Westie the turtle. Luna the snake. Vinnie the scorpion.
These are just some of the animals Wild Bear Nature Center lost in a fire that burned down their interim facility at the Caribou Village Shopping Center on October 9. The Boulder County Sheriff's Office has classified it as a complete structural loss. The organization also lost numerous educational materials.
“All of our things were being stored in the space that burned down,” Frankie Beard, Wild Bear’s Director of Educational Operations, said. “That includes books and microscopes and skulls and pelts and years and years worth of donations.”
The Nederland community feels that. Wild Bear leaders said they’ve received hundreds of messages of support. Residents and nature centers are donating what the organization needs most immediately. Local mechanics are helping leaders get into company vehicles since they lost their keys in the fire.
“It's hard to say that there's a good thing that came out of all of this,” Beard said. “But like, truly the community is the great thing that came out of all of this. Our community is really the ones that are stepping up in this moment.”
All the while, Wild Bear hasn’t stopped its programming. Beard visited Nederland Elementary a day after the fire, and she says the response from the kids was the most heartwarming.
“They were, like, ‘I'm really sorry about what happened to Wild Bear,’ like, came up and told us that,” she said. “I think that's really profound for an eight-year-old to say something like that…there's just a lot of love and joy somehow still being spread around.”
The organization launched a Fire Relief Fund to support its rebuilding. An anonymous donor has pledged a $150,000 matching gift.
That will go toward developing Wild Bear’s programs and exhibits and completing its new nature center near Mud Lake. The design of the 8,500 square foot building was created with input from the community and is net-zero. Leaders also aim to provide more support for those coming from Title One schools and underserved communities. It opens in 2026.
Beard said what they went through was really devastating, but Wild Bear can fight back.
“Wild Bear has been founded on the idea of resilience, and that we have continued to push through difficult things,” she said.
