Reasons for Using Bear-Resistant Canisters

When the prize is your food and the setting is the wilderness, never bet against the bears.

"You can't count on food being safe if you put it in a nylon sack and hang it in a tree overnight," says Harold Werner, Fish and Wildlife Biologist at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. "If you've never lost food by counterbalancing [suspending 2 bags of food high on a tree branch], it's only because you're lucky, no matter how well you do it."

Too many campers and backpackers have learned this lesson the hard way. Resourceful black bears, driven by a powerful sense of smell (100 times stronger than a dog's), have become some of the cagiest, most determined creatures on earth when it comes to snitching food from humans.

Increasingly drastic measures are needed to protect your food in some North American wilderness areas—and to protect bears from being put to death when their desire for human food makes them too aggressive. Other than standing guard by your trail mix all night, the preferred solution is to store food inside a bear-resistant canister. In fact, some wilderness managers in the West are making the use of such containers mandatory.

Bears: Smart, Motivated, Relentless

Black bears, particularly those in the Sierra Nevada, have become "habituated" to human food. That means once they get a taste of it, bears want more of it—lots more—and will do just about anything to get it.

They often succeed. Why? Brute strength, persistence, surprising ingenuity and, crucially, the lackadaisical food-storage practices of humans. Wildlife managers remind us that such a dilemma is not a "bear problem." The real problem occurs when humans take a casual, indifferent approach to storing food.

A bear's food-stealing repertoire includes:

• Bashing windows of locked vehicles to get to food coolers (which bears have grown to visually recognize and associate with food). Bears have broken open vehicles just because a soda can or gum wrapper was left visible. (Solution: Don't leave such items inside a vehicle, or at least conceal them thoroughly—only if no other food-storage options are available.)
• Breaking the rear windows of cars, then clawing through the back seats in order to get at aromatic items locked in trunks. (Solution: Remove food from a vehicle when you park; if available, store it in a bear box.)
• Sending cubs up trees to dislodge nylon food bags dangling from limbs. (Solution: Use a portable, bear-resistant food canister.)
• Gnawing through limbs several inches thick to make suspended food bags drop. (Solution: Same as above.)

"I've never seen it myself, but I've heard that some bears will walk out on a branch and make Kamikaze jumps at food bags to bring them down," says Michelle Gagnon, a bear technician at Sequoia/Kings Canyon. "I believe it. You can see blood on the branches they've chewed through to make bags drop. They'll actually hurt themselves to get at food."

Changing Strategies: Mandatory Usage

In many areas where bear-human conflict repeatedly occurs, use of bear-resistant canisters has been made mandatory. These locations include:

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, California:

• the entire Rae Lakes Loop
• the Rock Creek drainage area, including Soldier Lake, Miter Basin and Siberian Outpost
• Dusy Basin (includes all camp areas from Bishop Pass to the junction with the John Muir Trail in LeConte Canyon; also includes all cross-country areas in Palisades Basin)
• All Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers
• NOTE: Starting in 2009, the use of bear-resistant canisters will be required in ALL areas of both parks

Yosemite National Park, California:

• Canisters are now required in all areas within the park (use a food-storage locker where provided)

Inyo National Forest, eastern and central Sierra Nevada, California:

• the John Muir Wilderness east of Kearsarge Pass (the boundary of Kings Canyon) and west of the Onion Valley trailhead (near Independence, Calif.)
• the main Mount Whitney Trail (starting from Whitney Portal, near Lone Pine, Calif.)
• the Cottonwood Pass/Cottonwood Lakes area west of Lone Pine
• Bishop Pass/Dusy Basin region (Palisade Basin area)
• Rush Creek area (west of Devil's Postpile National Monument to Ritter Range, including Shadow Lake and Thousand Island Lake)
• Duck Pass/Purple Lake region (south of Mammoth Lakes, Calif.)
• Little Lakes Valley (south of Mammoth Lakes)

Olympic National Park, Washington:

• Coastline: Raccoons have become a serious problem on the park's coastline. Here the park requires that all food, garbage and scented items to be stored in a hard-sided food container, such as a bear canister or a 5-gallon bucket with a very tight-fitting lid. Buckets must be hung at least 12 feet high and 10 feet out from the nearest tree trunk. Bear canisters do not need to be hung.
• Interior: Groups of seven or more hiking a 16.8-mile stretch of trail in the Elwha Valley must carry canisters or stay at camps where bear wires are available. Also, they must carry bear canisters in the Elwha from the Whiskey Bend Trailhead to Hayes River Camp. Bear wires are not an option for these groups. Groups of 6 or less may use bear wires or bear canisters. Bear wires can also be found at popular sites throughout the park. Elsewhere, bear canisters are recommended and available at the Wilderness Information Office.

