Leadership Team

Brenda Lee, Founder and President

Working as a statistician for an analytical instrumentation firm for many years followed by a career as a marriage and family psychotherapist, she now combines her problem solving skills with her empathic nature to work on behalf of wildlife. Boulder Bear Coalition is the natural culmination of bridging her strong analytical and personal skills with her deep life-long passion to help protect wild animals. And being a bear-sitter is probably the coolest title she has ever had!

Odile Fazioni, Vice President

Odile is a life coach and world traveler. Originally from Italy, she has always cultivated a passion for animals and nature. Since she moved to Colorado in 2012, Odile has learned a lot about human-wildlife conflict and is committed to helping people learn how to better coexist with the local wild animals, particularly with black bears.

Blair Norman, Community Fruit Rescue Executive Director and BBC Representative

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Major Milestones

2012: Boulder Bear Coalition is founded
2014: Bear Protection Ordinance is passed unanimously by Boulder City Council. Boulder Bear Coalition is recognized by City Council for their efforts to implement this ordinance. At the time, this is the largest area to implement such a program.
2014: Community Fruit Rescue is founded, BBC is one of 5 co-founders
2017: Food Buffer Zone is established, in partnership with OSMP and Wild Foundation
2023: Gov. Polis and CPW Announce 2023 Human-Bear Conflict Reduction Grant Recipients.
Boulder Bear Coalition is awarded $107,225
2024: Gov. Polis and CPW Announce 2024 Human-Bear Conflict Reduction Grant Recipients.
Boulder Bear Coalition is awarded $53.000

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Partnerships

Community Fruit Rescue

Boulder Bear Coalition is a founding member of Community Fruit Rescue. Additional co-founders are Falling Fruit , Boulder Food Rescue , 350 Boulder and Boulder Edible Landscaping Working Group

Community Fruit Rescue’s mission is to inspire Boulder residents to harvest, share, and celebrate the bounty of our urban forest. Community Fruit Rescue is a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to harvesting and distributing the surplus urban fruit growing throughout Boulder, Colorado.

In Boulder, apples, pears, peaches, and plums create a dangerous attraction for bears. To help reduce this attractant to bears, Boulder Bear Coalition helps with harvesting local fruit and brings a portion of the fruit to the bears at The Wild Animal Sanctuary.

For more information on signing up for our annual harvest, see Community Fruit Rescue.

BVSD Trip Tracker

BVSD Trip Tracker encourages and rewards students and families for using alternatives to single family car transportation to BVSD schools. Students are rewarded monthly for walking, biking, carpooling and riding either the school bus or RTD.  Students receive Trip Tracker dollars that can be used like cash at participating local businesses or to donate to a short list of local non-profit organizations including Boulder Bear Coalition. We are grateful for the generous donations from students and faculty to help our efforts to protect our local black bears!

Wild Cities

Boulder Bear Coalition is a  WILD Cities Champion for Boulder Colorado with the goal of helping regenerate wild nature in urban areas to improve quality of life for all. Check out this beautiful 2-minute video to learn more about the Wild Cities Project.

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Testimonials

“Brenda Lee demonstrated both leadership and initiative, pressing the Boulder City Council to adopt measures aimed at securing garbage and the result was passage of new requirements of bear resistant garbage and compost containers. 

Ms. Lee acted as a crucial liaison between wildlife managers and the community often effectively communicating with individuals who were distrustful and suspicious of CPW. Ms. Lee encouraged residents to be proactive and take responsibility for their own properties and behaviors.  When we removed and put down a very high profile bear Ms. Lee and the Boulder Bear Coalition maintained a productive and cooperative relationship with wildlife managers while continuing to advocate for the well being of bears.  They worked to understand management decisions and how they could play a positive role around them.

The Boulder Bear Coalition has been a catalyst in working towards solutions that involve individual residents and public policy.  As we move forward and continue to try to prevent conflict properly evaluating the underlying causes will be critical.  Ms. Lee has exhaustively researched and proposed ways to evaluate habitat and movement corridors within the city that if executed will make meaningful contributions to our understanding of the problem and can result in novel but realistic solutions. With the right resources I expect the Boulder Bear Coalition can make Boulder into a model for other communities.” 

-Kristin Cannon, CPW NE Regional Director

“The Boulder Bear Coalition clearly cares deeply about the fate of the bears, are dedicated problem-solvers, and have proceeded to find tangible ways to proactively protect Boulder’s black bears. One of the first solutions that Boulder Bear Coalition introduced was the proposal to use bear resistant carts throughout the city of Boulder as trash was clearly a main attractant for bears coming into town. Boulder Bear Coalition has established itself as a trusted group that has formed effective partnerships in order to protect bears, ensure public safety and empower the community to protect its wildlife. I trust that, in her hands, Brenda Lee and her team will succeed in making a difference for the lives of black bears.”

