Chew on this when tempted to feed wildlife

The outdoors is no place for critter lovers to be sloppy with food.

Careless handling of camping snacks or even backyard bird feeders can be as lethal to wildlife as recklessness with a .30-06.

Recent black bear problems at Priest Lake are a relatively tame reminder that we all pay a price when food gets into the wrong paws.

Tent camping was temporarily banned at the Luby Bay campgrounds after two bears became aggressive and helped themselves to camp food and berries left unsecured last week. The ban was lifted Wednesday after both bears were trapped and relocated.

The Forest Service, however, is still requiring all food and food waste on federal land around the lake to be stored in hard-sided vehicles, strung up out of reach or stored in bear-proof lockers. Coolers, incidentally, are not bear-proof.

But these restrictions ought to be standard operating procedure for campers anywhere bears, deer, marmots, raccoons or other critters could become addicted to human food. The potential consequences are much more restrictive.

Consider how bear issues got out of hand in Yosemite National Park, peaking in 1998 with $655,000 in damages as bears broke into some 1,584 camps or vehicles.

Between 1960 and 1998, the park had recorded up to 433 annual human-bear incidents in the backcountry alone, as many as 29 human injury incidents a year, up to 172 bears captured and relocated and as many as 48 bears a year that had to be killed.

Extra funding and a rigid program have reversed the trend.

Since 1998, Yosemite has nearly eliminated bear injuries to humans and reduced the bear damage by 72 percent with a $500,000-a-year program of enacting strict food storage rules, installing bear-proof food lockers and garbage containers, hiring extra staff to educate employees and visitors – and slapping fines on people who ignore the rules.

Nevertheless, there already have been more than 100 incidents in the park this year totaling about $15,000 in damage. At least 15 bear outlines have been stenciled on roads in recent months to show where vehicles have struck and killed bears, often lured to congested areas by the prospect of an easy meal.

Vehicles – even car trunks – are no longer safe or legal places to store food in Yosemite and many other places in the Sierras. Bears have learned to work their claws around the seals to pop out windshields in parked cars after they’ve spotted coolers, bags and boxes that might contain food.

Researchers say a bloodhound pales to a bear when it comes to following scent, and a campground-savvy black bear can open a trunk as effectively is a hoodlum in the Bronx.

As I prepared to hike up California’s Mount Whitney last fall, I was required to store my camp food in a metal locker at the trailhead campground and hope that the next camper followed the rules and latched the lock.

Camping is less tedious in other regions where wildlife food issues have not been allowed to get out of hand. Even in Yellowstone Park, a vehicle is still considered the preferred place for storing food in campgrounds.

With some thoughtful organizing in the back of our minivan on a Yellowstone visit, I was able to quickly slide a cooler and the camp kitchen box, including the small barbecue, in and out of the vehicle. It was so easy to comply with the rules for storing food in vehicles, our family soon found that we could quickly put up a meal wherever hunger called.

Instead of following the crowds back to the lodges and campgrounds at dinner time, we pulled into deserted scenic picnic areas. Within minutes, I could have salad and fruit on the table and chicken breasts sizzling on the propane barbie. We dined in some of the prime places to see wolves, bears, moose and other wildlife that emerges late in the day after the crowds have left.

We never returned back to our campsite before dark.

Dealing with sloppy camping is much easier than rehabilitating people who purposely provide food for wildlife without considering the impacts.

The urge to feed wildlife is powerful and becomes addictive both to the animals and the people who enjoy seeing them. There’s nothing wrong with luring birds to your backyard as long as you take the responsibility to clean the feeder regularly.

Diseases transmitted at feeders kill thousands of birds such as pine siskins every year. The Audubon Society recommends that you don’t put out a hummingbird feeder unless you’re willing to clean the unit and provide a fresh sugary liquid every other day.

In Oregon last week, I saw several people feeding the notoriously tame mule deer in Wallowa Lake State Park. Even tough the deer would walk within a few feet of people, many visitors still were compelled to offer food to bring the deer closer.

My wife and I saw one man get a swift kick from a buck’s front leg when his handout was depleted.

In 1995, a woman in the park was gored to death as she fed a buck some apples.

“I recognize that people love to see them, but the deer have become an appalling nuisance,” said Barbara Walkers, the Forest Service Wallowa District ranger. “I lived there in temporary housing for six weeks and if you drop a box of Cheerios from your grocery bag between the car and the house, the deer will be on it like roaches. They’ll come running for a bag of Doritos.

“I soon realized it wasn’t safe to let my 4-year-old child be outside alone.”

We’ll all be better off if we think of human food as a poison in our relationship with wildlife.