I'd like to use my organic light roast coffee grounds to mulch my acid loving landscape plants, but I have read that bears love coffee grounds. We have deer, bears and cougars where I live. Is this known to be true or am I safe to use the grounds without baiting bears or other critters?
Putting coffee grounds out isn't guaranteed to attract interest from bears or other wildlife. However, it’s correct to assume that any objects that have human scents might create that type of curious investigation from an animal.
If you add your coffee grounds to a hot composter, which quickly breaks them down, you might avoid drawing interest from animals. A good plan is to minimize the time that raw materials smells are available to animals and staying vigilant — I recommend a game camera.
People use electric fences to protect conflicts with bears. But that also assumes that they're able to safely tolerate bear travel in whatever space there is between the electrically protected resource and their home. In a residential/suburban setting, any bear interest would mean removing the composter, because you wouldn't want the curious, persistent bear to keep visiting your yard even if it couldn't access the contents of a composter.
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