ALPINE, Texas — In one of the most remote corners of Texas, Matt Hewitt is unlocking the door to a giant steel trap he’s hoping will catch a black bear.

“It’s completely empty,” Hewitt says, as he reaches for a bucket with bait – days-old glazed donuts and frozen cantaloupe.

Hewitt, a researcher at the Borderlands Research Institute, affiliated with Sul Ross State University, leads a group that captures and collars black bears to try and get an idea of just how many are roaming the mountains and desert stretches of Far West Texas. And although it’s too soon to say exactly how many bears there are, Hewitt believes “there’s more than people realize.”

Historically, black bears were once the biggest predator to travel the region in large numbers, but overhunting and habitat loss led to their decline over several decades.

But in recent years, the number of black bears in West Texas have been on the rise: sightings in the state have jumped from nearly 80 in 2020 to at least 130 so far this year, according to state data. And in other states, researchers believe black bear populations are growing too.

Inside an eight-foot steel trap, researcher Matt Hewitt has sprinkled stale doughnuts and chunks of cantaloupe. Hewitt hopes the bait’s enough to lure and trap a black bear.

Carlos Morales/NPR

hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Carlos Morales/NPR

Matt Hewitt, a researcher with Borderlands Research Institute, heads for his truck after securing a snare, which he hopes will snag tufts of bear hair.

Carlos Morales/NPR

hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Carlos Morales/NPR

But in West Texas, for all the celebration of the bears’ return to the wilderness, there are challenges and concerns as bears have ventured into neighborhoods, gotten into yards and posed a threat to livestock and pets.

“I don’t mind the bears coming back, we don’t want them wiped out, that’s for sure,” said Pam Clouse, who lives in Alpine, an area that’s seen a number of bear encounters in recent years. “You know, they were almost extinct.”

Clouse and her husband, Ken, both grew up in West Texas, and consider themselves wildlife enthusiasts. During drought years, the couple would sprinkle buckets full of corn on their yard and keep troughs of water on their property for wandering wildlife like deer and javelina.

Recently, they removed the food and water at the suggestion of state officials, and have even electrified their fence, too — all in effort of keeping the bears away.

But the bears are still coming, they say. “These bears are pretty large,” said Pam Clouse, as she pulled up an image of a bear from a trail camera at their house. “They’re probably about 4, 500 pounds if I had to guess.”

A still image taken from a trail camera Pam and Ken Clouse have on their porch in Alpine, Texas.
hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

The Clouses feel like more can be done to ease residents’ concerns over bears wandering onto their property. “I’m not promoting a hunting season for the black bears,” said Ken Clouse. “But there’s got to be some type of control.”

A mural in downtown Alpine, Texas highlights the wildlife that call the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas home – including the black bear.

Carlos Morales/NPR

hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Carlos Morales/NPR

Learning to live with bears

In states like Montana and Colorado, residents have adapted to living with bears by installing bear-resistant dumpsters and trash bins and, in some cases, installing alarm systems or sprinklers — things to try and startle bears.

But of all the measures, wildlife biologists stress removing food and anything that might attract a hungry bear.

During the late summer and fall months, as black bears prepare to den, they’re looking to eat as much as possible, and they’ll go through great lengths to consume the 20,000 daily calories they’re after.

“They have a great sense of smell, much better than our own,” said Raymond Skiles, former wildlife biologist at Big Bend National Park in West Texas. “So, number one, they can smell food when you and I would never have a clue.”

Skiles was at Big Bend National Park when black bears made their return there in the late 1980s. He said it took time and work at the park, but they were able to adapt to the return of bears there. The park brought in dumpsters that were hard for bears to get into, educated visitors about the animal, and put into place rules that ensured food wasn’t being left out.

Today, Skiles said, those measures have gone a long way in reducing the possibility of bear-human conflict in the Chisos Mountains, one of the most popular corners of the park. Now, Skiles wonders if the same can happen in cities and towns across West Texas.

Krysta Demere sits in the offices for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in Alpine. Part of her job as a wildlife biologist is getting people ready to live with black bears and educate them in hopes of reducing bear-human conflict.

Carlos Morales/NPR

hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Carlos Morales/NPR

From the national park, an expansive stretch of desert land roughly the size of Rhode Island, the bears are now pushing north. Wildlife conservationists here say it’s likely because the land has reached what they call “carrying capacity.”

“And when you’re over carrying capacity, there’s not [enough] resources on the natural landscape for those animals,” explained Krysta Demere, a wildlife biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “So, then they begin to move out and search for new food sources.”

Part of Demere’s job is to help people across West Texas get ready to live with bears, something they haven’t experienced in well over 80 years.

“And that’s a long time,” said Demere. “That means there’s not a generation alive today that’s had to live with [the] black bear before.”

But the next generation in Alpine and the ones after that will likely grow up knowing this place, once again, as bear country.

Moments after Luigi Mangione was handcuffed at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, a police officer searching his backpack found a loaded gun magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear.

The discovery, recounted in court on Monday as Mangione fights to keep evidence out of his New York murder case, convinced police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, that he was the man wanted in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan five days earlier.

“It’s him, dude. It’s him, 100%,” an officer was heard saying on body-worn camera video from Mangione’s arrest on 9 December last year, punctuating the remark with expletives as the officer combing the bag, Christy Wasser, held up the magazine.

Wasser, a 19-year Altoona police veteran, testified on the fourth day of a pre-trial hearing as Mangione sought to bar prosecutors from using the magazine and other evidence against him, including a 9mm handgun and a notebook found during a subsequent bag search.

The testimony shed light on the critical minutes after Mangione was spotted at the McDonald’s and the sometimes unusual steps police officers took in collecting evidence critical to tying him to the crime.

Mangione’s lawyers argue the items should be excluded because police did not have a search warrant and lacked the grounds to justify a warrantless search. Prosecutors contend the search was legal and that police eventually obtained a warrant.

Wasser, testifying in full uniform, said Altoona police protocols require promptly searching a suspect’s property at the time of an arrest, in part for dangerous items.

On body-worn camera video played in court, Wasser was heard saying she wanted to check the bag for bombs before removing it from the McDonald’s. Despite that concern, she acknowledged in her testimony Monday that police never cleared the restaurant of customers or employees.

Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. He appeared in good health on Monday, pumping his fist for photographers and chatting with his lawyers as testimony resumed.

The hearing, which was postponed on Friday because of Mangione’s apparent illness, applies only to the state case. His lawyers are making a similar push to exclude the evidence from his federal case, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Prosecutors have said the handgun found in the backpack matches the firearm used in the killing and that writings in the notebook showed Mangione’s disdain for health insurers and ideas about killing a CEO at an investor conference.

Thompson, 50, was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for his company’s investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police have said “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

Mangione was arrested in Altoona, about 230 miles from Manhattan, after police there received a 911 call.

Wasser testified that she went to the McDonald’s on her own to assist another officer, Joseph Detwiler. Before that, she said, she had seen some coverage of Thompson’s killing on Fox News.

Wasser began searching Mangione’s bag as officers took him into custody on initial charges of forgery and false identification, after he acknowledged giving them a bogus driving license, police said. The same fake name was used by the alleged gunman used at a Manhattan hostel days before the shooting.

By then, a handcuffed Mangione had been informed of his right to remain silent – and invoked it – when asked if there was anything officers should be concerned about.

Wasser told another officer she wanted to check the bag for a bomb before leaving the McDonald’s because she didn’t want to repeat an incident in which another Altoona officer had inadvertently brought a bomb to the police station.

“Did you call the bomb squad?” Mangione lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo asked.

“No. I didn’t find a bomb yet,” Wasser said.

According to body-worn camera video, the first few items Wasser found were innocuous: a hoagie, a loaf of bread and a smaller bag containing a passport, cellphone and computer chip.

Then she pulled out a gray pair of underwear, unwrapping them to reveal the magazine.

Satisfied there was no bomb, she suspended her search and placed some of the items back in the bag. Some evidence, including Mangione’s laptop, was transported to the police station in a brown paper bag, body-worn camera video showed.

Wasser resumed her search after an 11-minute drive to the police station and almost immediately found the gun and silencer — the latter discovery prompting her to laugh and exclaim “nice”, according to footage. Wasser said the gun was in a side pocket that she had not searched at McDonald’s. Later, while cataloging everything in the bag, she found the notebook.

“Isn’t it awesome?” Wasser said at one point during the search.

Asked to explain, she told Friedman Agnifilo that she was proud of her police department’s work in helping to capture Thompson’s suspected killer.

A Blair county, Pennsylvania, prosecutor testified that a judge later signed off on a search warrant for the bag, a few hours after the searches were completed. The warrant, she said, provided a legal mechanism for Altoona police to turn the evidence over to New York detectives.

As he has throughout the case, assistant district attorney Joel Seidemann described Thompson’s killing as an “execution” and referred to his notebook as a “manifesto” – terms that Mangione’s lawyers said were prejudicial and inappropriate.

Judge Gregory Carro said the wording had “no bearing” on him, but warned Seidemann that he’s “certainly not going to do that at trial” when jurors are present.

Many utility companies are pinning their short-term hopes on “demand response” solutions that require companies to curtail activity at peak times.

AI model builders typically run data centres at full capacity during “training runs” — where they feed LLMs with vast amounts of data to improve accuracy. These rises in activity can clash with consumption from other customers — including households — during peak usage, increasing the risk of blackouts.

Companies including OpenAI have also asked US regulators to speed up interconnection requests for flexible data centres, arguing that it will help “reduce costs” for all users.

“We have to get smarter about using unused capacity on the grid,” said Daniel Eggers, executive vice-president at Constellation, a power company that supplies 2mn US homes and businesses.

Researchers at Duke University said earlier this year that if data centre operators could restrict their consumption 0.25 per cent of the time, the grid could accommodate about 76GW of additional demand. They cautioned that this would not replace the need to build new capacity.

Brandon Oyer, head of energy and water for the Americas at Amazon Web Services, said the company could tolerate some curtailment on a temporary basis, but did not consider it a “smart investment” to do so for a prolonged period of time. “Some customers might be able to tolerate that. Some customers might not. It’s going to be a very nuanced decision.”

A white-knuckle ride

The concern for hyperscalers is that this patchwork of measures will not be enough to power data centres coming online over the next few years.

In this scenario, a raft of projects will no longer be viable because they cannot meet contractual commitments. Others will have to simply wait for upgrades to the electricity grid and the construction of new generation capacity to be completed.

In a race between global superpowers, AI could be slowed down by decades old grid infrastructure and a failure to provide adequate capacity.

For some, the power crunch eases concerns of overbuild. For tech companies and the Trump administration, it may undermine billions of dollars in investment.

“We may not get all this done in the timeframe that hyperscalers would like . . . and they won’t be able to interconnect until we’ve got the resources to meet them,” said Nerc’s Robb. “It’s going to be a white-knuckle ride.”