You could still compost, but keep it strictly lawn waste and no food products.

You could compost grass clippings, pulled weeds, shredded paper etc.

You could start an indoor or in the garage vermicompost for food scraps.

Or we could start a monthly lottery, freeze your kitchen scraps and send them to the lucky winner.

We have bears around also but have few problems with them. In fact saw two just last week.

Wonder if it would work for you to bury each day's accumulated kitchen scraps. We've done that and the worms quickly turn it into soil. I always dig it in the depth of a shovelful of soil.

I can't take it anymore! I'm throwing away perfectly good coffee & kitchen scraps! I think I'll try to dig, bury and put my lawn clippings over the top...more of a pile style. If the bear wants to snack...he can have at it... The pile will be on the far side of the yard and at the back of the garden.

I just can't put this good stuff in the garbage anymore.

Half our county doesn't compost for fear of bears so I'm glad you raised the subject. We have eleven open bins and three closed ones - a wooden crate vermicomposter, an Earth Machine, and a green cone food digester - that have never been disturbed, but then there are no bears in our immediate vicinity. The odd bear breaking into a few people's Earth Machine bins was enough to put a way disproportionate number of people off composting. I wish I had answers for those few who do have a genuine concern, and who ask us what to do.

The county came up with a bear-proof 'green solution' to the organic waste problem, which was to tell people to put their kitchen scraps in non-recyclable, non-biodegradable green plastic bags, which must be purchased at the local grocery store, and which get picked up by the garbage truck and hauled on a two hour drive over the mountains to a composting site. The finished compost stays on the other side of the mountain. The county's advertising makes all this sound like a fabulous opportunity to help the environment.

You don't want to encourage the bear to come to your garden. A nuisance bear is a dead bear and you don't want that. And as joepyeweed says, what will he do to your garden if he comes to depend upon your garden as a source of food? Why not try the vermicomposting in the garage and just limit your pile to leaves, grass clippings and other greens? We have problems with bears/raccoons/rats here and do our composting to disuade the vermin. On the other hand, isn't it wonderful to live in a country where we are side-by-side with the wild? And, here on this forum, we try to use nature to our advantage. Hummmm, I wonder how good bear poop would be in a compost?

My experience with bears is that once they find a food source they keep coming back AND they are pretty darn destructive, breaking windows and cabinets. Our family used to have a cabin in Northern Wisconsin. And even though we would think it was bear proofed... it seems it never was.

And even though our family was very diligent about not leaving any food items for the bears, other families with cabins in the area were not so diligent... and the bears learned that ransacking cabins was a good source of food.

And of course, the bears that learned to ransack would eventually be killed. :-(

"And even though we would think it was bear proofed... it seems it never was. "

I've seen the display at Yellowstone and I don't think there's any such thing as bear proof. You can slow them down, but I don't think you can stop them.

You ask if we have any thoughts, and after your first thread on this topic (see link below), my only thought is that you aren't listening. I'll make this as simple as I can:

Your Food + Bear = Dead Bear

And it's your fault.

Here is a link that might be useful: previous thread

After some bad experiences with racoons in my compost I decided to buy a NatureMill indoor composter - and I LOVE it! No, I'm not affiliated with them in any way. They are pricey, but it was worth it for me. Just a thought.

Can you compost a bear?

"Can you compost a bear?"

Yes.

Montana is composting the road kill by covering the whole animals with wood chips. They use the resulting compost along the roadsides.

I completely agree with Karchita. A fed bear is a dead bear, as they say around here.

10-15 miles west of here is considered Bear Country. It is the foothills of the Sandias. In that area, you can be fined $5,000 for improperly storing food, leaving food outside, and for leaving food outside of "bear proof" garbage cans.

Bears will climb in through open windows of houses in the foothills to rummage in the kitchen. It happened as recently as June 18th.

Bears caught in our area are sedated by Game, Fish and Wildlife officers and transported to places like the Gila Wilderness. They sometimes survive. Sometimes they spend the rest of their life working their way back to humans to get more human food. The ones who repeatedly do this end up in captivity or shot, hopefully not before they hurt someone. A 120 lb yearling bear is adorable but can maul you pretty easily.

