Posted on 05/15/2025 9:17:41 PM PDT by Red Badger
Yellowstone National Park confirmed an 11-year-old male grizzly was captured and killed Wednesday after repeatedly knocking over bear-resistant dumpsters. Officials say the grizzly had repeatedly sought out human food.
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A grizzly bear was captured and killed in Yellowstone National Park this week after becoming too used to human food. It’s the first grizzly to be killed within the boundaries of Yellowstone since 2017.
The National Park Service (NPS) announced that the 11-year-old male grizzly had repeatedly sought out human food, turning over several bear-proof dumpsters and bear-resistant trash cans in several different areas of the park between April 3 and May 13.
Because the incidents were happening near some of the busiest spots in Yellowstone, the decision was made to euthanize the bear rather than relocate it.
It was put down Wednesday.
“It’s unfortunate that this bear began regularly seeking out garbage and was able to defeat the park’s bear-resistant infrastructure,” Yellowstone Bear Management Biologist Kerry Gunther said in a statement Thursday.
Overturned bear-resistant dumpster in Nez Perce Picnic Area (National Park Service)
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Smarter Than The Average Bear
According to the NPS, Yellowstone’s bear-resistant dumpsters can weigh more than 800 pounds. The heaviest grizzly recorded in Yellowstone, captured in 1977, weighed 715 pounds.
Nevertheless, the 11-year-old grizzly found a way to overturn dumpsters near Old Faithful, the Nez Perce Picnic Area and the Midway Geyser Basin parking lot. Furthermore, the grizzly knocked over several bear-resistant trash cans, which have concrete bases specifically to deter or prevent this kind of behavior.
That level of intelligence and determination in a grizzly is rarely seen in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The NPS was concerned about the heightened risk of a human-grizzly incident, especially at Old Faithful, which is by far the busiest spot in Yellowstone.
“We go to great lengths to protect bears and prevent them from becoming conditioned to human food,” Gunther said. “But occasionally, a bear outsmarts us or overcomes our defenses. When that happens, we sometimes have to remove the bear from the population to protect visitors and property.”
Because the grizzly was frequently causing chaos in the vicinity of Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park staff were mobilized to capture and euthanize it.
Overturned bear-resistant recycling container in Nez Perce Picnic Area (National Park Service) First This Year
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This is the first grizzly killed in a management action in Yellowstone since 2017, when a grizzly was killed for tearing into tents near Heart Lake in the search for human food.
It’s also the first lethal grizzly management action in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in 2025. Other grizzlies have been killed since emerging from hibernation, but those were the result of accidental encounters rather than bureaucratic management decisions.
Grizzly 1058, one of Grizzly’s 399 famous quadruplets, was killed by a vehicle strike in Grand Teton National Park in early May. Another grizzly was shot dead after charging a shed antler hunter near Dupuyer, Montana,in mid-April.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regularly captures grizzlies that have shown signs of becoming habituated to human food. The decision to relocate or remove a grizzly from the population is determined by several factors, including the frequency of incidents.
Management actions like these are rare within the boundaries of a national park, but not entirely unheard of. In July 2023, a five-year-old female grizzly was killed in Glacier National Park after showing “increasingly aggressive behavior” after becoming food-conditioned.
“This action was taken after the bear received multiple food rewards from unsecured sources, causing it to exhibit increasingly aggressive behavior,” the park said in a release. “This behavior posed a threat to human safety, making it necessary to remove it from the population.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
they it to a zoon Why didn’t Because it is extremely expensive to do.
One needs to find a zoo that can handle a adult wild bear.
Then one needs to house until it is transported it there.
All this takes a lot of time and money.
Until Grizzlies start to show a DECENT ATTITUDE, I have no problem with taking them out.
Kind of sad. A grizzly just being a grizzly gets him killed.
Me too! Or porta-potties. Not that I would wish such fate on a bear, but I disappointed on account of the clickbait title.
Bears are fairly intelligent creatures. I saw a video clip a few years that said bear traps had to be redesigned/reconfigured every so often because the bears knew how to prevent triggering the trap or learned how to escape.
Dumpster tipping?
“Disgusting. Why didn’t they take it to a zoo.”
Typically each bear gets three chances, the bear gets sedated and relocated twice. The third time it’s euthanized. That’s how it works here (I live north of YNP) and to get to the southern most town in the county (Gallatin) you have to drive through YNP.
There is only so much space in zoos so not every bear can be saved. The below link is to Montana Grizzly Encounter (which only has so much space) which saves some grizzlies. (It’s just East of my home):
https://www.grizzlyencounter.org
Some folks ARE trying..
I forgot to mention that at 3:39 AM this morning we had our first black rear of the season — it knocked over our bear-proof garbage can and made quite a ruckus!
I have videos of it from two cameras...
They kill a griz for not picking up after himself? But they protect antifa and antifa burns buildings and cars. I think they’ve got it backwards.
I am the last person to be called a animal rights wacko, but this makes no sense.
We Americans pay good money to see this kind of feat on television.
Give the bear a medal, tranquilize him, rag him with a monitor, and then transport him to another part of the park, and let him enjoy life.
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