Conspicuous Consumption
Some park animals, either fed deliberately or inadvertently by visitors, have become so addicted to human food that many parks have begun aggressive campaigns to reduce the number of panhandling animals and to discourage visitors from feeding them.
BY DAVID WILLIAMS
On a recent backpack trip in Grand Canyon National Park, Mary Moran got into a tug-of-war with a ringtail, a small carnivore that resembles a raccoon. She was sleeping in an open floor tent when something rustling through her backpack aroused her. "I awoke and saw a bag of food disappear under the tent flap," says Moran. "I got out just in time to see a ringtail heading up a rock with my gorp and granola." She headed after the nocturnal thief, grabbed her bag of snacks, and pulled it back. "I thought I had securely packed my food, but the ringtail was bolder than I expected."
Although such hand-to-hand combat is highly unusual, wildlife-human interactions have become commonplace in national parks. The usual cause is humans giving food to animals. Some deliberately feed wildlife, hoping to get a nice picture or thinking they are dispensing essential nutrients to Yogi Bear or Bambi; but more visitors supply food unintentionally, by being messy or leaving it in a car or on a picnic table. Either way, some animals have become so addicted to human food that many parks have begun aggressive campaigns to reduce the number of panhandling animals.
Black bears are generally considered the most problematic animal habituated to human food because they are intelligent, able to consume great amounts, and dangerous. Since 1997, Yosemite has reported 4,285 bear incidents, resulting in $1,635,524 in damages, 13 injured people, and 16 bears intentionally killed by rangers. Although bears have not caused as much damage elsewhere, the animals have had to be killed at Olympic, Great Smoky Mountains, Rocky Mountain, and Sequoia/Kings Canyon national parks as well.
Normally, black bears avoid contact with people and their structures, but when visitors either purposely or inadvertently provide an easy meal, they respond accordingly. "We generally see a three-step process where they become night-time active bears, afraid of people. They then progress to day-time bears becoming unafraid of people, finally developing into aggressive panhandlers that will displace a person to get food," says Carroll Schell, resource management specialist at Great Smoky Mountains. In one year, rangers at that park had to remove 32 bears a total of 58 times from the Chimney picnic area.
Biological costs are high for bears that head down this path. Schell reports that they damage their teeth and claws on cars and cans and become less wary of people, making them more likely to be hit by cars. Compared with bears on a natural diet, bears with access to human food are larger (100 pounds heavier on average), reach sexual maturity sooner, and produce more cubs, which learn the methods of their mothers—ultimately leading to more problem bears.
Once a bear becomes active during the day, rangers discourage the creatures' behavior through hazing, such as throwing rocks and shooting rubber bullets toward them. If that does not succeed, wildlife biologists at the Smokies capture the bear, pull a dysfunctional tooth, implant ear tags, tattoo its lip, and release it in the same place.
"We hope the bear associates this nonlethal but painful process with its actions," says Schell. The next stage involves documentation of the troublesome bear, and if problems persist, people are injured, or the animal cannot be relocated to a safe place, the bear will be destroyed. Other parks take similar steps.
Bears are not the only animals addicted to human food. Mule deer at Phantom Ranch habituated to handouts in the Grand Canyon in the 1990s became so belligerent—striking out with their forelegs, breaking into packs, and butting with antlers—that rangers had to kill 40 animals. Necropsies revealed a surprising development.
"A doe that should weigh 100-125 pounds weighed only 68 pounds," says Elaine Leslie, wildlife biologist at the Grand Canyon. "Nearly five pounds of plastic garbage bags, foil candy wrappers, and assorted food packaging clogged the third and fourth compartments of her stomach and prevented passage of digested matter into her intestines. She was one step from starvation."
