If you don’t want to find a bear in your orchard, garden, corral, backyard, pickup truck, garbage, garage, storage shed, bird feeder, porch, deck, patio or kitchen, it helps if you think like a bear.

“That’s where you get the real insight,” said Louisa Willcox, wild bears project director for the Natural Resource Defense Council. Bears n grizzly or black n are omnivores and always interested in food n sort of like a teenager on a growth spurt. So what is it about your property that might be of interest to a bear?

The answers might surprise you, because unlike some teenagers, bears aren't picky eaters, so there are a host of “attractants” in and around your home or private property that could attract them.

According to the bear experts with the Interagency Grizzly Bear Agency in Missoula, Montana, attractants include human foods, soft drinks and alcoholic beverages, cosmetics and toiletries, pet foods, processed livestock feed and grains, bird feeders, animal carcasses, cooking residue on barbeque grills, empty food containers, garbage, fruit-bearing trees and bushes and vegetable gardens.

“Management of trash is a big deal,” said Willcox. She referred to the Living With Wildlife Foundation (www.lwwf.org) as the best comprehensive source of information about how to live with predators in the neighborhood.

The LWWF report, the 2005 Living With Predators Resource Guide, was produced with the cooperation of the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Department. The resource guide covers bear-resistant containers and other products and methods for securing and storing garbage, livestock feed, pet food and other attractants. The guide also contains information on methods for deterring predators from your property, including information about electric fencing, information on ways to scare predators from your property, information on bear-resistant refuse and recycling centers, and information on ways to reduce the volume of garbage that you generate and therefore have to secure.

There’s also information covering products and techniques which can be used while recreating in wild areas. Information about various types of bear-resistant backpacking containers for food and garbage storage, techniques for hanging your gear in the back country, portable electric fencing, outfitters' panniers, and a host of other information is included in this guide.



Field tested

The wildlife foundation has worked with the top experts in the world to determine whether containers or electric fencing can really keep the resident bears at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone.

“Some of the products pass the bear test, but most fail,” said animal curator Libby Scott. In the testing process, Scott and company strive for real world conditions. If they want to test a garbage container, it will have a bag of garbage in it, maybe with liquid contents speared on the lid or handle.

Her bears can smell it, she said. “That’s when they go to town on it,” said Scott.

Bears can bounce on products, stand on it, chew on it, claw at it and knock it around.

Sam, at 1,500 pounds, tends to use his weight on products, said Scott. Stoke likes to use his paws to twist things off n like lids. Spirit has learned that she can smash containers against rocks, Scott said.



Smarter bears

Like Yogi Bear, the Discovery Center bears are “smarter than the average bear” because they have more and more experience at breaking into containers n much more than wild bears.

“Wild bears just don’t have the patience,” said Scott, to stay and really work at defeating a balky container. “They lose interest and move on,” she said.

Discovery Center bears, however, are consistently rewarded when they tackle new containers, she said. These bears know there’ll be a food reward.

Manufacturers can be just as persistent as the bears, she said. The Discovery Center bears will figure out how to get into a container, she said, and a manufacturer will fix and reinforce what went wrong, then come back for another test.

The bears often find yet another weak point, and the manufacturer goes back to the drawing yet again. Some products can be regarded as “bear-proof” while others can be regarded as “bear-resistant.” The point is, that even if a product resists a bear’s efforts for a few minutes, that might be enough to discourage them and send them on their way.



Driven by hunger

“Bears are driven by food,” said Scott. When they emerge from hibernation in the spring, they’re down 40 percent in weight. Wild bears have May to October, maybe November, to regain that weight.

Scott said product testing is a lot of fun for her bears. “They enjoy it,” she said, “because they know there’s a reward.”

Bears and powerful animals, but even Scott was stunned when she watched on particular bear, "Sam," take on a garbage container bolted down to a slab of concrete. Sam managed to tip over both the container and the slab, which weighed about 2,000 pounds.

As challenging as it can be working with bears and manufacturers, Scott said educating people can be even more so.

Just last week, she had a family come through before they visited Yellowstone n and a good thing, too. In in conversation, Scott learned that they intended to buy a nice steak at a West Yellowstone grocery store n to feed a grizzly bear and get a good photograph. Scott said she hoped she’d disabused them of that particular notion.

“Some people just don’t care, others want to feed animals, based on good intentions. Others get so excited, they leave their brains behind the car when they see a big wild animal,” said Scott.

Not everyone, tourists or newcomer residents, understand that bears are wild animals, she said. “You can’t expect bears to change their behavior for you,” she said. “You have to be ready for bears.”