One man’s trash is another bear’s treasure. 

In Glenwood Springs, May-September is known as “bear season,” the period of time when the weather is warm and bears descend from the mountains in search of food. 

Sometimes, they find it in our own front yards. 

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In 2022 between the months of June and July, Glenwood Springs Police Department recorded 25 bear calls (which can be simple bear sightings or instances of bears getting into trash cans) and one ticket/court summons after a bear broke into a resident’s trash bin. The numbers rose only slightly in 2023, with 26 bear calls and three tickets/summons. 

This year, the months of June and July saw 142 bear calls to the department and 40 tickets/summons — a drastic increase with an almost equally drastic response. 

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Bear calls unrelated to trash issues could be caused by anything from bears reported in residents’ backyards to bears being stuck in a tree or walking down the street. 

Bennett Avenue accounted this year for the largest share of bear calls with 19. According to Code Enforcement Officer Kacee Stewart, the majority of bear activity is typically found in the downtown core. 

Roughly 40% of the bear calls come from residents who call to report sightings or instances of bears getting into the trash, according to Stewart. The other 60% are officer-initiated. 

Stewart said roughly 90% of her workdays are spent responding to cases of bears getting into people’s trash. 

“I do receive help from the other officers when I’m super slammed with calls,” she said. 

‘Why did I get a ticket for this?’

Residents who step outside in the morning only to find trash strewn across their driveway might blame one of three things: a faulty bear-proof clasp, trash not being picked up on trash day, or forgetting to bring the trash can indoors. 

Unbeknownst to several residents, the third is required by the city’s municipal code and could result in fines, even if a bear doesn’t get into their trash. The city’s code states that all garbage bins must be kept in an enclosed area from 7 p.m.-6 a.m. An “enclosure” could include a garage, a shed, a fence enclosure or inside the home. 

For the last few years, penalties for a bear getting into a residential trash bin were $50 for the first offense, $500 for the second and then a court summons after the third occurrence. 

As of an Aug. 15 Glenwood Springs City Council ordinance change, however, residents will now be charged $200 for the first penalty beginning Oct. 1, or $150 more than the original fine. 

“In Glenwood Springs we have a zero-tolerance policy, and it is for the safety of the bears,” Stewart said about why the city doesn’t hand out warnings before their first penalty. 

Bears scavenging from trash cans should be taken seriously — hence the phrase “garbage kills bears.” Once bears find food within residential neighborhoods, they are more likely to come back — creating problems for both the bears and humans. Food-conditioned bears may end up being relocated or euthanized. 

Do bear-resistant cans make a difference? Depends on how you use them.

Even residents with bear-resistant trash bins don’t always use them properly. Code enforcement officers have reported seeing bins left wide open, some propped open with overflow trash, and others with bear-proof clasps not properly secured on the lid — which occurred at an apartment building in South Glenwood. 

“I had a picture of the dumpster on the property and let her know that this is a bear resistant container, but the residents are obviously not securing the trash dumpster with the bar in the proper position,” a June 17 police report read. The penalty was $500. 

As the population of Glenwood Springs ebbs and flows, new residents may not be as familiar with the city’s rules surrounding proper care of garbage cans, resulting in a surprise when faced with a fine. 

“I would say it’s kind of 50/50,” Stewart said. “A lot of times they’re aware that around the area (there are) bear issues, but a lot of times they also don’t know that it is a code violation and that it has penalties that are associated with it.” 

One instance of a ticket being issued to residents on June 7, 2024, involved full trash bags being left out in front of their home. The bear ripped into the trash bags, not even needing to knock over the can. 

“Granted, they’re not super excited to get a citation over it, but they are usually pretty receptive to the education that I give them at that point,” Stewart said. 

Having bear-resistant bins could come down to affordability

Wildlife-resistant waste bins can significantly reduce the chances of a bear getting into your trash. A 2011–2017 CPW study found that using bear-resistant containers could reduce human-bear conflict by 50%. However, through the city of Glenwood Springs’ Pay as You Throw (PAYT) program, these bins are double the price of regular bins of the same size. 

The city’s trash bins come in four different sizes at different monthly prices: super saver (32 gallons for $10.80, picked up every other week), small (32 gallons for $12.72), medium (64 gallons for $25.44) and large (96 gallons $38.16). Each size has a wildlife-resistant option at about double the price: wildlife-resistant super saver ($22.80), wildlife-resistant small ($24.72), wildlife-resistant medium ($49.44) and wildlife-resistant large ($74.16). 

“The plastic (on bear-proof lids) is a little bit thicker, so it has the same kind of lid,” Public Works Director Matthew Langhorst said. “They have a clasp on them, so when they go down, they actually physically lock closed. And there’s a mechanism so that when the truck picks it up, it releases the mechanism, dumps it, and when it puts it back down, the lid is closed again.” 

