Bear Problems Their Main Antagonist May Be Two-Legged Visitors Who Are Careless In The Wilderness

Wilderness is sacred ground for many people who relish the chance to wander where there are no roads and few signs of humans.

Wilderness also is holy land for wildlife, especially for bears.

Can it be both ways?

In order to meet the demand of crowds wanting to experience wilderness, trails have been carved into the landscape, pack bridges span the rivers, ranger cabins guard the heavy-use areas and fire lookouts stand as sentinels on high peaks.

Where people and bears meet, trouble is inevitable.

About 300 conflicts between humans and bears are recorded annually in the Bob Marshall Complex, which includes 4 million acres with a core of wilderness and surrounding public lands.

Many of those conflicts involve bears and livestock. A growing number, however, involve grizzlies and black bears that learn to associate campers with food, said Mike Aderhold, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department regional manager in Great Falls.

That scenario rarely has a happy ending, especially for the bears.

In national parks of the United States and Canada, hikers and horse riders are concentrated into designated campsites where park managers have installed poles or wires so campers can easily hang their food out of reach of black bears and grizzlies.

But in American wilderness areas such as the Bob Marshall Wilderness, food hanging structures are not only discouraged, they are torn down if encountered by a ranger.

Backpackers generally have little trouble finding a tree limb where they can toss a line and hang their food the recommended 10 feet high and 4 feet away from the trunk of a tree. The chore is much more difficult for horse packers who tend large groups of people.

Yet it was a backpacker’s laziness this month that gave a gorgeous blonde black bear its first taste of human camp food. The bear became addicted with the first meal and became a menace to campers up and down the South Fork of the Sun River near Indian Point ranger station.

A state warden eventually had to destroy the bear.

Several bears a year are destroyed this way. Sometimes they are grizzlies, an endangered species.

If structures are allowed in wilderness, why can’t the Forest Service allow food hanging wires at least in the most heavily used areas to make it easier to hang food for the good of the bears?

“It all boils down to the concept that there should be as little evidence of man as possible in wilderness,” said Allen Rowley, spokesman for the Flathead National Forest in Kalispell.

While parks try to concentrate people in certain areas and leave the rest of the park natural, wilderness managers attempt to disperse people and their impacts.

“Putting up food poles would encourage people to concentrate,” he said.

Despite the Forest Service efforts, visitor still congregate at scenic highlights, such as the Chinese Wall, or popular put-ins and take-outs on prime fishing streams, such as the South Fork of the Flathead River.

“I’m not sure when we’ll cross the line and have to resort to more compromises to handle the concentrations of people,” Rowley said, noting that food poles could be in the future.

Meanwhile, the Forest Service and state wildlife agency are working to educate people on proper behavior in bear country.

“It’s been very discouraging this summer with many reports of people who didn’t have a clue about hanging food,” he said. “It’s a continual battle.”

Encounters between humans and bears are mounting to the point that the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department is considering adding a third quick-response bear specialist to the Bob Marshall Complex.

“We give the bears a few chances, but usually it’s three strikes and they’re out,” said Aderhold.

Officials are gradually making campers share more of the blame.

“The Forest Service has established rules for making food unavailable to bears in the wilderness,” Aderhold said. “We’ve been working on education, but we’re turning the screw a half a turn every year as far as enforcement. We’re starting to write tickets to violators. We’re eventually going to have to get tough if we’re going to recreate in the presence of grizzlies.”