You are here

Grand Teton Puts Down Another Bear

Share

For the third time in less than a month rangers in Grand Teton have put down a bear that had become too accustomed to human food. Kurt Repanshek photo.

It's beginning to sound like open season for black bears in Grand Teton National Park. For the third time in less than a month rangers have killed a black bear that had grown too accustomed to tying humans to food. This time the bear was a 60-pound male.

In recent weeks rangers killed two other black bears, both females, who had turned into problem bears because park visitors had left food out.

In the most recent case, the young male is thought to have obtained food in early August when visitors had left food unattended at Inspiration Point.

"Since then, this young bear repeatedly acquired food from people, once more at Inspiration Point but primarily at the Jenny Lake Campground and along the shores of Jenny Lake. He boldly approached people to take food and did this more frequently as time passed," park officials said. "During the first week of September, incidents involving this bear occurred almost daily. He showed no fear of humans by this time, approached families at picnic sites, walked around cars in parking areas, and even investigated a cabin in one incident, putting his paws up on the cabin window."

The park's news release did not mention whether any visitors were cited for making food available to the bear and calls to park officials were not immediately returned.

Comments

That's it "anonymous"...it's all Bush's fault...nevermind that his wife is a huge fan of the parks (unlike Bill Clinton's wife).
You have absoulutely NO credibility in what you say as long as your ilk want to blame everything on the President and his administration. Did it ever occur to you that these decisions are made at a MUCH lower level???


Melissa,

I too want to thank and congratulate you! Stick with it.

My experience is a bit varied. And I've never been a ranger - I'm on the research side of things (and of course, a visitor to many national parks). But my experience this summer - note, I was in Alaska, which is a different situation - is that many of the rangers often get slighted. By this I mean that they do have a tough decision - whether to take reports seriously. Many people may not realize how tough a decision they have, considering the varied sources of pressure they feel when making a decision. Many visitors to our parks - and all public lands - are so disconnected from the animals (and natural environments as a whole) they are watching that they do over-react too often. A couple of the rangers I met this summer deserve to hold on to their cynicism.

That said, we have too many people doing things in our parks (whether feeding the animals or whatever), that need to be stopped. I know that the interp staff at Rocky Mountain NP here in Colorado says that only about 5% of their 3 million annual visitors actually attend a ranger-led talk or program. Signs get ignored far more than they get read. Park literature is never looked at - even when given out for free. This is an audience problem, in my opinion. People need to be responsible. If you figure out how to force responsibility and maturity on people, let me know!

And until we reconnect many of our park visitors to the real world around them, situations like this Grand Teton - bear incident are not going to go away. We need to be the ones reaching out and trying to inform our fellow visitors. Maybe this can be some good peer pressure. :)

Jen


Jen: Your comments are right on. Reminds me of an experience this summer in Yosemite. Checking into White Wolf tent cabins, I got the usual bear warnings. The man behind me look stupified. "You mean there are bears here!" "Real bears?" "Will they come into my tent?" Hard to believe that someone coming to Yosemite just had no clue. Of course, that night, a bear ransacked a bear box that had been carelessly left unlocked. Maybe by a person who just didn't think there really were bears in Yosemite National Park.


Yes Gerald, I realize that the lower subordinates dish out some of the fool hardy decisions of this present administration. Yes, fool hardy! But all this butt sniffing goes all the way to the top of the White House. Who do you think is guarding the hen house your fairy godmother? Damn right I blame the Bush administration for most of the crap that goes on within the national parks today. I didn't realize Mrs. Bush was such a lover of the national parks (I deeply welcome that) not until the latter part of the year, and not until the world was denouncing the Bush & Cheney doctrine on most of their anti-environmental polices, from global warming to the lack of wholesome support for the national parks, and other major pertinent conservation issues here in the U.S. and aboard.


Wow, Melissa's comments make my heart ache. I wish I could, like the others, tell you to "stick with it" but instead I'll give you my advice; "pace yourself" while trying to change things from the inside or move on.

I do think she gives a good example of where privatization of park can fail. I'm curious what Beamis and FrankHead have to say about this. Though, I suspect privatization is less to blame here than the undertrained, undermotivated, understaffed ranger force. Surely the Chief Ranger still has jurisdiction in these campgrounds. No?

There are many not-so-expensive ways to mitigate this campground/bear/human education problem (as Melissa explains it), but alas, I'm no longer on the pension payroll.


With all due respect -- BS Frank. There are too many people looking to blame someone else. A journey of a million miles begins with one step. And another. And another. Everyone who works at the park and everyone who visits the park is to blame for not doing enough. Everyone. This problem won't get solved by all of us sitting back and counting on the charitable goodwill of the masses to maintain the parks. Also please stop belittling people who have the desire and will to make a difference. If enough people speak up from within change can happen. It's thoughts like yours that poison the well and make it that much more difficult. I don't care that your experience sucked, but thanks for sharing. A public trust still depends on people, and people are the source of the problem, not government. You go Melissa!


In recent years, we've heard that folks on the inside of the NPS have felt their jobs would be in jeopardy if they spoke out about things they didn't like (the 2005 Management Policies 'Hoffman rewrite' as one example). But, there are organizations out there willing to help these folks make a change. These are groups like the Association of National Park Rangers (ANPR), the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees (CNPSR), and the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). ANPR for instance, offers a health insurance program for seasonals -- this is somewhat new. The CNPSR lead the charge against the Hoffman policies. I know you have issues with PEER Frank, but they have stayed on the Teresa Chambers case, years after it has fallen from the headlines.

My point, it is possible to affect change from the inside, but it takes some guts, the ability to cover your ass, and probably some help from friends on the outside. More power to you Melissa if you are willing to be the change you wish to see in the world.


Wow, you pretty much summed it up right there, Beamis.

I first started as a seasonal ranger, eleven years ago. I worked for a number of years as a campground ranger and in fee collection at the entrance stations. When i took my first job in interpretation, i was full of enthusiasm and a belief that i could make a difference. I felt like it was such a privelege to be part of the history of our parks, and of course the NPS has a fantastic mission statement. But that's really all just on paper.

The agency appoints superintendents who try to circumvent the rules whenever they can get away with it. They often follow the letter of the law and not the spirit of it. I have seen permanent career employees who are either shockingly apathetic about resource issues or make decisions that will advance their careers even to the detriment of the park (like agreeing with really poor decisions from on high, instead of speaking up.) I had one supervisor in the recent past who was an amazing man ... passionate, intelligent, vocal and he was consistently passed over for promotion.

The summer before last i was fairly fired up about a pending decision to "improve" the Gros Ventre campground. It's a large campground on the southern flank of the park, it has several hundred campsites, and hardly anyone stays there. And the reason for that is because it's on a side road that for some reason on the park map looks like it's not paved. After the privatization three years ago, the lodge company began agitating for improvements like 100+ sites with electrical hookups for RV's, and they wanted to build shower facilities and a camp store and a bloody laundromat (i'm not even kidding!!!) Meanwhile, the town of Jackson is a mere 5 miles away! For some reason, the park superintendant was all for this plan which is currently on a back burner, not off the table mind you, due to a lack of funding.

This side road that the campground is on just happens to go through the area where most of the park's bison and antelope give birth to their calves. It's also one of the few places in the park in June, July and August where you can take a nice leisurely drive to watch wildlife and not pass a thousand other people. I've sat on the shoulder of that road at dusk, watching the bison, deer and elk and also watching across the valley the headlights from hundreds of cars on the park's main road. In both directions ... a solid line of car after car after car. Meanwhile, where i am, i might see two or three vehicles in a half an hour.

But if you build it, they will come. Adding electrical hookups and services to the Gros Ventre campground would increase the traffic out there by what? A hundred fold? More? I mean, i agree there is a lack of amenities for RV'ers that need hookups but there are also three other campgrounds on the main road that they could "improve" instead. What kind of value should we place on keeping the solitude of that part of the valley? For crying out loud, it's not 1930 ... the NPS should be waaaaaay past the point of development simply to encourage visitation. So .... i was fired up about this topic, and basically i couldn't find anyone else in my district that cared. Supervisors or seasonals. No one cared. No one was even interested in discussing it with me.

And the situation this summer with the bears was simply the icing on the cake. Several of these deaths could have been averted by having a ranger staff patrolling the campground, and closing trails and backcountry campsites to the public, but no one wanted to make the decision to close trails. Why? Because we have to be a good "neighbor" to the community of Jackson. If we close the trails or campsites some local residents might be unhappy. (This excuse is a political decision i heard repeatedly over the last few years to justify many absurd policy decisions.)

This past summer i finally realized ... i have no ideals or enthusiasm left for the National Park Service. The beaureaucracy has crushed it out of me. Stick a fork in me, i'm done.

I still want to live in a national park ... how can i do anything else at this point? And for the most part, i still like the job that i do. I do good work. I get positive feedback from the public, if not from the agency. And i have no intention of quitting. When i say that i believe i can change the agency from the inside, what i mean to say is ... i can do exactly what i did two summers ago. Write anonymous letters to the local papers, call up local environmental organizations and fill them in on the issues (which surprisingly they often know nothing about), and give them information that they might not have otherwise.

I worked with a gentleman who had met Ed Abbey when he was right out of college, and he likes to tell the story of what one of Abbey's supervisors had to say about him ... "You better keep an eye on that one. He's a thinker."


Add comment

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

The Essential RVing Guide

The Essential RVing Guide to the National Parks

The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.

This app is packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.

You'll also find stories about RVing in the parks, some tips if you've just recently turned into an RVer, and some planning suggestions. A bonus that wasn't in the previous eBook or PDF versions of this guide are feeds of Traveler content: you'll find our latest stories as well as our most recent podcasts just a click away.

So whether you have an iPhone or an Android, download this app and start exploring the campgrounds in the National Park System where you can park your rig.