Yellowstone Grizzly Euthanized After Outsmarting 800-Pound Dumpsters

Last week Yellowstone National Park officials made the call to euthanize an 11-year-old, 400-pound male grizzly bear that had become something of a public safety threat. The bear, who had become known for flipping over 800-pound bear-resistant dumpsters and uprooting trash cans, had developed a dangerous taste for seed oils human food.

Between April 3 and May 13, the grizzly repeatedly accessed garbage at high-traffic areas like Old Faithful, Nez Perce Picnic Area, and Midway Geyser Basin parking lot. Its ability to outmaneuver bear-resistant infrastructure, designed to withstand the strength and cunning of grizzlies, was a remarkable but troubling feat. As it would turn out, this bear wasn't just hungry; he was a culinary genius with a knack for overturning all-you-can-eat buffets disguised as bear-proof bins. His innovative approach to dumpster diving included not only flipping over massive dumpsters, but also artfully prying smaller trash cans from their concrete-enforced bases.

Kerry Gunther, Yellowstone’s bear management biologist, expressed regret over the outcome.

“It’s unfortunate that this bear began regularly seeking out garbage and was able to defeat the park’s bear-resistant infrastructure,” she noted.  “We go to great lengths to protect bears and prevent them from becoming conditioned to human food. But occasionally, a bear outsmarts us or overcomes our defenses.”

The reality of these kinds of situations is that once a bear becomes food-conditioned, or habituated to the delicacies of human food, it naturally poses a significant risk to park visitors. Given the bear’s voracious appetite and taste for trash, relocation was not an option for this adult grizzly as relocated and conflict-prone bears often return to the original site or simply continue problematic behavior elsewhere. 

This marks the first grizzly killed in a management action in Yellowstone since September 2017, when a bear was euthanized for damaging tents and accessing human food at Heart Lake. The National Park has invested heavily in preventing human-bear conflicts and these measures have undoubtedly helped the grizzly population recover from fewer than 200 bears in the 1980s to over 1,000 today.

Given their explosive growth and celebratory comeback, the euthanasia of this mature boar comes at a time when debates about grizzly management have reignited, with some Western lawmakers pushing to delist grizzlies from the Endangered Species List earlier this month.