By Nirankar Horak, Land of Enchantment Wildlife Foundation (LEWF) Executive Director
For years, there have been many conversations about bears and other wildlife in Los Alamos. One of the many questions that continues to be discussed is how can we reduce interactions and keep wildlife wild? We have seen great progress with bear resistant roll carts and reducing wildlife feeding. While this has helped tremendously, we still have issues with bears coming into town due to attractive smells. Bears spend all their time after hibernation getting ready to hibernate. They must eat significant quantities of food to ensure they can survive hibernation and don’t need to come out early in search of food. Due to their high food drive, they search high and low for reliable food sources to help them reach their food goals.
Although Los Alamos has reduced some of the easy access to food, there are still other places that smell incredible to a bear–like compost. We may think of it as just our scraps, but bears see the opportunity for easy access to food. They can smell compost bins for many miles and thus come into town looking for the great smelling food. Because many compost bins contain food scraps, yard waste, and other organic matter, there are a lot of great smells to attract bears. The bins become even more enticing when there are worms in them!
With all that said, do we need to get rid of our bins? The simple answer is NO. How do we deter the bears? Add a hot wire fence around compost areas. We have seen enormous success in beekeepers protecting their beehives with a hot wire and we encourage homeowners to add it to their compost areas, chicken coops, and any other areas we would like to deter bears. There are a lot of systems that can be purchased to fit the needs of the homeowners.
This article was featured in the Summer 2025 Edition of Nature Notes, PEEC’s quarterly newsletter mailed to members. PEEC activities and events are open to everyone; however, members receive exclusive benefits such as discounts on programs and gift shop merchandise. Annual memberships start at $35. To learn more, visit peecnature.org/support/membership/.