MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For bears, fall is the time to chow down so they can fatten up to hibernate during winter. But habitat loss and climate change are driving bears into urban areas to search for food. From Boulder, Colorado, Sam Fuqua reports on an effort to harvest residential fruit trees before the bears do.
SAM FUQUA, BYLINE: On a sunny afternoon in September, half a dozen people are picking apples off two huge trees laden with fruit.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Can we get one volunteer to help me transfer some of the apples that we have in crates into some of these bags?
FUQUA: One tree is at least 30 feet high. They're in Jessica Newman's (ph) yard just north of Boulder. Her 9-year-old son Jasper (ph) is holding a pole twice as tall as he is with a small basket on the end.
JASPER: There's this foam thing here, so you use the pointy, like, curved things to pull it down and it just falls into the foam thing, and then you can bring it down.
FUQUA: With help from the picking poles, the volunteer harvesters collected almost 1,000 pounds of apples from the yard in about 2 hours. They sort them as they go. Harvest coordinator Benjamin Buck (ph) says the ones that are wormy or already on the ground will go to animal shelters.
BENJAMIN BUCK: Those we'll donate to animals only. We won't put anything that's fallen on the ground to humans. This one here - shiny, a little bit of green and red, beautiful apple, no imperfections - this is going to go in our human bin.
FUQUA: The nice ones are sent to local food banks. Melanie Hill runs Community Fruit Rescue, the small, Boulder-based nonprofit that coordinates events like this.
MELANIE HILL: It's exciting to see a black bear. I love it, but we don't want them to stay too comfortable in town, where they pose a risk, or they get hurt or unfortunately killed. And they can be hit by cars. There's a lot of concerns there.
FUQUA: Two black bears were hit by cars in Boulder last year, and the city logs hundreds of bear sightings annually. Property owners who used Community Fruit Rescue in 2023 said they saw fewer bears after the apple harvesting. Cassandre Venumiere-Lefebvre surveyed the property owners for a pilot study. She's a French conservation biologist doing research at Colorado State University. She says, given a choice, black bears really don't want to be around people.
CASSANDRE VENUMIERE-LEFEBVRE: Black bears particularly try to avoid humans as much as possible. So there's evidence of bears having increased heart rate when crossing roads or avoiding human presence, voices, activity on trails and avoiding developed areas.
FUQUA: But, she says, caution is overruled by appetite this time of year, as human settlements provide what biologists call attractants.
VENUMIERE-LEFEBVRE: Garbage is the main one, but ripe fruit on private properties, in fruit trees or along alleys, ornamental trees from the town.
FUQUA: Colorado wildlife officials say the state has a stable population of 17,000 and 20,000 black bears. But the human population continues to grow. The Denver metro area, including Boulder, added over 400,000 people in the past 10 years. Homeowner Jessica Newman says she's recently seen a bear on the road and scat by her house, so she's glad to have help with her apples.
JESSICA NEWMAN: It's way more fruit than we can handle. It also attracts things like bears and other predators. And so the fact that folks can come and take this fruit and provide it to people who need food and will use it is really valuable to us.
FUQUA: So far this year, Community Fruit Rescue volunteers have harvested over 14 tons of residential apples.
For NPR News, I'm Sam Fuqua in Boulder, Colorado.
(SOUNDBITE OF CODY FRANCIS' "FEELS RIGHT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.