Before and after … Environmental Sustainability Board member Hermann Geppert said he is pleased with the new commercial bear resistant dumpsters. ‘We had this bear in our trash almost every day. He got less and less shy. Lately he started going through the trash during the day. We are very happy to have the bear (resistant) dumpsters now,’ Geppert said. Courtesy/LAC

The County has distributed the first round of new bear resistant roll carts over the last couple of weeks ago to approximately 500 homes in the North Community 3 area. The County will be sending out a survey seeking feedback on the new roll carts from the residents in these homes. Courtesy/LAC

As part of its Operation Save the Bears initiative, Los Alamos County began distributing its new bear resistant roll carts a couple of weeks ago to approximately 500 homes in the North Community 3 area. The County also has distributed 260 commercial bear resistant dumpsters around town.

The County has received a few complaints on this first deployment of carts as well as favorable comments, Environmental Services Manager Angelica Gurule said.

Gurule explained today that problems with the mechanism on the roll carts sometimes not unlocking occurs when residents throw unbagged cat litter into the cart or fill the cart too full.

The main issue with the commercial bear resistant dumpster appears to be that the lid is quite heavy and pressing the tabs to unlock the lid and then raising it is difficult for some users.  

Gurule said before making the larger purchase of approximately 6,520 new bear resistant roll carts, the County intends to send out a survey to all roll cart recipients in North Community 3 to solicit feedback.

In FY22, the Los Alamos County Council allocated $2.4 million to implement the Operation Save the Bears project. Existing commercial trash dumpsters and residential roll carts are to be collected and repurposed as recycle dumpsters/roll carts or salvaged depending on condition.

Operation Save the Bears is intended to protect Los Alamos citizens, as well as bears living in the surrounding environment by reducing the number of human/bear encounters. Traditional trash dumpsters/roll carts are an easy food source and once bears consume human food, they become habituated and will return to the original food source year after year.

Additionally, this can be a learned behavior, with mothers teaching their cubs. Bears that lose their natural fear of humans and human activity are more like to become problem bears and be involved in a negative human-bear encounter. In the past, problematic bears are relocated once or twice and then euthanized.

The bear-resistant dumpsters/roll carts prevent bears and other wildlife from rummaging through trash in search of food. Replacing every traditional trash dumpster/roll cart in the County with a bear-resistant dumpster/roll cart will secure this food source and encourage bears to search for food in the wilderness and not in residential and business neighborhoods. Consequently, this behavior will reduce the number of human and bear encounters within the community.

The North Community 3 area was chosen to receive the first batch of bear resistant roll carts based on the highest concentration of reported bear incidents, according to Los Alamos Police Department data.

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