Adirondack Mountains, New York:

• Eastern High Peaks Wilderness Area

Denali National Park, Alaska:

• Canisters are required in most backcountry units (a policy initiated in 1984).

Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska:

• Canisters are required in all non-forested areas of the bay.
• Canisters are recommended for all other areas within the park.

Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska:

• Canisters are required in all backcountry areas.

The requirement can be a tough sell to backcountry visitors, who already face higher user fees and stringent quotas. Wildlife managers insist the move is necessary to frustrate bears that have made a habit of campsite thievery. They also hope to prevent younger bears from ever acquiring such an unnatural habit. If not, they say, more and more "problem" bears will be put to death—and the real executioners are humans who take a sloppy or unthinking approach to food storage in campgrounds or the backcountry.

Some statistics:

• In Yosemite National Park, more than 1,300 parked vehicles experienced bear-inflicted damage during 1998 (costing more than $630,000).
• The number of vehicles damaged by bears in 2000 dropped to 306.

Part of the drop can be attributed to human-bear management program launched in 1999. The park mandated that no vehicle (other than motor homes) parked within Yosemite may contain food. The park provides more than 2,000 food-storage lockers (crate-sized, heavy metal boxes) throughout the park where visitors are encouraged to place their food while parked.

• In Yosemite, total reported bear incidents dropped from 764 (in 1999) to 654 (in 2000). In 2000, 137 backcountry damage reports involving bears were recorded; 16 bears were relocated. No human injuries were reported.

Rangers routinely tell backpackers that traditional food storage methods in the wilderness (such as bear-bagging or counterbalancing food bags) are not failsafe.

This, they say, is not mere bureaucratic legal-speak. Black bears have grown so crafty, so bold and so adaptive to human food-hanging strategies that, unless you have access to a fortified "bear box" or bear wire in the backcountry, your food supply may be vulnerable.

"Once bears get introduced to human food, they get hooked," says Werner. "They will go to great lengths to find more. They'll even take up residency at 11,000 feet if there's a campsite nearby that consistently attracts people and their food."

Saving the Bears

Properly storing food in wilderness settings is not just beneficial to you; it helps preserve the lives of bears.

"If you lose your food to bear, that may ruin a trip for you, but even worse is that you've helped make a bear grow bolder toward human food," says Sequoia's Michelle Gagnon. "The bear may become so bold that it finally has to be destroyed, and that's sad."

Using a Bear-Resistant Food Canister: Some Advantages for Humans

• No more bear-bagging or counterbalancing—one of the least desirable, most time-consuming camp chores a backpacker faces each night.
• Less stress: The simplicity and reliability of bear-resistant canisters enhance your peace of mind at night.
• Freedom to camp and store food securely in places where food-hanging trees may be scarce: deserts, canyons, above treeline, along waterways.
• Bear-resistant food canisters also resist other wildlife prone to food thievery, from mice to marmots.
• Canisters can double as a stool or table.

Personal Responsibility

"When you go into the backcountry of a national park," Gagnon adds, "you're entering a place where animals are supposed to be protected. If you're sloppy with your food and attract them to your camp, you're altering their habits. People have a responsibility to deal with food the way they deal with waste. You have to minimize its impact."

Kate McCurdy is a wildlife biologist at Yosemite and the park's task force leader for its bear-management program. She has added incentive to use bear resistant containers.

"It's my job to kill bears that become aggressive toward humans and their food," says McCurdy. "That's not something I enjoy."

"I've heard people sitting at the grill in Tuolumne Meadows and laughing about losing food to a bear on an overnight trip," she says. "It gives them an exciting story to tell, but what they're really doing is changing a bear's behavior, and that's potentially deadly to the animal. Whenever I get to backpack, I've just learned to suck it up and live with a canister and the extra 3 pounds."

Increased bear activity on the Rae Lakes loop in Kings Canyon a few years ago forced Werner to impose an emergency canister requirement for hikers. "A few people objected vehemently," he says. "They said they had a right to make their own decisions about handling their food. People need to realize that the requirements are not to protect people and their food, but to protect bears."

Goal: A Change in Behavior

McCurdy says Yosemite's bears are such quick learners that they now recognize canisters and associate them with frustration and wasted effort, not a reward.

"Our field crews began using them in 1991 and '92," McCurdy says. "We've tracked a well-documented learning curve in how bears deal with canisters. At first, bears would spend an hour trying to break one open. Over time, it got down to 30 minutes, then 15. Now it's becoming more common that if a bear glances at a campsite and sees a canister, it's going to just keep moving. That's encouraging."

Christine Cowles, a former public information officer at Yosemite, continues to monitor bear management efforts throughout the Sierras.

"We're seeing a lot more people willing to make the effort to store food correctly," she says. "A lot of that is due to rangers getting out and educating the public, explaining bear behavior and biology. Once the public understands how access to human food can lead to a bear's death, most people want to do the right thing."

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