Yellowstone Kills ‘Food-Conditioned’ Grizzly Bear That ‘Outsmarted’ Bear-Resistant Dumpsters

Staff at Yellowstone National Park this week trapped and killed a “food-conditioned” grizzly bear for the first time since 2017, after it wreaked havoc on developed areas of the park seeking human food sources.

The National Park Service said that between April 3 and May 13, the 400-pound male grizzly overturned several bear-resistant dumpsters and accessed food and trash near Old Faithful, the Nez Perce Picnic Area, and the Midway Geyser Basin parking lot.

“In addition to developing a strategy to flip over 800-pound dumpsters, the bear also uprooted smaller bear-resistant trash cans from their concrete bases to gain access to human food and garbage,” park officials said.

The bear became increasingly food conditioned, which poses a threat to public safety in such busy areas of the park, officials said. The bear was trapped and killed on May 14 to ensure public safety and to “reduce the chances of other bears becoming habituated to human food.”

“Its unfortunate that this bear began regularly seeking out garbage and was able to defeat the parks bear-resistant infrastructure,” said Yellowstone Bear Management Biologist Kerry Gunther. “We go to great lengths to protect bears and prevent them from becoming conditioned to human food. But occasionally, a bear outsmarts us or overcomes our defenses. When that happens, we sometimes have to remove the bear from the population to protect visitors and property.”

The last time park officials had to kill a grizzly bear was in September 2017, when a bear was damaging tents and accessing human food in backcountry campsites at Heart Lake.

Yellowstone offers bear-resistant food storage lockers in all campgrounds, food storage devices in all backcountry campsites, and utilizes bear-resistant dumpsters and trash cans throughout the park. Park officials are reminding visitors to make use of the bear safety measures to prevent bears from developing a taste for human food sources.