Chalk drawing of a bear pulling food from an overturned trash can beside a report chart.

Check on Our Neighbors, Bears Are Breaking Into Colorado Homes. Here Is What Draws Them In, and Why

Infographic of 2026 Colorado bear activity, showing a 97 percent increase in reports and prevention steps.
Colorado’s 2026 bear numbers, and the steps that keep a house off their route.

Bears Are Breaking Into Colorado Homes. Here Is What Draws Them In, and Why We Check on Our Neighbors.

Wildlife officers in Golden spent this summer chasing at least seven bears through a town of twenty thousand people. They called a public meeting on the first of September because residents kept finding bears in trash, in sheds, and on porches. Golden is twenty minutes down the hill from me. It is where I shop. It is the kind of town people move to for the quiet.

That is the part worth your attention. Not the headline. The ordinary.

Some of the places I name in this post are outside the corridor I serve. They are Colorado neighbors, and I name them because that is where the reports came from, not because I clean there.

I have cleaned houses for ten years now, and my work runs the corridor from Nederland to Evergreen. This year, Colorado Parks and Wildlife logged 6,129 bear reports by mid August, nearly double the same stretch of last year. Ten of those became attacks on people, the most Colorado has ever recorded. One of them was a woman in her eighties, at home in the dark. A bear came through an unlocked first floor window at four thirty in the morning, went upstairs, and found her in her kitchen. It charged her and scratched her across the stomach. She survived. A bear was also found inside a Boulder County camper and a vehicle next to it in July. Boulder County is outside the corridor I serve. I name it because that is where the report came from, not because I work there.

This is not a story from somewhere else. It is happening on the roads I drive and at the houses next to mine.

I want to tell you something personal too. We just had new carpet put in at my place, and for a stretch everything in the house was off the floors and stacked and shoved wherever it would fit. It was temporary. It was still heavy. I felt that low fog of living in your own chaos every single day, and I clean for a living. If it sat on me like that for a week, I have real compassion for anyone living in it for months or years, and who does not know why it weighs on them.

So this is a public service post, in the plainest sense. It is about bears. It is also about us, and about the neighbor who cannot keep up and will never ask for help.

In this post

Is the bear problem in Colorado actually getting worse?

Yes. CPW logged 6,129 bear reports by mid August, nearly double the same stretch of 2025, and has since confirmed 10 attacks on people, the most in the state’s recorded history.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife started its statewide digital reporting system in 2019, and every year since has set a record. From January 1 through August 13, 2026, the agency received 6,129 reports of bear sightings and conflicts, against 3,115 during the same period in 2025. That is a 97 percent increase, and it puts 2026 ahead of the entire 2025 year already. CPW has called 2026 an extraordinary bear year. Larimer County, north of us and outside my service area, alone went from 98 reports last year to 293 this year.

The attack count has moved since the first version of this post, and it moved in the wrong direction. On September 11, a bear bit a woman through the wall of her tent at a campground near South Fork, a Colorado town outside my service area, and she fought it off by punching it in the face. Two nights later, a bear pulled the screen off a bedroom window at a Durango condo, came in, and swiped a 17-year-old girl across the stomach while she hid under her blankets. Durango is also outside my service area. That bear broke into another home the next morning, and CPW is actively trying to remove it. Those two incidents brought the state to 10 confirmed attacks, the most on record, against thousands more sightings and non-injury encounters. Wildlife officers had also euthanized nearly 300 bears by the end of August, and the state has launched a public education campaign about this year’s activity level.

Chalk drawing of a bear pulling food from an overturned trash can beside a report chart.
Wildlife officers logged 6,129 bear reports by mid August, nearly double the same stretch of 2025.
YearCPW bear reportsNote
20245,022Approximately 2,225 involved property damage
20255,299About 57 percent linked to unsecured trash
2026, through Aug 136,129Up 97 percent against the same window in 2025

One note on that 2024 number. CPW originally reported 5,022 for the year, and its August 2026 release restates it as 4,927. The 2025 and 2026 figures are unaffected, and the direction is the same either way.

