{"id":138206,"date":"2026-07-08T19:02:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T01:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bear-spotted-near-parque-de-vida\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T19:02:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T01:02:41","slug":"bear-spotted-near-parque-de-vida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bear-spotted-near-parque-de-vida\/","title":{"rendered":"Bear spotted near Parque de Vida"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Parque
Parque de Vida bear<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A bear was spotting lumbering through central Cortez on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Dispatch received a call at 5:42 a.m. reporting a bear sighting near the Cortez Fire Department at 31 N. Washington St.<\/p>\n

According to Cortez dispatch, the bear moved south toward Jackson Street and was last spotted near a residence behind the Children\u2019s Kiva Montessori School at 601 N. Mildred Road, near Parque de Vida.<\/p>\n

The bear, according to Lt. Rogelio Maynard, was not captured or relocated \u2013 but was a rare sighting in the urban landscape of Cortez.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been here for 11 years and this is probably the third time in 11 years a bear has been in town,\u201d Maynard said.<\/p>\n

\"Cortez
Cortez dispatch received several calls about a bear last spotted near Parque de Vida early Wednesday morning. Lieutenant Rogelio Maynard said the sight is uncommon within city limits. (Ann Mare Vanderveen\/The Journal file)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson John Livingston said the Cortez area wildlife officer did not receive a report on the bear but encouraged residents to call CPW\u2019s Durango office at (970) 247-0855 for bear sightings in downtown areas.<\/p>\n

As drought and fires intensify in Southwest Colorado, wildlife may seek food and refuge in cities which increases the likelihood of human-wildlife conflict, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just have a lot of wildlife that\u2019s displaced by that Ferris Fire,\u201d Livingston said, referring to the more than 50,000-acre blaze burning 15 miles northwest of Dolores. \u201cThey\u2019re seeking water, food and shelter and they\u2019re going to be looking wherever they can to find that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He encouraged residents to pay attention to roads and highways to avoid car collisions with displaced animals and to keep pets on a leash on trails to avoid run-ins with elk, bears or deer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you add in the fire, it\u2019s just creating a situation where animals are going to be on the move more often,\u201d Livingston said.<\/p>\n

avanderveen@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colorado Parks and Wildlife warns that fires and drought are pushing wildlife to urban areas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":138207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,28,29,6419,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-138206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-tj-trueanthem","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138206"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=138206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}