https://capcity.news/wyoming/2...6IrZHNLkOP6iNXYCahYU

This article is about my former ranger district on the Bridger-Teton. Blackrock is the northernmost district of the B-T. Yellowstone NP is its neighbor to the north, Grand Teton NP is the neighbor to the west. The summit of Togwotee Pass is the boundary between Blackrock and the Dubois District of the Shoshone NF. Jackson Ranger District lies to the south, just over the Mt. Leidy Highlands.

Blackrock is in the Primary Conservation Area (PCA) for the Grizzly bear. I used to say that my job as a District Ranger in the PCA is to keep people safe from bears in the designated camp grounds, and bears safe from people everywhere else.

I retired 5 years ago and the issues revolving around grizzlies and the public were more serious every year I spent there. Two or three years before I retired I made Turpin Meadow, our largest, most heavily used campground “hard-sided only,” closing the CG to tent camping. Turpin Meadow lies south of, and adjacent to, the almost 600,000 acre Teton Wilderness Area. It lies alongside the Buffalo Fork River, and just west of the place where Clear Creek dumps into the Buffalo Fork. There are a lot of bears.

I had many discussions with the Forest Supervisor, Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD), and especially the Forest Service Grizzly Bear Habitat Coordinator and FS representative to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team (IGBST) concerning issues revolving around an increasing bear population.

There was some pushback on the Forest Order closing the CG to tent camping. Like many FS campgrounds there were those who returned to the same place every fall for hunting season. There was a group of men who set up a very large military surplus tent for hunting camp. “We’ve been camping here for 25 years and never had a problem,” the group patriarch said, almost poking me in the chest as I informed him they were in violation of the Order.

“Well things are changing and we’ve had several incidents,” I replied. That was the truth too. Two trailers belonging to Outfitter/Guides who staged out of Turpin had been torn into to get at the horse feed stored inside. One was a very expensive trailer, like some motorcyclists use. It was completely enclosed, windowless, and had a very solid latching system on the back doors to keep valuables secure. The bear opened up the side like a pop can. I closed by saying, “If something should happen to you, given my knowledge of the growing number of grizzly incidents occurring here, your family would go after me for not doing anything to keep you safe.”

He looked at me silently for a moment, then said, “OK, we’ll move.” He asked for a place they could go and I told him of another, smaller CG with fewer amenities than Turpin, but it was also adjacent to the Wilderness, just not as heavily used as a travel corridor. As fate would have it, another hunting camp at THAT campground had killed an elk. We got a call at the office that there was a G bear incident there and “would someone come out?” I called Mike with WGFD and we both went to the camp. They had stored elk meat in the nose of their horse trailer. During the night a bear came into camp, smelled the meat, and somehow jerked an entire quarter out through the 5” wide window in the nose of the trailer.

The big tent that I spoke of from Turpin Meadow was set up next to the camp that had the horse trailer broken into. It was mid-morning and I assumed they were all out hunting, but I felt like I should go check, often big hunting camps have someone who doesn’t hunt and just comes along for the trip or to cook.

I scratched on the tent near the door and yelled, “Hello the camp!”

I definitely heard something coming from inside, announced myself, and asked if I could enter. I got back something in the affirmative and stuck my head inside to see ALL of them still in the sack, sleeping off the previous night’s drunk. Food—all over. Whiskey bottles. Beer cans. What’s the old saying? “God watches out for children, drunks, and fools.”

The online newspaper article is about bears and Togwotee Pass. My first couple years on the district, bears within sight of the highway over Togwotee were an infrequent occurance. Yeah, it happened, but not often enough to cause any real headaches. By the third year things were changing and sightings occurred more often and we began to experience “bear jams.”

As the article explains, a bear jam in one of the National Parks occurs in an area where speed limits are lower, where traffic is generally in search of wildlife and where there is a dedicated group of volunteers responding to the jams. Much different on a ranger district on a U.S. highway.

One day I was driving up Togwotee when I spotted a handful of cars pulled over on the highway. There was a sow and two cubs on the N side of the highway and soon more cars began to stop. I radioed the office and asked for assistance, because more vehicles were pulling over. I put on an orange vest and crossed the highway where people were standing along the edge of the highway taking pictures.