The worst is still coming. Bears are entering hyperphagia now, the weeks before denning when they eat almost constantly to build winter fat. Colorado State University wildlife researchers say a bear needs about 20,000 calories a day between July and October, and CPW field staff describe bears spending up to 20 hours a day awake and searching for food. This year the natural food failed. CSU calls the drought “extreme, which means far fewer berries and acorns for bears to feed on,” and says we should expect this to be the new normal. In Aspen, a Colorado town outside my service area, the city logged 74 trash incidents by mid summer in 2024, 127 in 2025, and 311 this year.

Sculpted clay scene of a black bear at a cabin door beside a chart on pre-winter feeding.
Bears eat almost nonstop before denning, and this year the drought left them with far fewer berries and acorns.

Why do bears break into houses?

Food odor. Over half of Colorado’s bear encounters in 2025 traced to unsecured trash, and an empty can still smells like food to a bear.

Bears follow their noses. CPW says most conflicts can be traced to human food, garbage, pet food, bird seed, or another attractant. The breakdown from the 2025 season is specific. Over 57 percent of human-bear encounters were linked to unsecured trash bins, with another 18 percent tied to livestock, chickens, and beehives, and 16 percent to bird seed, pet food, grills, coolers, and refrigerators left unsecured. Of that total, 2,448 incidents resulted in property damage.

The part people miss is that an empty can still smells like a meal. CPW’s guidance is to clean containers regularly with ammonia or bleach to kill the residual smell. The odor is the invitation. The container is just what the odor is coming from. I do that wash with simple, non-toxic ingredients, and I have never used bleach in a bear-proofing routine, at my own place or at a client’s.

And the rules changed this summer. House Bill 26-1342 took effect August 12, 2026. It lowered the standard from intentionally luring a bear to knowingly leaving food or edible waste out where a bear could reasonably be drawn to it. It repealed the requirement that a first offense get a warning. And it raised the fine for a third or later offense from $2,000 to $5,000. Officers can write the ticket on the spot now.

Chalk drawing of a bear looking out a cabin window above an overturned trash can.
The law took effect August 12, repealed the first offense warning, and raised the third offense fine to $5,000.

Here is the hardest part to say. Bears learn. CPW is blunt that once a bear gets food in a place, it comes back for another meal, and that the pull of an easy meal overcomes its natural wariness of people. A bear that gets comfortable around houses stops acting like a wild animal. It tears into sheds, garages, cars, and doors. And a bear that learns to eat our food usually ends up dead. CPW’s own words are that habituated bears often must be killed. When we leave the food out, the bear pays for it. Every unsecured can is a possible death sentence on legs, and that is not a figure of speech.

What does living in clutter and grime do to your brain and body?

Research ties clutter to higher stress markers and a heavier load on attention. The effects show up in adults and in children.

This is the layer almost nobody talks about, and it is well studied.

Attention. Princeton neuroscientist Sabine Kastner’s lab found that when many objects compete for the visual system at once, they suppress each other’s processing, which is the neural reason a cluttered space is harder to think in. That work, published in the Journal of Neuroscience in 2011, gives a physical mechanism for something most people already feel.

Stress. A 2010 study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin followed dual-income couples through their homes and their days, and found that women in more cluttered, stressful home environments showed flatter, less healthy daily cortisol patterns, along with more negative mood across the workday. A 2021 experimental study at Leiden University went further and made it causal. Participants cared for an infant simulator in either a normal living room or a chaotic one. Their salivary alpha-amylase, a physiological stress marker, was higher in the chaotic room, even though they did not report feeling worse. The room itself moved their stress physiology.

Children. A 2018 study in Developmental Psychobiology followed low-income children from preschool into middle childhood and found that household chaos in preschool predicted a more blunted daily cortisol pattern years later. A 2019 study in the Journal of Family Psychology found that household chaos related directly to cortisol levels in preschool children, and that it carried part of the effect of economic instability through to the child’s stress biology.

One honest caveat. You may have seen the claim that a messy space makes you more creative. That came from a well-publicized study, and a 2019 replication with a larger sample and multiple creativity measures found no effect of workspace disorder on creativity or executive function. So I am building this post on the findings that hold up, the attention and stress ones, and leaving that one alone.

Add moisture to the picture and the body takes another hit. The Institute of Medicine’s 2004 review of damp indoor spaces found sufficient evidence linking indoor mold exposure to upper respiratory symptoms, cough, and wheeze in otherwise healthy people, and the CDC notes that people with mold allergies can have asthma attacks triggered by it. A cluttered, damp, neglected space is a measurable load on the nervous system and the lungs, and it accumulates over years.

