September 14, 2009, 2:17 pm
It was a small mistake, one that the campers would laugh about and remedy the next day with a trip to the store.Someone
in the party of 40 people from Southern California had left the door to
their campsite's bear-proof food locker open overnight. Two bears
walked in to the site and gorged on marshmallows, potato chips, steak,
bacon, chocolate, sour cream and cheese.
They left untouched the fruit and vegetables.
"They were very American bears," said camper Renne DePace, the next night.
However
slight, such oversights by visitors to Sequoia and Kings Canyon
national parks are a main reason black bears come looking for food in
the campgrounds and parking lots.
Over
time, those campground bears can pass on their habits to their
youngsters or become more aggressive, acting in threatening ways toward
people and doing significant damage to visitor and park property. When
bears are found guilty of those last offenses, they often have to be
killed.
It's the
job of Sandy Herrera and Danny Gammons to make sure that interactions
between humans and bears in the park rarely come to that point.
During
the summer months, Herrera, a bear technician, and Gammons, a wildlife
biologist, team up to patrol highly visited areas, hoping to head off
the bears before they get their paws on any human grub. Much of their
work takes place at night, when bears have learned to slip into
campgrounds under the cover of darkness and steal away with food.
From
their park-issued SUV or on foot, Herrera and Gammons use heavy-duty
flashlights and night-vision optics to look for those bears, racing to
an area of a campground if they hear shouting, the banging of pots or
barking of dogs. If they spot bears, they'll yell and use an array of
tools — slingshots, whistles, a large cap pistol called a banger, or a
paintball gun loaded with natural-oil balls — to scare them off.
