A report from Kiowa County Press covering 2025 data indicates that Colorado wildlife managers received record-high numbers of bear-related reports last year, with drought conditions identified as the primary driver. When natural food sources — particularly berry crops, acorns, and other mast — fail due to dry conditions, black bears dramatically expand their foraging range and shift toward human-associated food sources including trash, livestock feed, orchards, and outdoor refrigeration.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife has documented the pattern in previous drought years, but 2025 appears to have produced complaint volumes that exceeded prior records. The Kiowa County Press coverage, published in the eastern plains region that lies well outside typical black bear territory, signals how widely the story registered across the state — bears were showing up in areas and at frequencies that made the news even in communities not normally associated with bear country.
The preparedness angle that most general coverage skips is the food-storage infrastructure dimension. A drought year that degrades bear habitat is the same year that many rural and semi-rural households are also dealing with stressed gardens, reduced hunting harvests, and pressure on their own stored food supplies. Chest freezers in garages, grain stored for backyard chickens, and canning stocks in outbuildings all become attractants during a high-pressure bear year — and a bear that successfully raids a household's emergency food reserve causes compounding harm that goes well beyond a nuisance wildlife call. Households that use outbuildings or vehicles for overflow food storage in bear-adjacent areas may find our chest freezer security guide relevant to how that storage is configured.
Colorado's 2025 experience also adds a data point to the broader relationship between climate-driven drought cycles and wildlife behavior changes. Researchers studying black bear range expansion have previously noted that multi-year drought sequences, rather than single dry summers, produce the most significant and persistent shifts in bear activity patterns, as animals that successfully locate human food sources tend to return and teach foraging behaviors to cubs.
