Grizzlies and garbage: A national topic

It is the harvest season, and a lot of living things, especially grizzly bears, have their minds on food. In the case of grizzly bears, the only thing they think about right now is food.

While they think about food, I think about garbage. I work for the Living with Wildlife Foundation, in partnership with Flathead National Forest. I serve as the Swan Valley bear ranger, assisted by a dozen volunteers.

We talk to campground visitors about grizzlies and garbage. Following last Sunday’s airing of “Coexisting with Grizzlies” on CBS 60 Minutes, 9.5 million other Americans also learned about those topics. The segment featured the Swan Mountains, Western Montana, bear experts and residents. The program included images of local people and places.

While patrolling campsites, I contacted nearly 500 visitors this season. I was pleasantly surprised that they wanted to learn about bears, but also disappointed in how little they knew. These were visitors who had rarely been in the wild. They underestimated a grizzly’s intelligence.

A bear remembers food by its scent, location and appearance – hot dogs, in a cooler, at a picnic table. A bear’s nose can detect odors from miles away. Leftover corn cobs, cantaloupe sections, and orange peels in a campfire ring at an empty campsite. A bear will investigate and maybe surprise the next tourist.

I believe that a majority of our visitors want to help the bears thrive. The Montana Governor’s Grizzly Bear Advisory Council has published its final recommendations, which include educating citizens. Programs like ours could be replicated in other areas where the bears are expanding their range. Bear rangers and volunteers could clean up garbage, just as we have, and help visitors learn how to coexist with bears.

Saving grizzlies sounded like an impossible task a few years ago. However, today I realize our cadre of bear folks is succeeding. We didn’t expect to do this by picking up trash in crowded campgrounds and wide spots in the road. However, it may be the path to a better future. It is proof that collaboration and education are working, both for cleaning up the neighborhood and for saving the bears.