characteristics of a particular skull and can apply that new knowledge to logically deduce behaviors of an unidentified animal based solely on a skull.
This connection to nature is paramount to the success of CPW’s mission of conservation and learning how to coexist with wildlife without negative interactions for humans or animals.
CPW Volunteer Yvette and I were there to greet all who stopped by and we had some simple messaging that is important to the residents of Black Forest (both humans and wildlife). For those of you who I did not get a chance to talk to, I wanted to provide a bit of an overview of our discussions.
Black Forest is a thriving community of humans and wildlife. Many of you see wildlife in your backyards so often that it becomes commonplace. Deer, elk, birds and many small mammals provide endless opportunities for endless entertainment to watch.
However, humans often become complacent with wildlife or want to “help” wild animals. Both are dangerous.
Wildlife does not need human intervention to survive. Feeding wild animals can cause many negative effects.
The congregation of animals due to human-provided food promotes the spread of infections/diseases, increased traffic collisions and the attraction of predators. Human food generally is bad for wildlife and things like corn can lead to digestive illnesses in animals.
Worst of all, when humans feed wildlife, the animals lose their fear of us. If animals get used to positive interactions around humans, with little to no negative interactions, they lose their naturally wild instincts and can cause problems for themselves and humans.
For these reasons and more, it is illegal to feed big game. Especially bears.
I like to describe a bear as just a big stomach with a powerful nose. And bears are very lazy when it comes to food. If they find an easy source of food near humans and we do nothing to change that, bears will continue to visit.
Trash, bird feeders, uncleaned barbecues, beehives, chickens and other small livestock must be protected from bears. If they continue to receive positive reinforcement that human areas are a good place to find food and do not receive any negative interactions with humans, only the bears suffer.
Sure, a knocked over trash can is an annoyance. And losing your chickens can be very frustrating. But if we, as humans, don’t change our habits, a bear’s nose and stomach will eventually cause it to do something that poses a risk to human health and safety. That’s typically when I get called in and when the bear loses.
By the time a CPW wildlife officer is called, the conflict between a bear and humans has reached a dangerous level leaving us few options to change the behavior of the bear and the humans.
It’s sad because these situations could have easily been avoided if people took a few easy steps to make sure that bears do not find positive reinforcement by searching for food near humans.
- Make sure that bears cannot get into your trash by keeping the trash in an enclosed area that a bear can’t get to — do this until the day of trash pickup, close to pickup time, and put the trash can back as soon as possible.
- Make sure that bird feeders are not left accessible to bears; I even go as far as to recommend only having bird feeders out during the winter months when bears are less active.
- Chickens, goats, pigs and beehives all need to be protected so that bears cannot have access to their living spaces.
- Electric fencing is the best option to prevent bears from raiding your livestock.
- Clean your barbecue grills after every use and keep them in a garage or shed, away from bears.
- Keep your garage doors closed.
- Lock your ground-level doors and windows at night to avoid a curious bear encounter inside your house.
- Anytime you see a bear, yell at or haze it safely. That teaches a bear that humans are not a good thing to be around.
Remember, we as humans have the responsibility to conserve these wild animals and sometimes that requires us to change. Change is hard, even for me, but if we can turn those changes into habits, it becomes a lot easier/normal for us, and then the bears stay wild.
In the coming months, I’ll share more stories as I write about wildlife issues in our community. Got a question, problem or column idea? Please email me at aaron.berscheid@state.co.us or call me at 719-227-5231.
I might even answer your question in a future installment of “Wildlife Matters.”
