#bear safety

[sohannabarberaesque]

As bears appear farther south, the DNR has partnered with the Bear Wise program and posted new safety signs at rest areas across the state.

Remind you of Yogi Bear, anyone?!

[lookmomitsmytmblr]

Another reason to love leashing your dog (this includes long lines, not just super short leashes): Stops your dog from harassing wildlife or causing damage to the environment beyond the trail!

Was looking up bear safety this morning and the number one thing to do to keep your dogs safe from bears while hiking is keep them on a leash! This stops them from approaching or chasing and cornering bears. Especially (darkly) funny to me is that multiple articles emphasized that if a bear decides to defend itself from a dog that they feel threatened by, chances are the #1 place your dog is going to run while being chased by an agitated bear is straight to you 😭 lol

[campersgotogear]

How to Store Food Safely Outdoors: A Guide to Wildlife Protection

Keeping food fresh and safe when outdoors goes hand in hand with keeping wildlife at bay. Whether you’re out for a weekend camping trip. Living in a rural spot, you need to get food storage right. It can make all the difference. Because I have spent over 35 years in the food industry and have camped in 49 states. I have learned that a little prep prevents a big headache. I’ve collected tips on…

How to Store Food Safely Outdoors: A Guide to Wildlife Protection

[frnwhcom]

Grizzly 399: The Legendary Mother of Grand Teton

In the world of wildlife conservation, few creatures have captivated the hearts and cameras of people quite like Grizzly 399. This remarkable bear, a mother many times over, has become an icon of both the beauty and complexity of living in harmony with nature. Residing in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, particularly Grand Teton National Park, Grizzly 399 has garnered a global following for her…

Grizzly 399: The Legendary Mother of Grand Teton

[carys-the-ninth]

Ok so this happened during fieldwork in Denali a couple years ago. We were hiking up gear into our field site, two of us stayed behind to set up camp, and the other two crewmembers hiked back down to get more gear. (We saw this bear on our hike up the ridge and had changed our path slightly, but it didn't seem like he noticed us.)

Right after putting up tents, I sat down with the other tech to go over the data forms for this project. And she looks up and sees that same grizzly coming straight for us. We fortunately had bear spray on us (something I'm militant about), and scrambled back to a rise about fifty feet from the tents, yelling and waving our arms. The bear ignored our noise and kept indifferently zig-zagging towards us. He was clearly very curious about the tents, and we both believed he would have taken them down if we weren't right there. But he arced past the tents and then started to come towards us directly, still at the kind of moseying, deliberate pace you see in the bear video, sniffing the ground and then looking up at us while we yelled and stomped and made a fuss.

At 15 or 20 feet away, I fired off a blast of bear spray. I miscalculated the wind and it didn't hit him, but the sight & sound of a big orange cloud of stuff coming towards him was clearly not welcome. He turned around and (still very casual) walked ~100 feet away to the watering hole by our cook tent.

Even after the rest of the crew showed up, he was refusing to be bothered by our presence. He hung out and scratched his back and splashed around for a good 20 minutes. None of us felt safe spending the night there, so we packed up camp and took off after he'd ambled out of sight.

We spent the night in headquarters and talked to the wildlife biologist first thing in the morning. Apparently this was a juvenile male grizzly who had had a couple dubious run-ins with people earlier that season, including a bluff charge of a ranger just a few days before. Everyone agreed his behavior was escalating, they shut down the area to hikers, tranquilized him, put a radio collar on him and then did what's called a 'hard release' where they set him loose and then shoot him with rubber bullets, have dogs barking & noise makers, etc, to create a bad association with the area. He took off, booked it out of the neighborhood and as far as I know hasn't been a problem since then.

Denali tends to have more of these problems than other places in Alaska because there's very high tourist density and just more frequent opportunities for the teenage boys to get curious and go hey, mom said humans were bad news, but what if she was lying... Most of the places I work in have far fewer human-bear interactions, and the encounters are usually straightforward turn & run situations.

Anyway, according to the wildlife biologist, throwing objects is a good bet because it startles them and they don't attribute cause & effect to it. I think if we had just started hucking rocks we wouldn't have had to wait until he got into bear spray range. I've thought about carring some sort of clay shooter or similar as a back-up bear deterrent. Nerf gun. Ping pong ball gun, idk.

[carys-the-ninth]

For anyone who might need it, the gold standard for bear safety training videos was made in the 80s for the International Bear Association and you can watch it for free:

Fashions have changed since then but bear behavior hasn't. It's a half hour long and covers the difference between defensive and predatory attacks really clearly.

One thing I'll add, which I was told by a wildlife biologist after my own predatory encounter, is that bears really don't like things coming towards them, they aren't used to it. Hucking rocks or sticks at a predatory bear before they get in bear spray range can be useful.

[thespectrumofliving]

Stay safe while hiking in bear country! 🐻

What You Need To Know About Bear Spray

[amethystsoda]

Bean Museum and bear safety! 🫘