It was a familiar sight at Yellowstone National Park: traffic
backed up for miles as visitors fed bears from their cars. It may
have been against the rules, but park officials were willing to
turn a blind eye if it kept the public happy. But bear feeding
eventually became too widespread and dangerous to
everyone-including the bears-for the National Park Service (NPS) to
allow it any longer.
As one of the park's most beloved and enduring symbols, the
Yellowstone bears have long been a flashpoint for controversy.
Alice Wondrak Biel traces the evolution of their complex
relationship with humans--from the creation of the first staged
wildlife viewing areas to the present--and situates that
relationship within the broader context of American cultural
history. Early on, park bears were largely thought of as performers
or surrogate pets and were routinely fed handouts from cars, as
well as hotel garbage dumped at park-sanctioned "lunch counters for
bears." But as these activities led to ever-greater numbers of
tourist injuries, and of bears killed as a result, and as ideas
about conservation and the NPS mission changed, the agency
refashioned the bear's image from cute circus performer to
dangerous wild animal and, eventually, to keystone inhabitant of a
fragile ecosystem.
Drawing on the history of recorded interactions with bears and
providing telling photographs depicting the evolving bear-human
relationship, Biel traces the reaction of park visitors to the
NPS's efforts-from warnings by Yogi Bear (which few tourists took
seriously) to the increasing promotion of key ecological issues and
concerns. Ultimately, as the rules were enforced and tourist
behavior dramatically shifted, the bears returned to a more natural
state of existence.
Biel's entertaining and informative account tracks this gradual
"renaturalization" while also providing a cautionary tale about the
need for careful negotiation at the complex nexus of tourists,
bears, and all things wild.
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