Greater Yellowstone Coalition Credits Island Park

Island Park earned a nice blurb in the last publication of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Many of our homeowners took advantage of their program to purchase Bear-proof bins last year. Here's what the article had to say. Kudos to us!

Bear-proof bins prevent grizzly conflicts in Island Park

The grizzly bear's place in Greater Yellowstone became a little more secure in mid-July. That's when more than three-dozen people turned out in Island Park, Idaho, to help GYC celebrate the purchase and distribution of 40 bear-proof garbage containers throughout the community.

Thanks in great part to your support in subsidizing these $200 residential containers, Island Park ~ which doesn't have a formal garbage-disposal program but does have a lot of bears ~ now has 104 bins in key locations. And there is already a waiting list for next year's crop of containers.

How do bear bins correlate with grizzly security? You've heard the old axiom "a fed bear is a dead bear"? Island Park has been ground zero for bear/human conflicts in recent years because of improperly stored garbage. Island Park ~ which hugs U.S. Highway 20 for 33 miles just west of Yellowstone National Park, boasting "The Longest Main Street in America" ~ is at the crossroads of a critical wildlife migration corridor between Yellowstone and the wild Centennial Mountains along the Montana-Idaho border.

Several grizzlies have been killed or removed from the area because their instinctive migration habits drew them past easily accessed residential garbage cans. Once a bear becomes habituated to domestic food, it is unlikely to return to its natural food sources. The result is sometimes bad for humans and almost always bad for the bear.

The timing of this bear-proof bin program is especially critical. A primary food source for the grizzly, the whitebark pin, has been decimated by a warming climate. The loss of pine nuts at high elevations in Greater Yellowstone is forcing more bears to search for food closer to where people live, work and play. Bear/human conflicts are increasing all too frequently ~ and tragically.

Distribution of these bear-proof bins in Island Park in the past three years has already helped reduce the number of grizzlies enticed into residential areas. This important project is just one more way humans and Greater Yellowstone's iconic creatures can coexist on this incomparable landscape. At our Island Park event, two bear experts with the U.S. Forest Service and Idaho Fish & Game Department also showed guests how to operate bear-spray canisters while showing how to be more "bear aware."

Learn more about our grizzly bear work at http://www.greateryellowstone.org/bears.