Prairie Protection Colorado

09/05/2026

Colorado just reported that CPW has already killed 294 black bears this year, more than 3 times last year while drought and failed berry/acorn crops drive hungry bears into towns.

Calling that euthanasia is a lie.

Euthanasia is ending suffering. These bears are being shot for being bears. They are being shot for wanting to eat. Natural food failed. They found trash, chicken feed, or an open door. That is lethal control.

While that happens, many bear nonprofits keep repeating the same slogan: “A fed bear is a dead bear.” That’s a ridiculous saying. A fed bear is a fed bear, not a dead bear. A dead bear is the result of policy, not a sandwich. A fed bear is a bear who is surviving. These groups almost never talk about diversionary feeding, food placed away from homes to pull starving bears out of neighborhoods during a food crash. That has been studied. Hunger is the main driver of conflict. The slogan is treated like scripture anyway.

And here’s what those same groups, and CPW, almost never put next to the “we had no choice” headlines: Hunters already kill about 1,200–1,500 bears every year in Colorado.

CPW offers about 19,000 limited bear licenses and also sells about 9,000–10,000 extra over-the-counter licenses, including add-on tags for deer and elk hunters. In the last two years, that added up to about 26,000–27,000 bear licenses sold. That is a system built to make killing bears easy and convenient.

The official population of “17,000–20,000 bears” is not a statewide count. It was built by taking hair-snare densities from limited 2009 study areas and extrapolating them across the state.

So this year we will kill hundreds of “problem” bears for being hungry, on top of more than a thousand killed for sport, while refusing to even test a non-lethal tool that targets the actual cause: no food.

If you care about Colorado’s bears, don’t just share the body count. Ask the harder questions: Why is killing called euthanasia?

Why is diversionary feeding off-limits?

Why is recreational harvest treated as background noise?

And why are we managing a statewide population on an old extrapolation?

Link:

Colorado Parks and Wildlife also reports a record number of human encounters driven by drought and lack of natural foods for bears

09/03/2026

Anthropodenial is the refusal to recognize that animals have emotions, relationships, and inner lives. Prairie dogs are a perfect example of why this mindset fails.

Researchers have found that prairie dogs use complex vocal languages, they can describe predators by size, shape, and even color, and live in tight‑knit family groups that cooperate, mourn, and protect one another. Their social worlds are rich with communication and care.

When we deny these realities, we lose empathy for the wildlife that shares our landscapes. Recognizing their emotional lives helps us coexist.

Read more:

Slobodchikoff, C.N. et al. (2009). Prairie dog alarm calls encode labels about predator attributes. Behavioral Processes. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2009.02.010

de Waal, F. (2011). Anthropodenial and the Evolution of Empathy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4057833/

09/03/2026

Check out this fantastic work by Grasslands Colorado and Wild Prairie Colorado. They are showing how passive relocation saves and honors the prairie dog, a keystone species:

09/01/2026

𝐕𝐨𝐭𝐞 𝐍𝐎 𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐨’𝐬 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭.

Wildlife on our prairies and public lands belongs to all of us. It is not a constitutional trophy for one set of methods.

David Neils, a lifetime hunter and fisherman, asks the only question that should come first: Does the animal benefit? Harvest numbers, seasons, and “we’ve always done it this way” are not answers. If hunting or trapping is allowed, the public should see evidence that it matches the biology of that species. A population that has not collapsed is not proof that management is working.

Colorado Hunters and Anglers for Sensible Wildlife Conservation make the same point from the field: hunting and fishing are already legal here. This amendment is not about saving them. It would write a right to hunt, fish, and take wildlife by undefined “traditional methods” into the constitution and name hunting and fishing the preferred way to manage wildlife. That vague language is built to challenge voter-approved bans from 1996: leghold traps, baiting, hound hunts, and spring bear seasons that can leave cubs orphaned.

Out-of-state special interests are pushing this. If it passes, wildlife advocates and ethical hunters who do not want those methods back get locked out of decisions about our shared wildlife.

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐡. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞 𝐍𝐎.

Wild Nature Media:
https://www.wildnaturemedia.com/blog/what-is-successful-wildlife-management
Colorado Hunters and Anglers for Sensible Wildlife Conservation: https://www.coloradohuntersandanglers.com/

What Is Successful Wildlife Management? by David Neils, lifetime hunter and fisherman Colorado is a state that loves wildlife. We celebrate elk bugling in September, watch mountain goats on high ridges, photograph moose beside mountain streams and follow the tracks of mountain lions through fresh

08/29/2026

After Prairie Protection Colorado suggested diversionary feeding trials with appropriate food that stores discard up and down the Front Range, CPW responded with an editorial telling the public the only way to “help starving bears” is to not feed them. Groups that market themselves as bear advocates signed on.

Read it:
https://cpw.state.co.us/news/08282026/editorial-want-help-starving-bears-dont-feed-them

Then ask what you just funded if you donate to those coalitions.