“Is that a grizzly bear?” asked a nice lady from Ohio with her family.

“Yes, it is,” I replied.

“Wow, I’ve never seen one,” she said, smiling. “That’s a grizzly bear, kids!” She said louder.

One of the guys from the office arrived. By this time the are at least 15 vehicles lining both sides of the highway. The sow was starting to become more agitated and I could tell that she wanted to take the two cubs across the highway to the other side, she was kinda pacing back and forth. The route directly across from her was blocked by vehicles and we began asking people to move their cars, making a space for her to cross.

There are people on both sides of the highway and I’m showing people how far to pull up to make room, when a semi blew through the middle of us—without lifting off the gas—at all! I felt the back draft as the truck flew through there doing at least 55 mph. I’ll never forget that as long as I live.

Right after that I talked to Clint (Forest Supe) about “red” lights for our trucks. I didn’t want amber, I wanted red, feeling they would get more respect. There was some discussion with fire folks, I guess as to whether or not we should be able to put a red revolving light on our trucks. I wouldn’t budge.

Ultimately, I talked to the lieutenant with WHP who ran that zone for the highway patrol, about my desire to order red lights for these bear jams. I told my story about the semi. “I’d do it if I were you,” was his reply. God Bless you, and I did.

We were aided by WGFD bear conflict specialists, especially Mike B (actually really called Large Carnivore Biologists, but bear conflict with humans was a big part of the job). They would haze bears away from the highway, both for human safety and their own good to keep them from being hit. Mike used “cracker shells” fired from a 12 gauge shotgun. The shell was launched from the gun and would explode in the air above them, encouraging them to move. “Oh, God! You’re not going to shoot them are you?” asked one worried tourist as we walked up the highway toward the bears. “No, ma’am, we’re not.”

This is getting pretty long, so I’ll wrap it up. I might say that there’s a network of professional and amateur wildlife photographers. Within a year or so of the increased frequency of bears spotted along the highway, the network became pretty sophisticated. When bears were spotted the call went out and within a short while photographers from the three state area of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana (obviously already in the area, those were just the plates their vehicles carried) quickly began to arrive. They don’t take direction quite as well as the tourist crowd, apparently believing that once you surpassed a certain expenditure in photographic equipment, you should be granted more latitude.

The photographers carried the small 2-way radios that places like Cabella’s sells. When a bear disappeared from sight, going into the timber, they would begin driving the forest roads in the vicinity. If the bear(s) popped out of the woods somewhere, the call went out over the radios and they would flock to the location. It remains my opinion that actions like this may indeed be “harassment of an endangered species.”

Like I said, this is pretty long. Sorry for that, it’s a subject I have a lot of passion about. I was privileged to live and work in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) and cherish every minute I spent there. It’s regrettable that the incidence of bears along the highway continues to increase, but I’m grateful that management of the situation has become a joint effort.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TMats,

And that is the reason why, when I have to go from Cody to Jackson or vice versa through Yellowstone, I allow an extra hour driving time.

PC

Long post or not, it was a good read with good first person account. The article was good at laying out the issue but I honestly liked the perspective from your post.

Thanks for sharing.

Having worked a lot of traffic, I've learned to never underestimate the stupidity of the motoring public...and that's before you throw wildlife into the mix. I've been to Yellowstone, and I've seen how people act around the bears...I'm not sure what would possess someone to pull up close and get their kids out of the car around a 1000lb grizzly, but it doesn't surprise me that they do. I will say I was really impressed with the rangers...not sure how they did it, but it seemed like every time there was a bear near the road, there was a ranger there keeping people in their cars and moving them along. My hat is off to you guys for dealing with it...I'm sure after a while it would get tempting to just sit back and watch nature take it's course.

I've hiked some in bear country. Thankfully I've never encountered one up close. I watched a sow and two cubs from about a mile or so away one time...I was up on a ridge and they were way down below on the other side of a lake. It was a neat experience, but I was darn happy they were where they were and I was where I was.

Thanks for sharing. I'm fascinated by bears but from the distance from my sofa to my screen. I've seen black bears twice and briefly in the wild. I'm wary when I'm in the woods but we can share the same space and I'll definitely get out of the way. You probably have enough stories for a book.