Bear-resistant objects are incredibly necessary in bear country. When a bear gains access to human provided food, it can lead to several problems. These range from just the mess created by an animal rummaging through the trash to an increased risk of attacks on humans, and the more bears find food near human populations, the more likely they are to return. But this isn’t just harmful to people, as bears who frequent these areas are more likely to have to be captured, relocated, and sometimes euthanized.
So, how do you make a bear-resistant object? Do you just make it out of metal and make sure the door is secure? Should it be a specific shape to confuse the animals? Finally, once you think you’ve succeeded in the design, how do you test it to ensure that it is, in fact, bear-resistant? To answer that final question, we turn to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone.
The Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center
The Grizzly and Wolf Discover Center isn’t just a wildlife park that rescues bears who’ve become too comfortable with stealing human food. It’s the only place where products hoping to be certified as bear-resistant can be put to the test. The bears have 60-minutes to attempt to crack open coolers, trash receptacles, and other containers. If it holds up through that time can be labeled as a bear-resistant object.
These bears are a lot smarter than you might think, though, and plenty of the 40-80 products tested throughout the season fail. The hardest part, though, is probably finding a way to create a bear-resistant object easy enough to use for the dumbest tourist, but hard enough to open for the smartest bear.
“There’s a considerable overlap between the brainpower of most intelligent bears and the least intelligent tourists.” – some park ranger at some point in the 70s or 80s
Related: Watch: Bear Climbs Out Of A Window Of Colorado Home
Image Credit: Tom Scott via YouTube
