F&G urges Island Park residents and visitors to reduce human-bear conflicts by securely storing attractants

For the safety of both the community and the bears, Fish and Game is asking residents and visitors of Island Park and the surrounding areas to securely store their garbage and other attractants, making them inaccessible to bears. Recent reports of a bear getting into unsecured garbage in an Island Park neighborhood serve as a reminder to be diligent and ‘Bear Aware.' Bears have a keen sense of smell and are always on the lookout for an easy meal. Unfortunately, this can lead them to seek food rewards from carelessly or improperly stored attractants like garbage. 

Conflicts occur when bears score an easy meal from human carelessness 

Island Park is bear country, and the neighborhoods and cabin sites are surrounded by National Forest in grizzly and black bear habitat. Bears will often move through these areas looking for good smells and food. Unfortunately, they sometimes find human food sources – such as garbage, pet food, or bird feeders – all of which are high in calories and readily available. That’s when the problems start.

Bears are intelligent and can learn very quickly to associate people with food. The presence of unsecured human food sources like residential garbage, bird feeders, dog food, chicken coops, or even fruit trees cause human/bear conflicts that rarely end well for the bears, and often means a messy, and likely unsafe, situation for a property owner.

 It usually goes from bad to worse

Finding food inadvertently provided by people is bad for bears and people, and it often ends with a dead bear because when the animals find a regular food source in neighborhoods, they become less fearful of people.

They can grow increasingly bold and aggressive in their search for food when their efforts result in a high-calorie reward. The consistent promise of food can cause a bear to overcome its fear of people and result in an increasingly dangerous situation.

When it becomes evident that a bear has become habituated to that food source, or has lost its wariness of people, biologists and conservation officers often have no choice but to trap and kill the bear. In cases like these, the habituated bears cannot be moved, because research shows they will quickly travel long distances to seek out human foods in their new locations.

Keeping bears wild and away from residences takes effort and cooperation

Luckily, there are a lot of things that people can do to prevent bears from becoming habituated, protecting both the residents in their neighborhood and the bears moving through it.

The key to keeping Idaho bears wild is to not allow them to access human food sources around neighborhoods and homes. 

Following the steps below helps protect both you and the bears:

• Remove bird feeders between April and mid-November.
• Feed pets inside.
• Get a certified bear-resistant trash can and use it properly; don’t tamper with latches, prop them open, or overfill them. If you don’t have a bear-resistant can or if there is too much trash to fit in the can, keep it in a garage until the morning of pickup.
• Do not keep coolers, refrigerators, or freezers outside.
• If a bear has already visited your place and found food, take the above steps right away. The bear will likely pay you a couple more visits, but if it finds no food, it will eventually move on.

People in Island Park and the surrounding area can report bear conflicts to the Upper Snake Regional Fish and Game Office (208) 525-7290. Additional information on how to live and recreate in bear country can be found at the IGBC website: Be Bear Aware - Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC)