Extreme heat and other weather events are driving bears closer to humans’ campgrounds and hiking trails—and that’s no good for either species
the public restrooms in Yosemite Village, a buzzy stop in Yosemite National Park’s iconic valley, sits a brown metal dumpster. Visitors reach up to open the trash chute. Their peanut butter jars and apple cores tumble into a sealed compartment. The slot slams shut. Then, they clip a tethered steel carabiner through a loop, which prevents less dextrous creatures from getting access. “USE CLIP,” reads a sticker on the chute. “SAVE A BEAR.
“Bears have evolved to be these food-finding machines,” says Heather Johnson, a research wildlife biologist with the US Geological Survey Alaska Science Center and a member of the IUCN North American Bear Expert Team. Yet climate change is making it harder for them to find a meal in the wild. Bears prefer eating their natural foods—grasses, berries, pine seeds, and acorns. But droughts, for example, damage roots, shrivel berries on the vine, and force oaks to abort their acorns.at it.
The United States is home to roughly 300,000 notoriously omnivorous black bears; they’re the most common and widely distributed bear species in North America. Black bears very rarely attack people; they are generally less aggressive toward people than grizzlies. Outliers exist: A black bear killed a manin Tucson, Arizona, in June. But these bears are more often the ones that get hurt. Hunting for food, they venture into traffic or damage property, cause a nuisance, and get euthanized.
Those effects compound when bears can access human food—be it trash from homes cozied up to the wilderness or from snacks packed in by campers. These extra calories shorten their hibernation. (Bears that hibernate less also appear to
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