Yellowstone National Park staff killed an adult female black bear there on July 11 after it managed to climb a pole and eat human food.
The park explained in a release Thursday that campers are required to store their food in bear-resistant boxes or up on storage poles in order to keep bears from eating it. Bears that get used to human food can become aggressive against people.
Yellowstone rangers first took notice of the bear after it crushed an unoccupied tent at a campsite in the northern part of the park on June 7, which sits on land in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
The bear then returned to the campsite on July 11 and managed to climb a storage pole, tearing into food bags that were kept there.
Since the bear’s behavior escalated and then paid off when it got food, Yellowstone staffers decided to kill it. They did not mention any injuries to the campers using the site.
“We go to great lengths to protect bears and prevent them from gaining access to human food … occasionally, a bear outsmarts us or overcomes our defenses. When that happens, we sometimes have to make the difficult decision to remove the bear from the population to protect people and property,” Yellowstone bear management biologist Kerry Gunther said.
The culling marks the first time Yellowstone staff had to kill a bear since 2020, when another black bear injured people and ate food at another campsite in the national park.
