31 bear cubs, 2,000 pounds of fruit a week: the Colorado rescuer whose autumn guests eat like kings

Goldilocks managed three bears. Nanci Limbach, in Silt, Colorado, is currently caring for 31. A late-spring freeze and a summer drought left many of this year's bear cubs underweight and scrounging, so they have come to the Pauline S. Schneegas Wildlife Foundation, which Limbach has run for more than 40 years. The cubs are getting through about 2,000 pounds of fruit a week — no small shopping list when the freeze also took the local apples. Limbach's long view is earned: in her first years, the bears she released wore radio collars, and not one was lost in hibernation. Several hundred bears later, the method still works: feed them well, keep them wild, let them sleep, let them go.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: institutional program