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Posted by Bill S on May 2, 2008 at 1:00:35 pm EDT
In reply to Bear Food Ediquette While Camping Question CO posted by skinny_duck on April 28, 2008 at 12:16:03 am EDT

When you said that the land managers are "hoping the canisters will train a generation of bears and then subsequent bruins will not bother to attempt to get food from campsites.", you are not correct. The land managers are more realistic than you give them credit for. They well know, as I said, that bears are curious and intelligent, and they will continue probing all possibilities to get food. They also know that any success in encouraging the bears to spend most of their efforts other than campgrounds and backpackers packs are dependent on people following safe practices, which many of the campers just will not do. The hope is that with more education of the campers and other users of the parks and backcountry (emphasis on *users*, which means people, not bears) the number of negative bear-human encounters will be reduced (not eliminated, but *reduced*).

It is really hard, maybe impossible, to educate a large number of the people who use the campgrounds, backpack, and even the people who have cabins in bear country. Last night, I was at a presentation on "Light Backpacking" in which the presenter advocated bear bagging in Yosemite backcountry, despite the requirement to use bear boxes in the developed campsites that have them and bear cylinders in other areas and a strict prohibition against bear bagging. His statement was that "I have never had a problem with bears" in something like 20 years of backpacking. He suggested the UrSack for those worried about bears, despite the Yosemite backcountry permit offices displays of photos of UrSacks that had been ripped open by bears. What would it take to convince someone like this if photos and videos of the bears getting at bear bags, breaking into cars, and breeching UrSacks carry no weight? Yes, bear bagging and UrSacks seem to be effective still in much of the US, but not in much of the Sierra.

I mentioned the incidents in campgrounds I have used in the past couple of years. These campgrounds had posters at every campsite and the rangers came around every day to talk to all the campers. Yet, despite that and the issuance of expensive citations, every one of those campgrounds had people losing food to the bears every day, with one of the days seeing all but 4 campsites (all of us climbers who frequent Yosemite) being raided.

In the past couple of years, the bears in the Lake Tahoe area (and other areas with a large "summer cabin" population - many are also used in winter as "ski cabins") have been breaking into the cabins and raiding the refrigerators and pantries. The bears seem to look through the windows until they spot a refrigerator, then break into the closest door.

No, the land managers are realistic enough to know that you will never train the bears, and probably not the humans either, to eliminate negative encounters and get the bears to stick with all natural food sources. All they can do is educate enough people to reduce the number of encounters.

But, politically, you are probably right that you can't publicly say "reduce". You have to promote the program with statements like "eliminate" and "train the bears". And your statement that there have been no successful re-trainings is correct. That's why the land managers know that all you can hope to do is reduce the negative encounters.

Yosemite for decades has tried labeling the bears, trapping them, and releasing them far from the Valley and Tuolumne. They used a "3-strike" approach. First offense was for the bear to be released at the northern border of the park. Second offense was south of the park. Third offense was in Kaiser Wilderness and near Wishon Reservoir. Even at the most distant location and different directions, the problem bears are finding their way back to the Valley and Tuolumne, sometimes in as little as 3 or 4 days. There are, by the way, some videos of bear break-ins on the Yosemite National Park website.

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