The editorial treats CPW’s 17,000–20,000 bear estimate as fact. That number is not a current count. It is an old density study stretched across habitat maps. Hunter harvest has not climbed with that claimed boom. Year after year, licensed hunting still kills about 1,200 to 1,500 bears, while CPW issues roughly 19,700 limited licenses. The editorial folds sightings into “7,000 incidents.” A bear walking through a yard is not a crime wave. And the deadliest thing in a Colorado bear’s year is not a drought. It is a tag.

These groups now say diversionary feeding “is not the solution” and “can create serious problems.” Colorado has not run a designed private-land feeding study in a food-failure year. They are rejecting a tool they have not tested. The research that does exist, including the Ely work, is limited — not a reason to slam the door. Yellowstone dump history is not that study.

Secure trash. Use bear-resistant containers. Fence chickens and bees. That work is real. It is also the same work CPW already pays for through Human-Bear Conflict Reduction grants. Some of the people amplifying this editorial have sat on the grant side of that system. When an organization that says its client is the bear signs the agency’s population story and helps shut down research, ask whether you are paying for bear protection or for a partnership that protects the grant pipeline.

If a group cannot say out loud that hunting is the largest documented source of bear mortality in this state, it is not giving you the full picture.

Think before you donate.

Ask who they answer to.

Ask whether they challenged the estimate or just signed it.

Ask whether they demanded a real feeding trial or helped CPW call the question closed.

Bears do not need another press release. They need organizations that will not trade them for a seat at the table.

08/25/2026

Do you care about Colorado's prairie dogs? Read our latest newsletter and take the requested actions now!

https://prairieprotectioncolorado.dm.networkforgood.com/emails/4784052

08/21/2026

KEYSTONE!

>> Boyce likes an underdog and said, "I was just incredulous at how important prairie dogs were, while simultaneously being one of the most persecuted animals on the Great Plains."

There are no bag limits, or closed seasons for prairie dogs in Montana. They can be (and are) killed at will. Meanwhile, more than 150 other species, including many birds and the critically endangered black-footed ferrets, rely on or benefit from prairie dogs.

A recent review of 111 studies looked at the keystone effects of prairie dogs on grassland birds and found 105 different bird species documented using prairie dog towns in some capacity.

08/20/2026

If these bears had reliable access to food away from human areas, the vast majority of these encounters simply would not be happening.

Instead, the official response remains the same: do everything possible to ensure bears get zero calories near people. In a year when drought has already collapsed their natural food sources, that approach forces hungry animals into the only places left with calories: our towns, parks, and homes.

The photos and headlines around these recent attacks lean heavily into fear. Look at the actual outcomes: one person was struck in the face after chasing a bear out of her house and drove herself to the hospital; another was bitten while sleeping outdoors and was released after treatment. These are serious and frightening incidents, but neither person was critically injured. What they illustrate most clearly is how desperate the bears have become.

Bears are not seeking out conflict for sport. They are in hyperphagia, trying to pack on the fat they need to survive winter, and the forests are not providing it this year. When the only remaining options are unsecured trash, bird feeders, or a house with food smells, some will take the risk.

We can keep repeating “secure your attractants” (and people should), but until we also confront the larger reality: habitat loss, climate-driven crop failure, and the refusal to even discuss temporary remote food sources in crisis years, these stories will keep repeating, and more bears will end up dead for the crime of being hungry.

Article:

Colorado Parks and Wildlife says two people were recently injured in separate bear attacks in the high country.

08/17/2026

Colorado is in a serious drought. Berry and acorn crops have failed in many places, and black bears are starving. They’re coming into towns looking for anything they can find. Officials’ response is the familiar one: secure your trash, take down bird feeders, never leave food out. “A fed bear is a dead bear.”

We get why they say it. Habituated bears get into trouble, and trouble often ends with relocation that fails or officials deciding to kill them for being hungry bears. But step back for a second.

Along the Front Range alone we throw away enormous amounts of edible food every week, millions of pounds from grocery stores and elsewhere, while these animals go hungry. We’ve expanded into their habitat, altered the climate, and degraded the forests that once fed them. Now, when the natural food disappears, we treat any human-provided calorie as an unforgivable crime against the bear.

Feeding birds is fine. Feeding a starving bear is framed as the worst possible thing a person can do. And in two weeks, when hunting season opens on September 2, those same hungry bears become legal targets.

What if, in years like this, Colorado Parks and Wildlife took some of the perfectly good food we already discard and placed it in remote, closed areas far from homes, places where hunting is temporarily restricted, so the bears could put on the fat they need without learning that neighborhoods are the easiest cafeteria? It wouldn’t solve habitat loss or climate stress, but it might keep more bears alive and out of our yards until the forests recover.

Instead, we double down on the same message while the animals pay the price for a world we largely created. Worth thinking about before we call the next one a “problem bear.”

One of the many articles coming out about the bears coming into neighborhoods as a result of drought:
https://coloradosun.com/2026/08/17/bears-feeding-weak-berry-acorn-crops-trash-colorado/