Teton County residents reminded to keep the community safe by storing attractants to reduce human-bear conflicts

A recent report of bears getting into unsecured garbage in a Teton County neighborhood serves as a reminder for residents to properly store attractants to prevent unwanted bear encounters. Bears become very active in the fall as they search for easy calories to fatten them up for winter. This often drives bears to seek easy food rewards from carelessly or improperly stored attractants like garbage. For the safety of both the community and the bears, Fish and Game and the Teton County Sheriff's Office are asking residents to properly store their garbage and other attractants, making them inaccessible to bears.

All of Teton County is bear country, and reports of bears getting into garbage occur every year. Many of these incidents occur within Teton County's Bear Conflict Zones, where the use of certified bear-resistant garbage containers/dumpsters that have passed the Bear-Resistant Products Testing Program is required.

Conflicts occur when bears score an easy meal in town

Rural areas like Teton Valley are located on the urban-wildland interface and sit right in the middle of grizzly and black bear habitat. Bears will often move through town looking for good smells and food. Unfortunately, they often find human food sources - such as garbage, pet food or bird feeders - all of which are high in calories and readily available. That's when the problems start.

Bears are extremely intelligent and can learn very quickly to associate people with food. The presence of unsecured human food sources like residential garbage, bird feeders, dog food, chicken coops, or even fruit trees cause human/bear conflicts that rarely end well for the bears, and often means a messy, and likely unsafe, situation for a property owner.

"We all need to do our part to keep our communities safe and keep wildlife wild," says Barry Cummings, Regional Conservation Office. "Bears attracted by unsecured garbage create a dangerous situation for both people and the bears."

It usually goes from bad to worse

Finding food inadvertently provided by people is bad for bears and people, and it often ends with a dead bear because when the animals find a regular food source in neighborhoods, they become less fearful of people.

They can grow increasingly bold and aggressive in their search for food when their efforts result in a high calorie reward. The consistent promise of food can cause a bear to overcome its fear of people and result in an increasingly dangerous situation.

When it becomes evident that a bear has become excessively habituated to that food source, or has lost its wariness of people, biologists and conservation officers often have no choice but to trap and kill the bear. In cases like these, the habituated bears cannot be moved, because research shows they will quickly travel long distances to seek out human foods in their new locations.

Keeping bears wild and away from homes takes effort and cooperation

Luckily, there are a lot of things that people can do to prevent bears from becoming habituated, protecting both the residents in their neighborhood and the bears moving through it.

The key to keeping Idaho bears wild is to not allow them to access human food sources around neighborhoods and homes.

Following the steps below helps protect both you and the bears:

• Remove bird feeders between April and mid-November.
• Feed pets inside.
• Get a bear-resistant trash can and use it properly; don't tamper with latches, prop them open, or over fill them. If you don't have a bear-resistant can or if there is too much trash to fit in the can, keep it in a garage until the morning of pickup.
• Do not keep coolers, refrigerators, or freezers outside.
• If a bear has already visited your place and found food, take the above steps right away. The bear will likely pay you a couple more visits, but if it finds no food, it will eventually move on.

Teton County residents can report bear problems to the Teton County Sheriff's (208) 776-8200 or the Upper Snake Region Fish and Game Office (208) 525-7290.

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