Kodiak fights landfill bears with a second fence and a look at composting

Bears are still getting into the trash at the Kodiak Island Borough landfill, and the borough is now trying to solve the problem from two directions at once: a second fence to keep them out, and a look at composting to cut the food waste that draws them in.

State environmental regulators found last year that bears were getting past the landfill's perimeter fence, in violation of rules requiring the animals be kept out, and the site has been out of compliance since. Contractors repaired the fence in late 2025, but the state Department of Fish and Game called the work only marginally effective, and told the borough this summer that little meaningful progress had been made on new and existing gaps. The borough says it's spent about $5,500 and 195 hours on fence maintenance over the past year, with a constant attractant — the trash itself — still there.

The borough's answer is a second, interior electric fence, running about 2,845 feet around the active waste cell, at a rough installation cost of $250,000 to $350,000. Defenders of Wildlife has agreed to supply the materials, though not the installation. The alternatives the borough weighed cost more or promised less: federal wildlife-management services at $600,000 to $700,000 a year, or two weeks of hazing bears with dogs for about $40,000 — which would still have left the borough needing a fence. Assembly members reviewed the fence contract this month.

The other half of the problem is what's in the trash. Nearly half of what comes into the landfill — 43 percent — is organic material, the food and yard waste bears are after. At a July meeting, the borough's Solid Waste Advisory Board took up a residents' proposal to start looking at composting as a way to divert that material, agreeing, in the minutes' words, "that it was time to begin looking more closely at composting solutions." The board has $10,000 budgeted for outreach and education on the idea, none of it yet spent, and a composting update is on its agenda this week.

Composting, though, runs into the same bears. Fish and Game's living-with-bears guidance warns against composting anything a bear might eat — fish, meat, seaweed and kelp among them — so any program would have to be built carefully around what draws the animals in the first place. And the concern isn't abstract: Kodiak residents told the board they were worried about recent bear activity at the landfill, and about members of the public heading there to watch the bears. Board member Marion Owen, who brought the composting proposal, said she saw August as the tipping point for bear activity on the island and urged people to stay alert.