BURGER KING BEGS PEOPLE NOT TO FEED THE BEARS CHEESEBURGERS!

Black bears like Burger King their way too.

Authorities at the Colorado Division of Wildlife are looking for some adventurous people who witnesses say they saw feeding Burger King cheeseburgers by hand to a black bear and her three cubs in Eagle, Colorado.

"This is an extraordinary example of stupid and irresponsible behavior by people," Northwest Regional Manager Ron Velarde said in a news release. "Because of their reckless action, the sow and the cubs now know that people mean food. This dramatically increases the likelihood that these bears will get into trouble in the future and have to be put down."

According to the statement, the town's regulations doesn't require businesses to have bear-resistant trash dumpsters but the department is working with local businesses to install them.

Velarde said that the people who brazenly fed the black bears may not be residents of the small town, which is only a few miles from Vail, the popular ski resort town.

"Many of these restaurants are places where people on their way to another part of the country stop to eat, so it's possible that the people who fed the bears are long gone" Area Wildlife Manager Perry Will said. "But what might have started out as a great photo opportunity for them creates a big problem for us. Locals and visitors alike need to understand that we will not tolerate anyone putting our citizens and our wildlife at risk."

With a large black bear population, sightings of the creatures aren't exactly rare. But they can be dangerous. In 2010, 25-year-old Justin Young barely escaped a bear attack when the animal strode by his father's construction site in Vail.

He escaped with a black eye, cuts and bruises - much to the disbelief of his co-workers at the time.

"They assumed I fell down the stairs and was full of it, until they saw I was covered in bear hair," he told the Vail Daily shortly after the incident.

In Montana, a grizzly bear killed one person and injured two others just outside of Yellowstone National Park earlier this week.


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