Our Bears are Different
- pinewoodlakewag
- Aug 15
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 16
Why are the bears in our area "different"? This article from the Reporter-Herald explains how the bears in the Estes Park and Estes Valley area -- which the Pinewood area adjoins -- have adapted to living with less natural food and more people.
The bears of Rocky Mountain National Park are unlike most in Colorado. Here’s why
Presentation by Rachel and Andy Ames looks at how Estes Park-area bears adapt to changing conditions
PUBLISHED: August 6, 2026 at 3:00 AM MDT | UPDATED: August 6, 2026 at 3:17 PM MDT
By the time most people spot a black bear in Estes Park, the animal has already caught their scent.
Its nose, not its eyes, is its primary guide through the world, capable of detecting food, potential mates and danger from remarkable distances. And in a valley where growing seasons are short and food is sometimes scarce, that extraordinary sense of smell often leads bears into neighborhoods searching for easy calories.
That was one of the central messages that Andy and Rachel Ames delivered July 23 during a presentation to the Estes Valley Watershed Coalition at the Estes Valley Community Center, where they combined a decade of bear education work with the latest research on black bear biology and behavior.
“We’ve been involved with bear outreach for the last 10 years,” Andy Ames said. “We’ve found that bears can find themselves in trouble when people don’t understand (bear’s) abilities and behavior.”
But the presentation explored far more than avoiding bear encounters. It explained why the bears living around Estes Park are different from those found elsewhere in Colorado and why human behavior often determines whether a bear survives.
Life in a challenging landscape
Colorado Parks and Wildlife estimates the state is home to roughly 20,000 black bears, but the population around Rocky Mountain National Park is surprisingly small.
Citing a 2007 study by researchers Bruce Bender and Keith Baldwin, Rachel Ames said the greater Rocky Mountain National Park area was estimated to support only about 20 to 24 bears.
The black bears in Rocky Mountain National Park and the Estes Valley are also small in stature compared with black bears from other parts of the state, with males typically weighing around 220 pounds, compared with 275 pounds for an average male Colorado bear, and females weighing around 150 pounds, compared with about 175 pounds for an average Colorado female bear, Ames said.
The reason isn’t a lack of habitat. Instead, it’s a lack of food.
Estes Valley has a growing season of roughly 100 days, poor soils, relatively little rainfall and almost no calorie-rich foods such as acorns that sustain bears in other parts of the country.
“As the settlers came here, even they gave up on farming,” Rachel Ames said while describing the valley’s short growing season and dry conditions.
Without abundant high-calorie food, local bears roam over much larger territories than bears elsewhere. Their home ranges can cover 8 to 15 square miles as they move up and down the mountains following seasonal food sources, Ames said.
The scarcity of food also means Estes Valley bears rely far more heavily on insects, small mammals and carrion than many people realize.
While black bears are often described as eating diets composed of about 90% plant material, Rachel Ames said bears in the Estes Valley consume closer to an even split between plants and animals because berries alone cannot meet their nutritional needs.
Built to survive
The presentation by the Ameses walked attendees through the annual cycle of a black bear’s life, beginning with emergence from winter dens in March and April.
Bears leave hibernation having lost 20% to 30% of their body weight and spend weeks in what Rachel Ames described as “walking hibernation,” with slowed metabolisms and little interest in food while their digestive systems begin functioning again.
But by midsummer, she said, everything changes.
During a period known as hyperphagia, bears become driven to eat almost constantly, spending as much as 20 hours a day searching for food while building enough fat reserves to survive the coming winter.
A 100-pound bear, she said, may need to gain about 50 pounds before entering its den.
“If they had a buffet, they would definitely eat” as much as 15,000 to 20,000 calories a day, Ames said, noting that figure comes from observations of captive bears with unlimited food rather than wild bears.
Around Estes Park, that means feeding on chokecherries, Oregon grapes, insects, rodents, squirrels and almost anything else that provides calories.
Bears also play an important ecological role while doing so.
Research conducted in Rocky Mountain National Park found that seeds passing through a bear’s digestive system remain viable. Ames noted one bear scat sample produced more than 1,200 seedlings when researchers germinated the seeds.
Nature’s remarkable adaptations
Rachel Ames described the black bear’s winter hibernation period as one of the animal kingdom’s most extraordinary physiological adaptations.
Unlike true hibernators such as chipmunks and marmots, bears do not allow their body temperatures to plunge close to freezing.
Instead, they lower their metabolism by roughly 75% while reducing body temperature by only about 10 degrees, Ames said.
That allows them to remain alert enough to respond to danger while spending five or six months without eating, drinking, urinating or defecating.
Even more remarkable, she said, is what happens to pregnant females.
Fertilized eggs remain dormant through summer and early fall before implanting only if the female has accumulated enough body fat to sustain pregnancy.
If food is scarce, the embryos are simply reabsorbed.
“It protects the life of the mother above all else,” she said.
Cubs are born in the den weighing only about a half a pound, and continue developing while nursing on milk containing about 25% fat.
Why bears end up in town
The final section of the presentation focused on coexistence, emphasizing that people have tremendous influence over whether bears remain wild.
Bears naturally avoid humans when sufficient natural food is available. But problems arise during poor food years, when unsecured garbage, bird seed, pet food and food left inside unlocked vehicles become irresistible to them.
Andy Ames said trash ordinances adopted by mountain communities, including Estes Park, have been among the most effective tools for reducing conflicts.
He warned that a single apple left inside an unlocked vehicle can result in thousands of dollars in damage if a bear becomes trapped inside after the door closes behind it.
Electric fencing remains the most effective way to protect chickens, livestock and other attractants, while removing bird feeders during summer reduces the likelihood of drawing bears into residential neighborhoods.
The goal, Rachel Ames said, is preventing bears from associating people with food in the first place.
A difficult year ahead
The presentation concluded with a sobering assessment of current conditions.
This year’s dry weather has reduced berry production across the Estes Valley, and birds are stripping chokecherries earlier than usual. That leaves less food available for bears as they prepare for winter.
Andy Ames said the region is now experiencing its third consecutive dry year, raising concerns about both bear nutrition and future cub production.
“It’s going to be a tough food year,” he said.
Even so, the Ameses stressed that bears have evolved sophisticated ways to cope with changing conditions. The greatest threat, they said, often comes not from drought or natural food shortages, but from people who unintentionally reward bears with easy meals.
For Andy and Rachel Ames, helping people understand those adaptations is essential to keeping both people and bears safe.
The message was simple: in a community where wildlife and neighborhoods overlap, successful coexistence depends as much on human choices as it does on bear behavior.
Posted by Lisa Coalwell on August 15, 2026
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