Are You Bear Safe?

With the ever-growing visitation at Yellowstone National Park, helping visitors understand how to co-exist safely with bears is increasingly essential. Communities and businesses on the edge of national parks are on the frontline for educating visitors on proper behavior to keep everyone safe, including bears in the wild.

Human behaviors, such as inappropriately storing food, can lead bears to an easy food source. Once a bear learns that campgrounds, picnic areas, and people around town can provide this, there is very little that Park managers can do to change that behavior. When seeking out food, bears may even start to interact aggressively—or get hit by cars trying to find it.

Park managers work to prevent bears from associating people and human spaces with food by providing bear-resistant food storage and garbage receptacles. But when preventative measures are insufficient, they have no choice but to remove the bear.

As such, the Wildlife Restoration Foundation worked with Yellowstone National Park and the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center to generate a toolkit that WRF uses  to equip park gateway businesses to “train people not to train bears…to get in trouble.”  

The program works with the chambers of commerce and provides “Park Gateway Partner” businesses with frontline messaging tools customized to the point of intervention—a doorway, table top, a bedside table—where a park f visitor is easily reached. A quick quiz, “I Am Bear Safe,” is fun to engage visitors and start the conversation.

If you would like to learn more or participate in the partnership, contact bburns@wildlifeandparks.org. 

Or, take the quiz and test your bear safety knowledge!