Thinking outside the den

BY KEVIN SIMPSON THE COLORADO SUN

On the caretaker’s property adjacent to the local state wildlife area, sheets of structural steel, once blanketed by snow but now tickled by tumbleweeds, sit stacked on the ground awaiting their eventual transformation.

Inside a nearby outbuilding sits the nished product the raw materials soon will replicate, once it’s their turn to be cut, welded and shaped into a contraption state o cials have been craving for years: a better, lighter, more versatile bear trap.

Je Belveal, the 36-year-old Colorado Parks and Wildlife resource technician who took on the project, notes that his little slice of paradise on the plains may be home to a seemingly inordinate number of white-tailed deer, but there’s not a bear in sight. And metalworking, while among the skills he honed in pursuit of an agency gig, gures only tangentially into a job description that includes maintenance and upkeep of ve state wildlife areas — everything from cleaning the toilets to xing fence lines, maintaining roads, managing grazing and weed mitigation.

“ is is extra credit,” Belveal says of the bear trap project. “All I brought to the table here was a willingness to tackle the problem.”

Colleagues will tell you it’s much more than that, and talk at length about how Belveal’s retiring and self-e acing personality short-sells a skilled and dedicated worker. In fact, a lifetime of persistence and a penchant for problem-solving put him at the center of a collaborative e ort to reimagine a trap for safely and e ectively capturing problematic black bears — the only bear species living in Colorado — to relocate them, avoid putting them down and reduce chances of further con ict.

“Je just doesn’t do anything halfway,” says Frank McGee, who supervised Belveal when the project

Wildlife o cials turn to guy who never caught a bear to make a better bear trap

Frank McGee, Colorado Parks and Wildlife law enforcement training manager who formerly supervised Je Belveal on the bear trap project

began, before becoming CPW’s law enforcement training manager. “He’s very self-motivated as well, and I’ve always appreciated the way he takes pride in his work. He takes each and every part of his job seriously.”

Colorado Parks and Wildlife estimates that the state’s bear population hovers between 17,000 and 20,000. A spring freeze or drought conditions can su ciently infringe on natural food sources to nudge bears into close contact with humans — circumstances that people often exacerbate through behavior that encourages interaction and often, much to wildlife o cers’ dismay, leads to fatal consequences for the bears.

Since the implementation of a new statewide bear reporting system in 2019, CPW has logged over 18,300 sightings and con icts with bears, and nearly one-third of them involved enticements like trash cans and dumpsters. e problem has become pervasive enough that CPW recently announced it will be continuing a $1 million competitive grant program launched with state funding two years ago for local projects aimed at reducing bear con ict. When bears persist, traps may be used to capture, tag and release them — one important strategy to avoid putting them down. Since

2015, CPW has relocated 461 bears.

But over the years, more than a dozen wildlife areas across the state have accumulated such a variety of traps that on many occasions o cers scramble to nd the right one for a particular situation. Many of them are old and crusted with rust. And so began the quest to sift through the features and shortcomings of the agency’s rapidly deteriorating collection and build a better bear trap — preferably one that could be adapted to any situation.

If possible, it would be produced in-house, a more economical option than buying from a vendor, which could run $25,000 per trap.

Belveal has been working on the project in ts and starts over the last two years, and so far has completed four of the six planned for his home Area 14, a swath of the state reaching from Teller County, through Colorado Springs and clear to the Kansas state line. At a cost of about $5,000 in materials plus his time on the clock, the nished traps have saved the agency an estimated $80,000.

And though the rst tests of the traps still lie ahead, CPW has been so thrilled with Belveal’s ingenuity, persistence and attention to detail that the agency recently named him its outstanding technician of the year. But his can-do legacy was forged well before he reshaped a critical tool for dealing with problem bears.

Walking across his property at the edge of the Flagler State Recreation Area, Belveal extends a friendly, down-home demeanor and a viselike handshake that o ers no hint of the physical trials of his childhood.

Born seven weeks premature at 3 pounds, 7 ounces, he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy that triggered symptoms known as hemiplegia, muscle atrophy that weakened the entire right side of his body. With a right leg an inch shorter than his left, he walked with a limp and, into his middle school years, slept in a brace to stretch his tendons.

“My dad and mom never made excuses for me because of my disability,” Belveal says. “I was never a victim, always encouraged and told I could do anything any other man could do.” e drive that powered him to persevere didn’t stop with his prep wrestling career, and he has often leaned into its lessons. “I use and bene t from the mental toughness that sport requires on a daily basis,” he says. “You know how to dig deep. If I have a hard project or physically demanding task, I go back to my wrestling experience.

Belveal’s parents divorced when he was 10, and he initially lived with his mom in Karval and later Brush. At 15, he moved in with his dad, who moved to Colorado Springs so Belveal could attend a small Christian high school. ere, he spent his freshman year lifting weights to aid his rehabilitation. e following year he took up wrestling.

In his rst year of competition, he spent virtually every match pinned to the mat. When he nally broke through with a victory his junior year, he built on that success with a work ethic and irrepressible attitude that earned him the admiration of his coach and teammates — and a winning record. A late-season injury left him with broken ribs and then pneumonia, and the physical toll simply wore him out and left him just short of earning a trip to the 2006 state tournament.

“It’s the same attitude when you’re ghting a guy and you’re on your back. Just never give up. You gotta just keep trying until something works. I apply that subconsciously to everything I do.” e way he gured it, the job essentially amounted to farming and ranching for the government, a means to spend a career immersed in the work and lifestyle he loved. From that moment, he adopted a single-minded focus: One day, he would land a job with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. e most direct route might have been to pursue a college degree, but Belveal, though a more than respectable student, didn’t gure he was cut out for that. He noticed that the agency’s job requirements o ered him a loophole — a college degree or relevant work experience.

His other passion — the outdoors — led him to volunteer for work building trails and helping with other conservation projects. One experience in particular left a lasting impression: a stint shadowing a CPW wildlife technician.

“I chose what was most natural to me, which was working, and I went for the relevant experience route,” he says. “And everything I did for those years leading up to getting a fulltime job was focused on getting experience that would translate to my hireability with Parks and Wildlife.”

Belveal volunteered almost daily with CPW for years, intent on impressing the agency with his work ethic. He started down a professional path by taking a job with El Paso County Parks. Still, he felt he also needed to establish some trade skills to bolster his résumé. When his dad opened his own steel fabrication shop, Belveal worked for him full time from 2009-12 to get his certi cation as a structural steel welder.

He melded that experience with his continued CPW volunteer work. After six or seven tries — and rejections, at a time when an open CPW position drew hundreds of applicants — he gures his perseverance eventually just overwhelmed the agency.

“I got to know the HR gals and you know, they were rooting for me because I tried so many times it was kind of embarrassing,” Belveal says.

“But every time I applied I learned something and would come back, you know, a little better the next time.” e bear trap project has cemented his credentials. is story is from e Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support e Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun.com. e Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.

In 2012, he nally got full time CPW work as a resource technician at Lake Pueblo State Park. Five years later, he landed his dream job, transferring to the Eastern Plains to live and work as a wildlife technician on a state-owned property just east of Flagler.