Sculpted clay checklist sign with a bear, cabin, bird feeder, grill, and locked door.
Wash the cans, take the feeders down, clean the grill, and lock the windows, including the one you crack for air.

Can a dirty home really attract a bear?

Not on its own. Food odor is the documented draw, and a kitchen with old food residue smells like a meal to a bear.

I have to be straight with you here, because you deserve the truth and so does your neighbor. There is no case on record of a bear breaking in because a house was generally dirty. Wildlife managers do not blame grime. They blame food odor and food access.

But here is the honest bridge between the two. A smear of meat juice on a counter you thought you wiped down. A trash bag that sits in the kitchen for a week. A pet bowl left full on the porch. A sink full of dishes. Those are food odors, and a bear’s nose finds them through an open window or a door that does not quite latch. The bear in that attack came through an unlocked window, not a filthy kitchen. The bear in Colorado Springs, outside my service area, came through an open back door and found trash and vitamins within reach.

So cleaning is genuinely part of prevention. Not as a moral matter, as an odor matter. The houses in this corridor that never have bear trouble tend to be the ones where the trash is locked up, the grill gets cleaned, and the kitchen does not smell like dinner to something with four legs. That is not judgment. That is how noses work.

What does proper bear proofing actually look like?

Do not let trash accumulate, clean the cans, take down the feeders in April, clean the grill, and haze any bear that lingers.

CPW keeps this list short, and it works. I follow it at my own place and I tell every homeowner the same thing.

  • Do not let trash pile up. The attractant is the volume and the time, not just the bin. I take bags to the transfer station as they fill, and I tell owners who cannot do that to have someone run them. Leaving it inside does not remove the smell. It only tells you it is fine to store a week of it, and I have walked into houses with fifteen bags stacked in a utility room. What draws a bear is the odor, and a hoard of it indoors is still an invitation.
  • Clean the cans. Empty containers still smell like food. I wash mine with simple, non-toxic ingredients, and I do not use bleach. CPW lists ammonia or bleach as one option. It is not the only one, and it is not what I use.
  • Take down the bird feeders from April through November, which is CPW’s window. On its Living with Bears page the agency puts it more simply, feeders down until Thanksgiving. Seed and suet are top-tier bear attractants in this corridor.
  • Feed pets inside and bring the bowls in at night.
  • Clean the grill after every use, including the drip tray.
  • Pick up fallen fruit. A rotting apple on the ground is a dinner bell, and this is the season for it.
  • Lock the windows, including the one you leave cracked for air. That is how that bear got in.

If you would rather not run this list yourself, this is the work I do at every vacation rental turnover and on scheduled residential cleans in this corridor.

  • Haze a bear that lingers. Yell, bang pots, throw small stones from a safe distance, and leave it a clear way out. A bear that is uncomfortable around people stays a wild animal. A bear that is comfortable around people gets killed.
  • Report it. Call your local CPW office for a bear that keeps coming back. Call 911 if a bear enters your home or goes after a person.

Why should I check on my neighbors?

Chalk drawing of a bear walking past mountain houses at night beside a safety list.
Bears follow the easiest food, and a single unsecured house can teach a whole street.

Because one unsecured house can pull a bear onto the whole street. A bear does not stop at a property line.

When one home leaves trash out overnight or keeps a feeder up, the bear does not stay in that yard. It walks the street. It tests the garages. It learns the neighborhood, and it learns which doors are loose. Your safety is tied to your neighbor’s habits whether either of you likes it or not.

The woman in that attack was in her eighties, alone in her house, and a bear found its way to her kitchen in the dark. That is who we are talking about when we talk about a check-in. There are people on my roads who cannot haul a trash can to the curb anymore. People who have let things slide because they are tired or sick or simply have no one. People who would never in a hundred years ask for help.

This August, that same situation ended differently. A man in his sixties was home on his own in New Mexico, recovering from a seizure, getting around with a walker and a wheelchair, while a family member ran a quick errand. New Mexico is outside Colorado and outside the corridor I serve, so I name it because that is where the report came from, not because I work there. The family member came back to find the door ajar and a black bear inside the house. The man did not survive. The bear was killed. He was alone for less than an hour, he could not get up quickly, and a door did not latch all the way. That is the whole distance between a quick trip to the post office and someone dying at home.