The city’s website states that the higher cost of the wildlife-resistant service “reflects the higher capital cost of the carts and the average damage rate at approximately 1.5 to 2.5 years for cart replacement.”  

The point of the city’s PAYT program is exactly what it sounds like — you only have to pay for as much trash as you throw. Larger bins are more expensive to discourage residents from creating more trash than they need to and to incentivize them to recycle. 

“So the whole point of the program is, think about it, do you really need a 96-gallon trash can? Or you do you just have it because that’s what was handed out normally?” Langhorst said. “You can save money by going to the (64-gallon), or you could really save a lot of money by going to the 32.” 

The same 1-2-3 process of raising prices for larger bins was applied to the wildlife-resistant bins. Wildlife bins also cost more to begin with given they are built more robustly, Langhorst said. 

“So (project bidders) had to follow the proposal when they bid on it, and the cans went up, not because of the cost of the can totally, but because of how the (request for proposal) was put out,” he explained. “It worked perfectly for the standard trash cans. When we got to the wildlife cans, all of a sudden the purchase price of the can got built into the cost that the proposers were giving to us, (and so) the cost went up exponentially. That was not the intent.” 

Langhorst said the city is in the process of working with Mountain Waste & Recycling to rework their pricing system for the wildlife-resistant bins to more closely reflect the cost to buy and service the bins, rather than their 1-2-3 pricing pattern. 

In rectifying the higher costs, Langhorst said the city will also be handing out some of the non-PAYT wildlife-resistant cans acquired through their buy-back program to customers in the “rear load truck” area of town, which uses manually operated garbage trucks to collect trash and therefore can accept resident-owned bins. 

“(Mountain Waste & Recycling and Waste Management) were following the bid package that our consultant kind of helped us put together, and we didn’t see the detriment to that until the end, and we were already kind of there,” Langhorst said. “So now we’re going to rectify that situation, because we’re learning lots of new things with the Pay as You Throw program as we move through this first year.” 

Langhorst said the city’s pricing is mostly in line with (or priced lower than) neighboring communities that have implemented their own PAYT programs, such as Carbondale.  

Having a wildlife-resistant bin doesn’t exempt residents from having to keep their bins indoors at night, however, as they can’t guarantee protection from bears 100% of the time. 

“The lid on the dumpster was broken by the bear, but the bar was secure and locked,” a June 23 report stated. The officer contacted the city’s Pay as You Throw program, which said they would replace the dumpster. 

Some residents, in lieu of bear-proof bins, have tried strapping lids shut or tying cans to fences to avoid bears tipping them over. Aside from the code specifically stating that residents are not permitted to “modify” their cans, Stewart said this doesn’t change the requirement that the bins be enclosed during the night. 

“I don’t recommend those 100% of the time, they don’t work always, but our code states that it needs to be inside somewhere,” she said. 

Regardless of the number of bears searching for food in the downtown core or the type of trash bins lining the streets, the best solution to keep bears from getting too comfortable in town seems to be keeping bins inside, along with bird feeders and pet food. 

One study showed that simply putting trash out only on the morning of pick-up cuts the chances of a bear visit from 70% to 2%, according to the town of Lyons, Colorado. 

“The city of Glenwood Springs and CPW, including the police department here, are just really trying to push the safety for bears and not have to euthanize or relocate the bears the rest of the season,” Stewart said. 

Why are there more bears this year? 

The spike in cases of bears getting into trash cans this year isn’t out of the ordinary — although the spikes only happen every few years, they generally depend more on the year’s weather patterns than the type of trash cans residents have. 

“Last year we had a great natural forage here. Bears were able to find chokecherries acorns, things that they naturally eat in their natural habitat,” CPW Public Information Officer Rachael Gonzales said. “Unfortunately this year, we don’t have a great food year at all. And when they can’t find abundant food in their area, they go out and search elsewhere. That may bring them into town.”

Last year’s forage was so great, in fact, that many of the bears had cubs in 2023, bringing even more bears to Glenwood Springs, according to Gonzales.

“This year we got a pretty late frost. It killed all the cherries in my entire neighborhood. And if you go walk No Name Creek, there’s a heck of a lot less raspberries than there normally are,” Langhorst added, stating that the increase in cases of bears getting into trash could have more to do with yearly climate patterns and late frosts years than any changes in the garbage bins utilized by the city. 

From April to July 2021, there were 233 bear calls with 52 tickets, according to Langhorst. In 2015 there were 77 bear calls with 46 tickets for the same length of time.  

“The bears don’t have anything to eat up high, so they’re coming down and finding things to eat down low,” Langhorst said.