In Yosemite for years black bears have been terrorizing people and ruining their cars. If you leave even the smallest amount of food in your car they will smell it and break in. Recently they have been behaving much better. In 1998 over 1,500 people reported black bears breaking into their cars. Now only 120 people have reported anything happening. They say this is due to training bears to stay away from humans.
During the 1980’s and 1990’s black bears were an extreme problem. Back then Yosemite had open trash cans which attracted bears and brought them near people and their cars. To solve the problem they brought in more experts to star working with the bears. They also began putting their food in bear proof lockers which prevented them from coming near people. Also the park set up people around campsites to scare away the bears. All the people that stayed overnight camping were forced to put all of their food in bear proof containers. This helped out a lot during that time and the bears started to behave better. After all of this a study found out that bears were eating much less human food and were staying away from people. They have been doing this all the way up to modern day and the bears have almost completely stopped bothering humans that visits Yosemite.
My opinion about this article is that I think the park did a great job of keeping them away from people without making them leave their own habitat. Also it is good that the bears are getting used to eating wild food instead of human food. My classmate Toby Tobias agrees with me and thinks, “I think it’s one of the best ways to solve animal problems because no wildlife and humans are getting hurt and the bears are getting smarter”. The author is unbiased. 