Why Wyoming’s Yellowstone Park stop feeding bears? How garbage dumps once became an attraction

For generations seeing a bear in Yellowstone National Park was not necessarily a rare wilderness encounter. Visitors once gathered in large numbers to watch bears feed at garbage dumps, while some tourists even tossed food to bears along roads for photographs. What followed was a dangerous cycle of wildlife becoming accustomed to human food and people getting too close to wild animals. Yellowstone's eventual shift in bear management offers a striking example of how changing human behaviour can alter the relationship between people and wildlife.

When garbage became a bear attraction

In the park's early years, bears were routinely drawn to food waste. According to the National Park Service (NPS), bears began gathering near garbage behind Yellowstone's hotels in the late 1880s. By 1910, bears were also seeking human food along roads, and the park recorded its first confirmed bear-caused human fatality in 1916. The problem continued for decades. Between 1931 and 1969, Yellowstone recorded an average of 48 bear-inflicted human injuries and more than 100 incidents of property damage each year. The bears were not simply wandering into human spaces by accident. They had learned that people and developed areas could provide an easy source of food.

Yellowstone makes a major change

The park began taking stronger measures in 1960, including visitor education, bear-proof rubbish bins and restrictions on feeding wildlife. But the open garbage dumps remained. That changed in 1970, when Yellowstone introduced a more intensive bear-management programme. Open-pit garbage dumps inside the park were eliminated, while authorities tightened rules on feeding bears and storing food and rubbish. The aim was to push bears back towards their natural diet rather than allowing them to depend on human waste.


The transition was not immediate or easy. Researchers John and Frank Craighead had predicted that bears accustomed to human food would initially roam more widely and potentially come into greater conflict with people. The NPS says that prediction came true during the early years of the new programme, with numerous bears relocated to backcountry areas and others removed from the population. Yet the longer-term trend moved in the opposite direction.

Bear-human conflicts eventually fell

After 1972, bear-human conflicts fell to an annual average of about 10, according to Yellowstone's records. By the 2000s, the park reported just one human injury involving bears per year on average, compared with 45 annually during the 1960s. Property-damage claims also fell from 219 per year in the 1960s to an average of 15 in the 2000s. The number of bears being killed or removed also dropped dramatically.

This broader approach to wildlife management was emerging across America's national parks. Smithsonian Magazine, while examining the deadly 1967 bear attacks at Glacier National Park, described that period as a turning point for the National Park Service. Following the attacks, parks introduced measures including eliminating dumps, enforcing food-storage rules and installing bear-resistant rubbish bins. Smithsonian reported that many of these practices soon spread to other parks, including Yellowstone.

From feeding bears to protecting habitat

Yellowstone's strategy later expanded beyond simply keeping bears away from rubbish. In 1983, the park established bear-management areas where recreational activity could be restricted in places where grizzlies concentrated. The goal was to reduce encounters that could make bears accustomed to people, while also protecting important feeding areas and reducing the risk of injuries.

The story also became part of a much larger conservation effort. In 1975, grizzly bears in the lower 48 states were listed as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act. Yellowstone's population was estimated at 136 bears in the mid-1970s.

A lesson that goes beyond Yellowstone

Yellowstone's bear-management history shows that wildlife conflicts are not always simply a matter of animals entering human territory. Human behaviour can help create those encounters in the first place. By removing an artificial food source, changing visitor behaviour and protecting bear habitat, Yellowstone gradually moved from a culture of watching bears feed on rubbish to one focused on allowing them to live more naturally. The lesson is simple: sometimes protecting wildlife begins not with changing the animals, but with changing what people leave behind.