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Scientists use GPS tracking all the time to study animal populations. They can gather a wealth of information using tracking tags and collars. For Aspen, Colorado’s wildlife manager Kevin Wright, a major concern every summer is the interaction of the local bear population with humans, especially in town. As spring moves in, bears are waking up and looking for food, and that eventually leads to bear-human conflict before the end of summer. If these conflicts can be avoided, both humans and bears are protected. But if bears are becoming a safety threat to humans, they become as threat to themselves as well because they then have to be put down.

A group of scientists have been conducting the Roaring Fork Urban Bear Ecology Study to gather important information about how human-bear interaction is going lately. Over the past five years, they have been following the movements of local bears fitted with tracking collars.

Each collar contains a GPS device, allowing computers to store information from satellites about where each bear has walked for the past five years. The collars were removed this spring as the study came to a close.
Some of the study findings were encouraging. Last summer, study leader Sharon Baruch-Mordo reported that bears do not become addicted to human food sources. Bears get into trouble when they wander into town or come in contact with campers and find accessible food. One incident will get a bear tranquilized, tagged, and possibly relocated; a second incident gets the bear euthanized. But if people follow bear-smart precautions such as keeping garbage bins locked, bears are just as happy to stick to their natural food sources out in the woods.
On the other hand, Colorado State University graduate student David Lewis finds discouraging information from collected bear data. He has been following the tracked bears to count bear cubs in dens as part of his thesis study about bear population growth. He thinks the bear population in the Aspen area is declining, mostly due to conflict with the human community. It looks like the scientists’ job isn’t done yet. More study is needed to see how the bear population is faring and narrow down factors that have a negative influence on the population. More GPS tracking could be part of that future as scientists work to preserve the bear population in the local ecosystem.

Article Written by Kadence Vyra