Last week, a black bear broke into a house in Estes Park and attacked a woman who is in her 80s, scratching her stomach and knocking her to the floor.
The week before that, a bear attacked an angler in his 60s in Jefferson County. The bear knocked the man to the ground and bit his legs until his friends managed to scare the animal away.
The number of bear attacks in Colorado this year is more than double the figure last year, and they come amid an extraordinary number of bear encounters as environmental pressures drive bears to food-finding extremes. Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the state’s wildlife manager, has broadcast bear safety awareness, and news outlets in the state have widely covered the unusual bear activity. But what has failed to come through official andmediachannels is the obvious, if uncomfortable, fundamental cause of this phenomenon: global warming…