So I am asking you to check on your neighbors this fall. Not to lecture them. To look.

What should I do if I see a bear near my house?

If you know an older person who lives alone, a family going through something hard, a house that is visibly struggling, knock on the door and ask if they want a hand with the trash or the yard. That habit is the whole reason I do this work the way I do. Offer to carry the cans out on pickup morning and bring them back in at night. Offer to pick the apples before they rot on the ground. Frame it the way it actually is, as looking after each other in bear country. Most people will say yes to that. Almost nobody will say yes to a lecture.

I will be honest about my own limits here, because they are real. I am sensitive to mold, which means I cannot walk into the worst of these homes and clean them myself, no matter how much I want to. And this business keeps me moving from morning to night. I cannot personally clean every house on my roads before the snow. What I can do is tell the truth out loud, hand you the reasons and the words, and trust that we do the rest of it together. That is why this post exists.

I also want to keep this honest about the actual risk, because fear without truth is just noise. Fatal bear attacks in Colorado are extremely rare. There have been four since 1960, and none of them this year, even with the record number of attacks. The Denver Gazette confirmed in September that Colorado’s ten attacks this year injured people but killed no one. Both of the most recent deaths involved bears that had already gotten comfortable around people and human food. In 2009, in Ouray County, a Colorado county outside my service area, Donna Munson, 74, was killed at her home after a CPW investigation found she had been illegally feeding bears through her fence. In 2021 near Durango, Laney Malavolta, 39, was killed while walking her dogs. Wildlife officials were clear after that one that no blame belonged on the person, and equally clear that unsecured food is what starts the chain. The goal is not to frighten you. The goal is to never let a bear learn that easy meals live at the end of your road.

FAQ

Do not run. Make yourself look big, yell, bang pots, toss small stones from a safe distance, and give the bear a clear way out. If a bear gets inside, open doors and windows so it can leave the way it came, do not corner it or block its exit, and call 911. Report bears that keep returning to your local CPW office.

Are bird feeders really that big a problem?

Yes. CPW treats bird seed and suet as a major attractant and asks that feeders come down from April through November. Flowers and a water bath bring the birds without bringing the bears.

Should I worry in places like Black Hawk, Golden, and Nederland?

The whole corridor is bear habitat, and the drought is pushing bears into town right now. Golden had at least seven bears working the town this summer. The answer is not worry, it is routine. Locked trash, clean cans, no feeders, a clean grill, and latched windows. The houses that follow the routine are the ones that do not get visits.

What do I do with my trash if I do not have a garage?

What most people need is not another barrier. It is frequency. I take the trash out as it fills and run it to the transfer station rather than letting it sit, and I have never seen a bear problem fixed by hiding more bags behind more doors. If your schedule cannot carry that, have someone do the runs for you. If you do keep a can outside, put it in a bear-resistant container and anchor it down, and keep it clean. A can that is strapped down and washed is safer outside than a week of bags stacked in a shed or a garage, because a bear that wants in will break a wooden door, and then you have property damage on top of a bear that has learned your address.

What changed with the new state law?

House Bill 26-1342 took effect August 12, 2026. It lowered the standard from intentionally luring a bear to knowingly leaving food or edible waste where a bear could reasonably be drawn to it. It removed the warning requirement for a first offense, and it raised the fine for a third or later offense to $5,000.

What areas do you serve?

Black Hawk, Nederland, Coal Creek Canyon, Rollinsville, Eldora, the Golden Gate area, Golden, Idaho Springs, Evergreen, and Central City.

If you want a hand with any of this, send me a note or call 970-212-8485. I answer my own phone.

About the author

I am Sandra Rose. I have cleaned mountain homes in this corridor since 2016, and I run this company myself, house by house. Most of what is in this post I learned the hard way, at properties between Black Hawk and Evergreen, in every season this state has. If your place needs a hand, reach out.

Recommended reading

If you are getting a mountain property ready for the season, these go with this one:

If you want help with any of it, reach me here.

Sources

Citations name their original outlets. Some outlet names reference communities outside our service area, in Colorado and elsewhere. That is provenance, not a service-area claim.

Wildlife and state law

Household clutter, attention, and stress

Moisture and mold

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *