“Your trash, your compost, your chicken coops are easy food sources. So, bears will continually get into that, and they will get bolder and bolder. This often leads to aggressive situations where a bear may charge a person for trying to withhold their trash, or they may damage property.”
The bears are waking up. Grand Teton National Park saw its first grizzly bear of the year Wednesday night. And the first sighting in Yellowstone was earlier this month.
Their arrival is a reminder that some Jackson and Teton County homeowners may still need to get bear-resistant trash cans. The town is aiming to reduce human and bear conflicts ,and a new ordinance goes into effect April 1, but it may not be a cheap or easy process.
Kole Stewart, with BearWise Jackson Hole, is speaking to residents in the bear conflict zone ahead of the deadline to help homeowners get into compliance.
He recently stopped by the KHOL studio and sat down with News Director Tyler Pratt to talk all things bears and trash bins.
Click “Listen” below to hear their conversation.
“There was an instance here in Teton County where a bear tore into part of a building to get to what was secured trash,” Stewart said. “It literally walked like down in an [outdoor] apartment hallway essentially to get to it. So, you’ll start to see these bolder behaviors once bears start to get habituated to humans and used to eating their trash.”
Me reappearing in people’s lives after inexplicably disappearing for several months… pic.twitter.com/IN4lamDaXL
— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) March 21, 2023
