According to the National Park Service, a 400-pound grizzly bear was trapped and killed by Yellowstone staff last week because it poses a risk to public safety in the busiest areas of Wyoming Park.
The bear is an 11-year-old male grizzly who capsized the bear-resistant bin (some weighs 800 pounds) and pulled the bin out of the concrete base in search of human trash. It can get food and garbage nearby Old believerParker officials said, as well as near the Nesperce picnic area and the Midway Geyser Basin parking lot.
"Unfortunately, this bear began to look for garbage regularly and was able to beat the park's anti-bear infrastructure," said Kerry Gunther, a bear management biologist at Yellowstone Park. "We do our best to protect the bears and prevent them from adapting to human food. But occasionally, the bears will surpass us or overcome our defenses. When this happens, sometimes we have to remove the bears from the population to protect visitors and property."
The park notes that Yellowstone provides “bear-resistant” food storage lockers at all campsites, as well as food storage equipment at campsites in remote areas, as well as “bear-resistant trash cans and trash cans.”
Officials also said the last time the bear was killed by park staff in 2017 was in 2017 when it "demolished" the grizzly bear, which damaged the tent and obtained food at the Heart Lake camp.
In 2023, Another grizzly bear In the area, a woman who was deadly on a forest trail west of Yellowstone and attacked a person three years before that, was killed in the area. Montana fish, wildlife and parks are shooting a 10-year-old female grizzly bear with approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, grizzly bears are protected by threatening species in the United States and it is illegal to harm or kill them in addition to self-defense or defense of others. The Greater Yellowstone ecosystem is centered on Yellowstone National Park, and government agencies have identified it as a "recovery area" for the grizzly bear population.