Bears and Garbage : A Bad Combination
By Steve Primm, Carnivore Conflict Reduction Manager
Some combinations are never a good idea: Fireworks and dry grass. Texting and driving. Whiskey and chainsaws. And in the wildlife world, bears and garbage. Just like other bad combinations, bears-plus-garbage always leads to an unhappy ending: conflict, dead bears, upset people.
Bears are big animals, and they’re driven to find high-calorie foods so they can live off their fat reserves through the long winter. They quickly discover that garbage is easy to find and predictably abundant, which means they don’t have to expend a lot of energy to get a full belly.
Among many downsides, garbage-eating bears end up losing their wariness of people. Instead of foraging in the wild for natural foods, these bears focus their efforts on developed areas. They usually end up destroying property, sometimes hurting people. They lead short, troublesome lives.
Fortunately, many people have recognized this problem and have spent decades developing solutions for keeping bears out of garbage. Garbage cans and dumpsters intended to keep bears out now undergo rigorous testing, and a wide network of community leaders, wildlife officials, and conservation groups put these receptacles to use in places where bears could get into garbage conflicts.
Our Carnivore Conflict Reduction team at Heart of the Rockies Initiative is working with partners across western Montana to get more of this critical infrastructure into use as grizzlies expand into long-vacant parts of their historic range. Thanks to funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s America the Beautiful Challenge Grant program awarded to Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, Heart of the Rockies Initiative has helped get over 450 certified bear-resistant garbage cans and dumpsters into action in grizzly and black bear habitat.
We’re working with community partners from the gateway to Yellowstone all the way to the Canadian border. We’re also working with agricultural producers to reduce conflicts on ranches, supporting efforts to get dead livestock carcasses from the ranch to secure composting facilities so that bears and wolves aren’t drawn to areas where they’ll get in trouble. In less than a year, our partners have removed over 1,000 livestock carcasses from ranches.
Heart of the Rockies Initiative will be working in the coming months to deliver even more funding and technical support to partners working to reduce and prevent conflict with large carnivores.