Nor is the problem restricted to large animals. Industrious raccoons at Olympic National Park have broken into duct tape-sealed, five-gallon buckets hung from bear wires. At Yosemite, too many raccoons congregating under an outdoor food service patio created a dangerous situation by attracting mountain lions. Death Valley coyotes learned the best place to slow down cars to receive handouts, leading to several car-coyote collisions, and condors at the Grand Canyon seeking out food in trash cans near parking lots have nearly been run over. Not that cars always win: marmots in Rocky Mountain and Sequoia have chewed through wiring and hoses in search of salts and sweet-tasting, but poisonous, antifreeze.
The National Park Service does bear some responsibility for visitors feeding animals. What began in Yellowstone in 1891 as simply letting tourists know that bears could be seen feeding at dumps evolved into a popular program run by rangers. By the 1920s, Yosemite was providing bears with 60 tons of table scraps per year, attracting 2,000 people who paid 50 cents each to watch.
Although Yosemite and Yellowstone had stopped public feedings by the 1940s, these and other parks have generally not, until recently, actively enforced a no-feeding animal policy. At one time, visitors could even buy food at parks to feed animals. "Older visitors remember feeding animals and want to be able to share this experience with their grandchildren. This is a tough mindset to change," says Judy Visty, natural resource specialist at Rocky Mountain National Park.
But now the Park Service has begun to address the issue through a two-pronged attack of informing visitors and discouraging animals. The basic message is "Don't Feed Animals." Parks print precautionary messages on everything from bookmarks to posters to newspapers to bumper stickers. Interpreters also weave the message into their programs, and rangers have started to crack down on offending humans. At Grand Canyon, the staff displayed a skeleton of one of the deer that was killed along with the trash retrieved from its stomach.
Rocky Mountain National Park has tried one innovative approach. Prompted by a forced killing of two coyotes addicted to human food, Supervisory Park Naturalist Jeff Maugans established Chow Busters, a group of volunteers who go to overlooks and parking lots to contact people feeding animals. "We wanted to be proactive and educational, getting the message to people not only when they feed the animals but before they feed them," says Maugans. Chow Busters use props, such as skins or antlers, to attract visitors and then address health and safety problems for animals and humans in feeding wildlife. "The program has been successful," Maugans says, "although we have many years until we can call it a victory."
Education programs like these have reduced the incidence of purposeful feeding; however, people still leave food out on picnic tables or in their backpacks, coolers, and vehicles or they do not correctly use animal-proof garbage systems. In addition, many parks simply lack enough secure garbage cans and dumpsters to hold the volume of visitors' garbage or they do not have enough maintenance personnel to clean up. In one creative approach, staff at Great Smoky Mountains began picking up garbage in the evening instead of morning, leaving nocturnal feeders with empty plates, which in part contributed to rangers removing fewer than ten bears from Chimneys picnic areas since 1990.
Money is the main obstacle keeping parks from addressing all food-related issues. Where money exists, problems drastically decline. Two million dollars of bear-proof containers, along with an additional $500,000 annually for night-time patrols, better interpretation, and research, led to an 87 percent drop in incidents and a 96 percent drop in damages between 1998 and 2001 at Yosemite. Olympic has nearly eliminated its problems with bears and raccoons by spending $250,000 on animal-resistant dumpsters and garbage cans and an animal-proof food container loan program for backpackers.
In contrast, at Sequoia/Kings Canyon, where rangers had to kill four bears in 2000, the park has determined it needs $110,000 annually for a bear management program, but as yet has not found a source.
Although animals still panhandle and break into cars and people continue to feed them, most parks report that their vigilance is paying off with fewer incidents. People also seem to be learning from their mistakes. Recently at Death Valley, a woman was finishing her ice cream when a roadrunner approached. When she tossed the final bits to the bird, it paid no attention, but a small flock of house sparrows swarmed the treat. The roadrunner promptly grabbed one of the sparrows, slammed it on the pavement, and ate it in front of the horrified woman. When she told the ranger what happened, she added that the episode had convinced her to never feed a wild animal again.
DAVID WILLIAMS is a freelance natural history writer. He is the author of A Naturalist's Guide to Canyon Country and is now working on a book on nature in Seattle.
