“First, Grand Teton National Park deserves a gold star. The park has greatly increased its staff and sanitation efforts as grizzly bear colonize areas south of Yellowstone. Grand Teton has developed a Wildlife Brigade comprised of two seasonal rangers and volunteers who worked skillfully to handle 215 bear jams this year. “Bear jams” are caused by bears being close to a road, where they attract the attention of road-bound tourists. These jams can be very dangerous; it takes careful management to keep people from getting too close to bears and creating risky situations for both people and bears. While this figure pales by comparison with the number of bear jams in Yellowstone (926 this year, a new record), it was still up significantly up from what has occurred in Grand Teton in the past. In addition, Grand Teton Park put out 62 new food boxes and 2,000 food storage notices out at trailheads.
Grand Teton officials are also spearheading an important piece of new work, a social survey, to evaluate the effectiveness of Bear Aware messages. This is important, because no one has undertaken a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of the information and education efforts that bear managers have been pursuing for many years. And the results may show how communications can be improved to foster greater human safety in bear country.
Adding to Grand Teton’s credit is the way the Park handles its annual elk hunt. Unlike other parts of the ecosystem where hunting is allowed, the park has had relatively few grizzly-hunter conflicts, probably due to several factors. First, all hunters are required to carry bear pepper spray —in contrast to the adjacent national forests, where most of the hunter-related bear conflicts occur. Second, “calling” by hunters (so as to sound like an elk) is not allowed, which reduces the chance that a grizzly will be drawn towards what it thinks is an elk – only to bump into a person, sometimes at a dangerously close range. Third, there is no bow hunting season. Archery hunters are especially prone to problems since they tend to sneak around in the woods in camouflage, silent and scentless, where they can easily surprise a bear at close range.”
To view the entire article, please visit The Natural Defense Council’s Staff Blog at (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/lwillcox/), article “Mounting Human-grizzly conflicts in Yellowstone: what can we do?”.
