A recent article in Fortune Magazine “Climate change pushes thirsty bears into Coloradans’ cars — one honked a horn for hours from 3am onward,” from The Associated Press (AP), blames climate change for bears breaking into cars and homes in Colorado. This is false. Bears have gone in search of food and water amid a drought in Colorado, that much is true, but it’s not because of long term climate change.
“Millions of people live in or near bear habitat across the Rockies, where widespread drought has reduced supplies of nuts, berries and plants that bears eat,” the article explains this is “prompting the animals to roam far and wide for food.”
This is nothing unusual, except perhaps in the amount of bears that had dangerous contact with humans this year. The article blames climate change for the increase in bear encounters, but one of the most glaring issues with this AP piece is that it does not even once address the fact that there are significantly more bears than ever.
It is difficult to get exact counts of black bears, in large part because they live in dense wooded areas, but generally the bear population in Colorado is believed to have increased in recent decades. The same is even more true for parts of the country where bears were nearly eliminated, like in Pennsylvania, which has more than four times as many bears today as it did in the 1970s.
In addition to there being more bears, there are also more people living in what were once remote areas, so bear encounters will naturally increase. Food availability draws bears even when their natural sources are not suppressed. As land is developed, more contact with the wild animals that used to live and forage there should be expected.
The availability of human food sources from garbage bins probably disturbs the natural pattern of population booms and busts. When drought occurs that suppresses berry and acorn production in late summer, bears would normally have a harder time putting on weight for winter, and many would die off. Now, they have other sources of food, which sustains a larger population and exacerbates the issue of human-bear contact.
On the issue of climate change and drought, the article says that the Upper Colorado River Basin had a snowpack this year that was “the worst on record,” and that “[s]cientists say human-caused global warming made that far more likely.”
“Made that far more likely” is a couching statement, because the data show that despite more than 100 years of warming, Colorado has not seen an increase in drought.
It is true that snowpack hit a record low this year, which spelled trouble for water supplies since snow melt feeds the Colorado River and its tributaries. And long term data show that in general snow water equivalent in Colorado was higher in the 1970s than it is today, but it has been fairly stable since the late 90s and early 2000s.
In terms of precipitation-related drought, data show that there is no trend in worsening drought conditions, and in fact there were much more lengthy and severe droughts in pre-industrial Colorado.
The article adds that “vast areas of bear habitat” have been “scorched by record wildfires,” but it’s not clear that they mean Colorado. Colorado’s wildfires are not becoming more frequent or extreme, despite big fires in 2020 and 2018, which were outliers from a generally flat trend according to the available data from the National Interagency Fire Coordination Center.
Interestingly, the vast majority of the article was not about climate change, despite it getting the leading spot in the article headline. The majority of the article was discussing the bear-human interactions themselves, which certainly make for interesting news, but are not indicative of human-caused climate change.
The Associated Press and, by extension, Fortune Magazine by republishing their piece, seem more interested in promoting the catastrophe narrative of climate change in any way they can, regardless of nuances. The climate comments in the article were completely unnecessary to tell the story of increased human-bear encounters, and only serve to advance the outlets’ political climate slant.
