This pear tree just has a ton of fruit on it and a lot of bears in the area.

Boulder is a unique place because its position right at the base of the foothills, it's so close to the foothills and open spaces.

And this is where we see a lot of wildlife coming in the area.

Bears are seeing where they can get very easy meals as they're preparing for winter hibernation.

They are just putting on the calories, and ripe fruit is abundant in the area, and it's got some good calories they can pack in.

But there's been studies out there that show that urban areas are causes of higher mortality rates for black bears.

Basically, they come here and they have to be euthanized because become habituated to eating trash or fruit in people's backyards by removing this, we're actually keeping them a lot safer.

Community Fruit Rescue was founded in 2014, and a bumper crop year similar to last year in 2024, and we had different members of the community and community organizations come together, and they saw this tremendous amount of fruit growing in the trees, and they saw that also, unfortunately, dropping to the ground and rotting and going to waste and attracting those black bears into town.

Half of the human grade fruit is going to go to food pantries in the area, like community food share Boulder food rescue.

We set aside the fruit that's a little bit yucky or maybe it has 1 or 2 more wormholes that will go to animal sanctuaries in the area, and then the other fruit that's just kind of yucky, or it's on the ground and might have some wasps on it, and we'll put that in the compost bins.