Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirmed two more black bear attacks in the southern part of the state in mid-September, bringing the agency’s 2026 total to 10, the most attacks on record for a single year. The tally counts any incident in which a bear injures or kills a person, and it followed a summer in which drought and a weak berry crop pushed hungry bears closer to homes, campgrounds and trash cans than usual.
Some early news reports had numbered the two most recent incidents as the state’s 11th and 12th attacks of the year, but the agency’s confirmed count stands at 10. The two cases that pushed the total there happened four days apart in the state’s southwest corner.
Two attacks four days apart pushed the count to ten
The first struck early on Sept. 11 at Park Creek Campground in the Rio Grande National Forest near South Fork, where an animal hit a woman’s tent and bit her right arm through the fabric. Officers who responded found bite holes, claw marks, mud smears and dark hairs on and around the tent, all consistent with a black bear; they did not capture the animal, found no history of conflict at the isolated campground, and closed it for the season the next day.
About two days later, around 2 a.m. on Sept. 13, a bear tore the screen off a partly open bedroom window at a Durango condominium, climbed inside and swiped at a 17-year-old hiding under her blankets, leaving three scratches on her stomach. “The bite in this incident was more likely an act of surprise than aggression,” said Rick Basagoitia, CPW’s area wildlife manager in Monte Vista, describing the South Fork case. The Durango bear returned to a nearby home the next morning, and wildlife officers set a trap to remove it. “This bear has exhibited behavior that threatens human health and safety,” said Adrian Archuleta, CPW’s area wildlife manager in Durango.
Hyperphagia collided with a bad berry year
Both attacks landed squarely in hyperphagia, the fall feeding period before bears den for winter, when they can spend up to 22 hours a day eating in an attempt to pack in roughly 20,000 calories daily. Wildlife officials in Colorado and Montana say this year’s drought and poor berry crops have left far less of that natural food than usual, forcing some bears to travel farther and take bigger risks to find calories.
Statewide, CPW logged 8,672 reports of bear sightings and conflicts through Aug. 31, compared with 3,680 over the same stretch in 2025, a rate the agency says is running 3.6 times the 2020-to-2025 average. Wildlife officers relocated 98 bears this year, up from 33, and euthanized 294, up from 83; in Garfield County alone, 39 bears were killed by vehicle strikes this year against just one at the same point in 2025.
The South Fork and Durango incidents were not isolated. A CPW spokesperson had already logged the state’s eighth attack of the year on Sept. 3 in Steamboat Springs, where a bear huffed, popped its jaw and scraped the knee of an adult napping on a backyard patio chair before a neighbor drove it off with bear spray. Earlier in the year, a woman in her 80s was attacked after a bear broke into her Estes Park home, an angler was injured in Jefferson County, an unhoused man was bitten while sleeping in Aspen, and a man was attacked outside an apartment laundry room in Eagle-Vail in late August.
Neighboring states are seeing the same pattern
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks described 2026 in similarly stark terms, with Jamie Jonkel, the agency’s longtime bear conflict specialist around Missoula, calling it “one of the worst natural food failure years on record.” Utah has logged at least 168 black bear incidents this year and New Mexico at least 187, and in Wyoming, Grand Teton National Park staff euthanized a black bear near Delta Lake on Sept. 11 after visitors repeatedly let it approach them for food.
The dry conditions behind the shortage trace back to winter. Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming all recorded record-low snowpack water content on April 1, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System. No published analysis has yet measured exactly how much of this year’s rise in bear conflicts owes to drought rather than to unsecured trash and pet food, which wildlife managers still call the leading driver of encounters.
What the record means for the rest of bear season
CPW says most Colorado bears stay active from mid-March through early November, meaning the elevated risk has weeks left to run. The agency’s advice centers on removing what draws bears close in the first place: securing trash and animal feed, locking accessible windows and doors, feeding pets indoors and cleaning grills after use, since Colorado law already bars leaving trash or bird feeders where bears can reach them.
Kathleen Baran, the camper bitten at Park Creek, said she had kept no food in her tent and had to punch the bear to free her arm, a reminder that this year’s hungrier bears are testing even campers who followed the standard precautions.
CPW’s standing guidance for an encounter has not changed even as the count has climbed: do not run, move away quietly if the bear has not noticed a person, back away slowly if it has, and if it keeps approaching, hold ground, wave arms and yell until it leaves. If a black bear makes contact, the agency says to fight back rather than play dead. CPW plans to publish finalized 2026 numbers next year, and the current figures, including the relocation and euthanasia counts, remain preliminary until then.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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