I have nothing to compost but kitchen scraps (and paper) - no leaves, grass, etc... Someone suggested vermicomposting to me and I think I will do it. You should really look into it. The option you are considering - burying it and letting the bear have at it because its at the other end of your property is very dangerous.

for more bear information ...

Here is a link that might be useful: sandia mountain bear watch

Bears will climb in through open windows of houses...

In my experience, the windows don't have to be open (or doors for that matter) for the bears to use them. One bear, even knew if he busted the window in the door, he could then stick his arm in and operate the door handle to open it. Which was better, from a repair standpoint, than the bears who hadn't learned how to operate a door latch.

I was talking to someone today who has a cabin in the mountains, and is pretty savvy on bear issues. They meticulously haul out all food stuffs when they leave, and wash down the sinks and drains with disinfectant, to make sure there is nothing left that might attract bears. On top of that, they have welded 1/4" mesh on all the windows and doors.

So, they went up this past weekend, hoping to spend the week, and came back down for stuff to repair the damage. A bear had pulled the weld mesh off the door, broke the door, got into the kitchen and tore open the pad-locked fridge, which had nothing in it. Some sort of residual smell or something.

Around here, we only see them in the fall when they're out and about from the canyons into all the old orchards. The absolutely worst thing you can do is have an over-ripe cantaloupe in the garden or the compost. They'll be there.

So true. Here in NM, for whatever reason, our bears have not learned to break into cars yet, so we are not as prone to some of those stories. People can actually live year round in the foothills of the Sandias and Manzanos, backed up to National Forest land. Of course, who knows how much longer this will last. Kind of makes my rabbit, gopher, and maybe prairie dog, problems seem minor.

I think it'll last for as long as they don't get any food from people, cars, houses, compost piles, digging in gardens, whatever. But once they have success, they'll back for more. They learn really quickly and they don't forget.

Hi all,

Interesting thread. I have no bear problems, ground squirrels but no bears. No one cares about squirrels yet. Sounds like an opportunity here to invent a bear proof compost bin and make some $$. Lets hear some ideas here. What if the compost bin could be rolled and was made of strong enough material that a bear could swat it all it wanted and it would roll around and not get damage. It could be tethered so that it would not end up miles from your house. The bear would help turn your compost pile. Do you think this would piss the animal off or tire it out. A tired bear is a live bear. Maybe I haven't looked at this situation correctly. JMHO. Aloha.

Lehua--That sounds like a good idea, but I don't think you've got a very clear idea of just how powerful and persistent bears are. There are companies that work on bear resistant (none of them call them bear proof) containers. There's a bear education center at Yellowstone that I have visited and they show videos of bears getting into these containers and show some of the containers that bears have managed to open.

It would be pretty expensive to create a bear resistant compost bin and it would, in the end, slow a bear, but if the bear is really determined to get into it, it's going to get into it. And then the container is destroyed.

What would happen if you took straight Hobanero peppers dried them and put them into a blender crushing them up? You could then dust your bins outside with it. The only other and quickest way of getting rid of a unwanted guest would be with a Remington 308 rifle. Works great on dogs that people refuse to keep in thier own yards.

vicsitter1! I think that statement you made about shooting bears and dogs is completely uncalled for and ridiculous!This thread is about how to prevent the bears from being attracted to your compost and garden in the first place. It's not about how to KILL them! Enticing a bear (or dog)with food to your compost and then shooting it would be considered premeditated murder!

Wow, I live not that far from the original poster (I'm in NWNJ) and while we do have bears, I have never had my compost disturbed. Not in over 20 years. But, in my neighborhood we don't have a nuisance bear, just bears that pass through our yards. Yet, of course.

I have to admit, though, that while I would love to have blackberry bushes, the thought of bears making themselves at home in my garden has prevented me from buying them.

I don't think there is a solution to the problem. Other than removing the bear, which I don't believe can happen until the bear does actual damage or hurts someone/livestock/pet.

When is hunting season for bear in your area? Goooood eating.

or get or 3 bear dogs. Standard poodles were originally breed to be bear dogs. They are protected from the claws by the thick fur. 2 or 3 fight better than one alone.

or hot chilly power may repel them.

or try pee. I hear they won't eat it if it has pee on it.