Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) tranquilized and removed a bear cub from the cafeteria at Aspen Middle School Monday morning.
Aspen School District Superintendent Tharyn Mulberry said the bear was able to enter the building through a door adjacent to ASD’s football field, and members of the middle school’s food service team discovered the bear after arriving at campus before classes started. A notification was sent to families about the bear at 8 a.m., and middle school students were sent to the high school gymnasium until the bear was removed.
CPW says that because the roughly 9-month-old cub is old enough to survive without its mother, staff are relocating it to suitable habitat, where the bear can find enough food before winter.
After reviewing surveillance footage, Mulberry isn’t sure whether or not the door was propped open, or if there was a mechanical failure with the automatic locking doors. District staff said they are still investigating the incident.
Bear run-ins are common on the Aspen School District campus. Mulberry told Aspen Public Radio in a phone call that bears get into their buildings about once a year, most often in cafeterias where food is prepared.
“It's almost always food service,” Mulberry said. “They have a pretty good sense of where to go. … And we've also had to do secure perimeters because of bears in the playground. … They seem to be very fastidious in checking our trash cans every week.”
Mulberry added that school staff also responded to a bear on campus Sunday, but they aren’t sure if it was the same bear.
A spokesperson for CPW said many natural food sources like berries and acorns have done poorly this year, contributing to human-bear conflicts in the state. Many bears are seeking out human food as a result.
“One bear in one building is too many,” Rachael Gonzales said, the public information officer for CPW’s northwest region. “We’ve seen an increase in bears where they shouldn’t be.”
She urged the public to secure their trash cans, especially during the fall when bears are in hyperphagia, eating as much food as they can to prepare for winter in torpor, a similar process to hibernation.
