Buncombe County has more than its share of bear problems.
During Tuesday’s Board of Commissioners meeting, officials were urged to do more to reduce the danger of bear-related property damage and human injuries.
Since 2017, more people have been injured by bears in Buncombe than in the rest of the state combined, biologist Ashley Hobbs with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission told commissioners. There were 11 bear-related injuries in the county during that period and seven in the rest of the state, she said.
Bears have invaded more than 250 homes in the county since 2017, she said. The county accounts for more than a third of all calls to a state hotline to report bear issues.
Bears have become habituated to feeding on garbage, pet food and bird seed, Hobbs said. “They lose their fear of humans” as a result and view people as a source of food.
“We’re having more people, more development, more foods on the landscape and thus more bears and more problems,” she said.
Hobbs’ comments track findings by N.C. State University researchers in 2021 that female bears in and around Asheville are getting larger and having cubs earlier in life because of the availability of food provided, intentionally or unintentionally, by humans.
That in turn contributes to ongoing increases in the bear population and a rise in bear issues. Relocating bears is problematic because some return to their old haunts and many bears die following relocation, Hobbs said.
Hobbs asked the county government to do more to let residents know about the problems that providing food to bears creates and to encourage residents to use bear-resistant trash cans.
Commissioners took no formal action, but some said they are also hearing more reports of bear problems around the county and that it can be difficult to get bear-resistant trash bins from FCC Environmental Services, the company that provides residential garbage pickup in unincorporated areas of the county.
Leasing the cans adds $10 to a customer’s bill each month and the price tag to buy one is $320. Dane Pedersen, the county’s solid waste director, said only 2,853 of FCC’s 40,000 customers in the county use the bear-resistant bins.
To significantly reduce the number of bear problems, “We need everyone, or the vast majority of people, to have those carts,” Hobbs said, but she went on to acknowledge achieving that would be expensive.
More information about how people can avoid bear conflicts and state and national efforts to combat the problem is available here.
Housing money
Commissioners bemoaned recent decisions by the state that set aside only $1.7 million of a $69.1 million pot of disaster relief money earmarked to construct affordable housing will come to Buncombe County.
Matthew Cable, community development division manager for county government, said that means the county is $15 million short of the funds needed to build affordable apartments on county-owned property at 50 and 52 Coxe Ave.
The project cost was estimated at $74.5 million in March 2025.
The state Department of Commerce allocated federal Community Development Block Grant Disaster Relief funds to affordable housing projects around Western North Carolina last month. The money is part of a much larger appropriation to the state for Helene recovery.
Asheville city government also received money through the CDBG Disaster Relief program, but that is separate from the funds the state is administering. Developers of the Coxe Avenue project applied to the city for some of that money but were denied, Cable said.
Cable cited figures that show Helene destroyed 981 homes in WNC, not including the city of Asheville. Of those lost, 285 are in unincorporated parts of Buncombe County, he said.
County staffers and a private developer are discussing other ways to finance the Coxe Avenue project, he said. A referendum to authorize the county to borrow $40 million for affordable housing is on the November ballot this year.
Commissioners said they will contact state officials about their dissatisfaction.
Commissioner Parker Sloan said he is happy for other WNC counties to get funding, but Buncombe’s share is out of proportion to the damage it sustained.
“I think the state of North Carolina, the governor’s office and the agencies … under him screwed this up royally,” he said.
Deaverview, trash pickup and land protection
During the meeting, the commissioners also:
— Approved a $1.4 contract with Equinox Environmental for the Asheville-based firm to develop a master plan and construction documents for Deaverview Park. The park is to be located on 342 mountaintop acres between Asheville and Leicester that Buncombe County bought in March.
The property, accessed off Deaverview Road, offers sweeping views of Asheville and other parts of the French Broad River valley and includes a network of informal, dirt trails. The master plan is to be completed next summer and other documents will follow in fall 2027, County Parks and Recreation Director Allison Dains told commissioners.
The terms of grant funding used to buy the property require that it be open to the public by 2029, she said.
— Heard a presentation on a $190,000 project to hire one or more private contractors to remove litter from secondary roads in the county this fall and in spring 2027.
The state Department of Transportation owns the public road network outside the county’s municipalities plus major roads within cities and towns. But Pedersen, the solid waste director, told commissioners that while NCDOT devotes significant resources to trash removal along interstate highways and primary roads, its budget for litter pickup on secondary roads is “very minimal, close to zero.”
The county-funded effort will cover the northern half of the county this fall and the southern half next spring, he said.
— Approved spending $251,500 toward the purchase of conservation easements on 80 acres of the former Camp Sequoyah property on a tributary of Reems Creek east of Weaverville. The easement, which puts limits on development of the property, will be held by the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, a nonprofit.
Commissioners also approved spending $225,800 to begin work that will lead to later acquisition of conservation easements on 170 acres of farm and timber land in the Newfound area in northwestern Buncombe County.
More
Video of Tuesday’s formal meeting is available here and supporting documents are here. Video of the informal briefing and accompanying documents are here and here. Commissioners next meet Oct. 6 at 200 College St. in downtown Asheville. An informal briefing is scheduled for 3 p.m. followed by the formal meeting at 5 p.m.