-Lisa Morzel, Member of the Boulder City Council

“The issue has to be ripe, and you have to have all the right people in the room who are actively engaged. Leaving people out of the conversation is not good business and not the way to find solutions to the problem. Boulder added employees in its code enforcement department to enforce bear regulations but ultimately learned that going door-to-door to educate households and fine residents is “very expensive.” The city of Boulder ultimately mandated bear-proof trash containers in neighborhoods west of Broadway Avenue.

None of this would have worked out had we not worked with stakeholders who were invested in finding ways to minimize bear/human conflicts — trash haulers and community partners (like the) Boulder Bear Coalition,”

-Kris Middledorf, CPW Area Manager

“Outraged citizens flooded the city council meetings. It was clear the dead bears had been drawn into town by the endless availability of human food. They [Boulder Bear Coalition] pushed council members to pass an ordinance that would require Boulder residents to lock up their trash in bear-resistant garbage bins. Though trash ordinances already existed in small mountain towns, like Banff and those near Lake Tahoe, it was the first time a large city would pass such a law in the United States. That Boulder, a city with more than one hundred thousand residents, should need to implement this strategy to deal with black bears signaled a profound shift in the American West; as urban areas expanded, hungry black bears were no longer going to abide by arbitrary human boundaries. “

– Gloria Dickie, author of Eight Bears, Mythic Past and Imperiled Future

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Our History

When Brenda Lee moved to Boulder in 2006 she quickly realized that she shared the surrounding area with many kinds of wildlife including mountain lions and bears. She was regularly told by neighbors not to call CPW because “they are bear killers”. When a sow was killed by wildlife officers in 2009 and there was outcry from the community, Brenda began asking local animal advocates and groups about the management of bears in the area. Not getting a clear answer on why bears were being killed annually,  nor finding any alternative solutions being proposed, Brenda joined CPW as a volunteer bear sitter in order to better understand bear management in town.

Throughout her training and bear sitting work, she developed a relationship with local CPW officers and an understanding on how bears are managed in Boulder. What struck her most was the lack of city involvement in how bears were managed prior to CPW being called in to deal with a bear in town.  It became quite clear that the city relied on CPW officers to reactively manage any bears that had become a nuisance. No one was working on figuring out why the bears were in town and staying, and instead CPW officers were expected to respond to nuisance bears in town by relocating and/or euthanizing them. Brenda concluded that more needed to be done to proactively keep bears from coming into town in the first place and CPW should not be called unless there was a clear threat to human safety. Rather than seeing the wildlife officers as the enemy, Brenda wanted to understand why the bears were in town in the first place, find ways to reduce attractants, increase deterrents, and as a result, reduce the need for officers to be in town handling bears.

It was then that Boulder Bear Coalition was formed. Seeing a need for greater community involvement to help advocate for changes in the city we began to collect information on where the critical problem areas were, which was became quite obvious: unsecured trash in the Uni-Hill area. And this was just the beginning of a strong group of citizens rising up to be the voice for the bears and to put responsibility on the city and the community who wants to keep the bears alive.

From our initial $5,000 purchase of 20 bear resistant trash cans to sell to neighbors at cost and to show city council the variety of sizes available, to spending 20 hours/week during the bears hyperphagia period (August-October) for several years to monitor alleys for evidence of bears getting into trash we were able to work successfully with the city of Boulder to see the Bear Protection Ordinance unanimously pass! We are the largest city to pass this type of ordinance for the protection of local bears (and cleanliness of the alleys, which was an issue that needed to be dealt with as well).

We are also a part of Community Fruit Rescue, a partnership of local nonprofits formed to harvest fruit trees throughout town to reduce waste, share the harvest with local charities, and reduce fruit as a main attractant to bears. In the fall of 2016 we harvested 10,432 pounds of fruit, donated 4,319 pounds to local charities, 3,452 pounds to Wild Animal Sanctuary bears, and logged 836 hours of volunteer picking time! In 2018 we harvested over 14,000 lbs of fruit, with a large portion going to the bears at the Wild Animal Sanctuary once again! As of 2023, CFR has harvested over 100K of fruit in Boulder.

There are many challenges to being an effective voice for protecting the bears. One of the most important aspects to success has been our ongoing efforts to understand, respect and work with city and state officials. We have taken a strong stance on the importance of finding a common goal that we all share (Keeping Bears Out of Town) and thus continue to work together to find ways to reduce attractants, increase deterrents so that bears are not comfortable being in town.

We pride ourselves on finding proactive ways to keep our local bears out of town, out of trouble and alive. We are grateful to be in a town that is full of wonderful caring citizens who want to take responsibility of how we live in order to keep our local bears wild. We have built a strong team of dedicated volunteers to continue to find ways to keep the bears safe.

Boulder Bear Coalition is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
EIN #: 46-3941088