AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
This year, the American West saw a warmer and largely snowless winter. That means grizzly bears are coming out earlier than usual, and more humans are coming out to see them, creating so-called bear jams - rubbernecking tourists, photographers and hikers causing traffic while gawking at the grizzlies. Kerry Gunther is the bear management biologist at Yellowstone National Park. He joins us now to explain. Welcome.
KERRY GUNTHER: Hello, and I'm happy to be here.
RASCOE: Grizzly bears are out a little early this year. What has that looked like at Yellowstone so far?
GUNTHER: Well, we saw our first grizzly bear in January, and then we didn't see another grizzly bear till early March. We've seen quite a bit of grizzly bear activity since then. They habituate to the presence of park visitors with hundreds of park visitors parking and watching them from the roadside. Last year, we set a new record high for bear jams and had over 1,500 of them. And so part of that is our bear population is increasing slightly, and our human visitor population is increasing significantly. So we're having more and more people, which leads to more and more bear jams.
RASCOE: Is it a problem that people do this?
GUNTHER: Yeah. Anytime a bear is foraging in the roadside meadow, people will stop to watch and photograph. They're really not causing problems other than the traffic jams, so it's really more of a people management problem than a bear management problem. So it's a big challenge for us just to make sure that people don't approach these bears too closely or throw food to those bears. So we're worried about visitor safety, and we're also worried about the safety of the bear because if they feed the bear or the bear ends up injuring somebody, then we might have to take management action against the bear. So we're trying to keep both bears and people safe.
RASCOE: Grizzlies are a protected endangered species. You're trying to keep the humans safe and the bears safe. Two hikers were mauled at Yellowstone earlier this month. As more people take to the trails, what should they know safety-wise if they do come across a bear or a bear jam?
GUNTHER: Never really had anybody injured at a bear jam in modern times. Back in the earlier history of the park, when people were feeding bears along the road, we averaged 48 bear-inflicted human injuries per year. But now that we no longer allow feeding roadside bears, we haven't had a single injury. When you're hiking, you're more likely then to have a surprise encounter with a bear in the backcountry that's not so habituated to people. And so what we recommend is, first of all, you really need to be vigilant, you know, be alert, to make noise while hiking in the backcountry to help forewarn the bear of your presence. We also recommend that you hike in groups of three or more people. So almost all the injuries that we see in the backcountry are solo hikers, people hiking by themselves, or people hiking in just a party of two.
We also recommend that people carry bear spray. If you have an encounter with a bear, you slowly back away to put space between you and that bear 'cause a lot of times that will diffuse the situation. And if the bear does charge at you after the encounter, then we recommend you just stand your ground and, as the bear charges, use your bear spray. By standing your ground, most of the time that bear is going to veer off to the side or stop short, and it's not going to make contact. However, if you do have a surprise encounter, the bear charges and makes contact, then we recommend that you play dead. By playing dead, most of the time, you'll receive only very minor injuries.
RASCOE: That's Kerry Gunther, bear biologist at Yellowstone National Park. Thank you so much for joining us.
GUNTHER: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA'S "THE BARE NECESSITIES (FROM "THE JUNGLE BOOK") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
