Welcome to the Anthropocene

With bears, "if you dump it, they will come."

Once bears discover human garbage dumps, a pattern of scavenging starts that is taught down generations and can be very difficult to stop, as we learned at Yellowstone in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

In the early years of Yellowstone National Park, garbage disposal was a huge problem. While today's visitors have their garbage hauled far away from the park, it wasn't always this way. Indeed, Yellowstone still operated a garbage dump in the park until 1970, when the last of the dumps was closed and all garbage trucked far away. One of the main reasons for closing the dumps was bears....

In 1920, there were an estimated 40 grizzly bears at bear dumps, and that number grew to over 250 a decade later.

It was a recipe for disaster. Today, we call this habituation-having bears used to human food sources. The closer bears are to people, and the more comfortable they are around people and vice versa, the more injuries to bears and humans occur. Problem bears tore up vehicles. They scared people and, occasionally, they injured and even killed people.

When World War II rolled around, the National Park Service took advantage of the low turnout during the war years and closed the public viewing of bears at the dumps. But still, the park service hauled garbage to dumps inside the park. The last of the park's dumps, the Trout Creek dump, was closed in 1970, ending eight decades of fed bears.