When the prize is your food and the setting is the wilderness, never bet against the bears.

"You can't count on food being safe if you put it in a nylon sack and hang it in a tree overnight," says Harold Werner, Fish and Wildlife Biologist at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks since 1980. "If you've never lost food by counterbalancing [suspending 2 bags of food high on a tree branch], it's only because you're lucky, no matter how well you do it."

Too many campers and backpackers have learned this lesson the hard way. Resourceful black bears, driven by a powerful sense of smell (100 times stronger than a dog's), have become some of the cagiest, most determined creatures on earth when it comes to snitching food from humans.

Increasingly drastic measures are needed to protect your food in some North American wilderness areas—and to protect bears from being put to death when their desire for human food makes them too aggressive. Other than standing guard by your trail mix all night, the preferred solution is to store food inside a bear-resistant container. In fact, some wilderness managers in the West are making the use of such containers mandatory.
 

"If you lose your food to bear, that may ruin a trip for you, but even worse is that you've helped make a bear grow bolder toward human food," says Sequoia's Michelle Gagnon. "The bear may become so bold that it finally has to be destroyed, and that's sad."

Personal Responsibility
"When you go into the backcountry of a national park," Gagnon adds, "you're entering a place where animals are supposed to be protected. If you're sloppy with your food and attract them to your camp, you're altering their habits. People have a responsibility to deal with food the way they deal with waste. You have to minimize its impact."

Kate McCurdy is a wildlife biologist at Yosemite and the park's task force leader for its bear-management program. She has added incentive to use bear resistant containers.

"It's my job to kill bears that become aggressive toward humans and their food," says McCurdy, who oversaw the death of 3 bears in 1999 and 5 in 2000. "That's not something I enjoy."

"I've heard people sitting at the grill in Tuolumne Meadows and laughing about losing food to a bear on an overnight trip," she says. "It gives them an exciting story to tell, but what they're really doing is changing a bear's behavior, and that's potentially deadly to the animal. Whenever I get to backpack, I've just learned to suck it up and live with a canister and the extra 3 pounds."

Increased bear activity on the Rae Lakes loop in Kings Canyon a few years ago forced Werner to impose an emergency canister requirement for hikers. "A few people objected vehemently," he says. "They said they had a right to make their own decisions about handling their food. People need to realize that the requirements are not to protect people and their food, but to protect bears."

Goal: A Change in Behavior
McCurdy says Yosemite's bears are such quick learners that they now recognize canisters and associate them with frustration and wasted effort, not a reward.

"Our field crews began using them in 1991 and '92," McCurdy says. "We've tracked a well-documented learning curve in how bears deal with canisters. At first, bears would spend an hour trying to break one open. Over time, it got down to 30 minutes, then 15. Now it's becoming more common that if a bear glances at a campsite and sees a canister, it's going to just keep moving. That's encouraging."

Christine Cowles, a former public information officer at Yosemite, continues to monitor bear management efforts throughout the Sierras.

"We're seeing a lot more people willing to make the effort to store food correctly," she says. "A lot of that is due to rangers getting out and educating the public, explaining bear behavior and biology. Once the public understands how access to human food can lead to a bear's death, most people want to do the right thing."