Colorado’s “Negligently Luring Bears” law, House Bill 1342, cracks down on people who attract wild bears. The law lowers the legal standard from “intentional” to “knowing” behavior, removes the automatic warning first-time offenders used to receive, and raises the fine for repeat violations from $2,000 to $5,000.
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A new Colorado law is cracking down on people who leave out trash, bird feeders, or food that attracts bears. You’re watching the Local News Network brought to you by the FLC Center for Innovation and Sky Ute Casino. House Bill 1342 makes it a crime to knowingly lure a wild bear, changing the legal standard from intentionally to knowingly. The law also raises the fine for repeat offenders. A third offense or more now costs $5,000 up from $2,000, and it removes the requirement that first time offenders get a warning before facing penalties.
It does give us the ability to you know, issue citations when we’ve repeatedly come to your home, ask you to take down your bird feeders, you’re not doing it. And we’re still seeing bear conflict. You know, if we’re dealing with the same trash containers on a regular basis and we’ve continually worked with either the business owner or the homeowner to say, “Hey, you really need to make sure you’re securing this trash,” makes it a little bit easier for us to be able to say, “Hey, you shouldn’t know that you should be doing these things because we’ve come by, we’ve told you a few times. So now that you’re not cleaning up that attractant, you’re knowingly providing this food source for bears.”
According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, La Plata County is seeing one of its worst years on record with human bear conflicts with over 500 reports so far this year. CPW says that number typically takes a full year to reach.
We have a lot of bears in town. We’re having a lot of home entries. Really just need everybody to do their part.
To read the full bill, search House Bill 1342 at leg.colorado.gov. And for more stories like this, visit LNN.news.
