Gallatin food storage rules to change

By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

Beginning next year, everybody using the Gallatin National Forest will have to observe food storage rules intended to keep bears and other wildlife away from human food, garbage and game carcasses.

That means all those items must be stored in approved bearproof containers, in hard-sided vehicles or hung in the air at least 10 feet high and four feet from the nearest trees.

"It's a lot of work, but it saves you a lot of problems in the long run," said Larry Lahren, a Park County Commissioner who ran an outfitting business in occupied grizzly bear habitat for 17 years.

The storage orders have been in place for several years in parts of the Gallatin Forest close to Yellowstone National Park, but this order includes the entire 1.8 million acre forest, which extends from the Yellowstone border to the north end of the Crazy and Bridger Mountains.

The announcement comes as grizzly bears are expanding outward from their core habitat areas. But grizzlies aren't the only species that can cause problems after learning that humans can provide food.

Black bears also can be bothersome, especially in the fall, when they are desperate to put on calories in advance of their winter sleep.

Animals can become "food conditioned" when they learn to associate people with food, and sometimes become dangerously aggressive when they seek meals.

Coyotes and foxes in Yellowstone have become food conditioned in the past after being fed.

In California, reports of food-conditioned black bears breaking into cars are common.

In Wyoming, state officials had to kill 10 black and grizzly bears in 2001 because of "food storage related conflicts," according to the Shoshone National Forest, which has imposed similar regulations.

Sometimes, the people who feed wild animals suffer no consequences, but the next human visitor to the same place might find a dangerously aggressive animal.

On the Gallatin, the number of conflicts, mostly with bears, has been increasing, according to spokeswoman Marna Daley.

The Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest imposed identical rules in the Gravelly and Tobacco Root mountain ranges two years ago.

Dale Ragain, resource assistant for that forest in Ennis, said compliance with the storage rules has been increasing as people learn more about them.

"We don't have 100 percent, but it's improving," he said.

The effort there, he said, is to avoid problems.

Food-conditioned bears "weren't a real frequent thing," he said. "But we're trying to keep it from becoming one."

Daley said more campgrounds will be equipped with bearproof storage containers this year, and forest officials are working with retailers to provide portable containers for backcountry hikers or equestrians.

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