Yosemite Shows Bears Who's Boss Program cuts damage made by hungry animals by Carl Nolte San Francisco Chronicle - November 15, 1999 Rangers at Yosemite National Park have finally worked out a truce in a long war with the park's black bears, which had been terrorizing campers and wrecking their cars. The idea was simple, said Robert Hansen, executive director of the Yosemite Fund, a nonprofit organization that helped bankroll the park's bear-control program. ``Instead of trying to change the bear behavior,'' he said, ``We changed humans' behavior.'' After a yearlong blitz that used everything from bear-hating dogs to educational videos to bear-proof lockers, incidents involving bears and humans dropped 70 percent this spring and summer. ``It was a resounding success,'' said Kendall Thompson, a park service ranger. Just over a year ago, marauding bears were a serious problem in Yosemite Valley and in the park's backcountry -- and the number of bear incidents was nearing record proportions. In 1998, there were 1,317 such incidents, mostly involving bears breaking into parked cars in search of food. DAMAGE REPORT The animals did $584,027 in damage to cars and property in the spring and summer season alone. This year, there were 527 incidents, and the damage dropped to $183,494, a decline that park service wildlife biologist Steve Thompson called ``phenomenal.'' Hungry bears have been a problem at Yosemite for years, but the problem was getting worse and worse, especially since the bears seemed to be getting smarter and the human visitors dumber. The attitude of humans toward wild animals seemed to have been developed from watching nature shows on television. They did not understand the bears were wild animals or that they were hooked on human food. The bears had become sophisticated in their hunt for food. The animals are big and strong and can easily tear a car window apart to get inside. Some bears, it was said, would jump up and down on the roofs of vans. They had noticed that pressure on the roof caused the doors of some vans to pop open. Sometimes, the animals would cause major damage in search of something as small as a candy wrapper. Campers in the backcountry typically tried to hang their food in trees at night, but the adult bears deployed cubs to climb the smallest branches and shake down the food. So the park service, two nonprofit park partner organizations and the Yosemite Concession Service Corp., which runs the lodging facilities, formed a Bear Council to work out a plan. They were armed with a $400,000 federal appropriation for bear management at Yosemite and, later, $1.5 million for bear-proof lockers and other devices from the Yosemite Fund. The federal money went to hire more rangers who made face-to-face contact with campers and visitors to explain the bear problems. The $1.5 million bought 2,000 lockers where food could be stored. ``There are lockers at every campground, lockers at every trailhead,'' said the Yosemite Fund's Hansen. That way, campers could store food outside their cars. To make sure campers would use the lockers, the Yosemite Concession Service installed video terminals at the main desks of all its hotels. The terminals played the same loop over and over, showing bears breaking into cars. In addition, all overnight guests were required to sign a paper saying that they knew and understood the bear problem. BEAR-PROOF CANISTERS Backpackers were also offered bear-proof canisters to take with them into the mountains. The campers could store a week's worth of food in the canisters, and the price was only $3 for each trip into the mountains, no matter how long it took. The rangers also deployed Karelian dogs, specially bred in northern Europe to drive off marauding bears, at Tuolumne Meadows. The meadows, on the edge of the High Sierra, are well known for bear problems. Finally, in September, the bears had their day in the sun. It was called Bear Awareness Day, and the focus was on an old apple orchard in Yosemite Valley. Bears love apples, but hundreds of workers and volunteers collected 4,000 pounds of apples to keep them away from the bears. As far as the park service was concerned, the bears were better off eating berries and acorns, their normal food. The program has saved bear lives as well. At the height of the bear problems, an average of between five and seven ``problem bears'' were destroyed by the rangers each year. This year, only three bears were killed.