The Problem With Roadside Bears
Mother black bear leading her cubs across a road in Yellowstone National Park
I had never heard of the term “roadside bear” until I visited Yellowstone National Park. Nor had I ever seen a grizzly bear with my own eyes before visiting the park.
As its name states, roadside bears are exactly that, bears, whether black or grizzly, that are frequent visitors to roadsides often within National Parks like Yellowstone. These visitors are most likely female bears with cubs in tow. Bear cubs have a rough road ahead of them. The survival rate of bear cubs in most areas is 50%. Sadly, one of their biggest threats comes from their own kind. Male bears who stumble on a mother bear will try and kill her cubs, as she will go back into heat and be ready to mate.
Bears are smart, and female bears have learned that male bears don’t like people, specifically, the crowds that they often draw within the parks, so they tend to keep themselves and their offspring close to the roads and people as a form of protection. Unfortunately, this solution, while often successful, comes with its own unique consequences.
Roadside bears are good news for visitors to the park who are hoping to get the chance to see a bear for themselves. There are estimated to be over 1000 grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), with 150-200 residing within the park's confines. But Yellowstone is over 2.2M acres, which can make it hard to spot a bear within the vast landscape.
This is where the new challenges come in. Roadsides are dangerous. While it can better protect them from male bears and other predators, close proximity to roads dramatically raises their chances of roadside collisions.
Bear 399, one of the most famous roadside bears in history knows this all too well. In 2016 399 lost her sole cub, Snowy after it was hit by a car in Grand Teton National Park. This past October, 399 herself was killed when she was struck by a car late one night about 40 miles south of the park.
Even without cars, the roadsides can be dangerous places for bears as it puts them in close proximity with humans, humans that don’t always think clearly when they are around wildlife. While they look cute and cuddly, bears are dangerous, and yet we see it too often, people getting way too close for their safety. We have seen such stupidity that a bear would be justified if it defended itself, but if something ever happened the bear would end up taking the blame and likely would be put down.
A bear jam in Yellowstone National Park that is being managed by park rangers and wildlife management
That is where park rangers and wildlife management comes in. When a bear or bear jam (a group of people stopped by the roadside to view a bear) is spotted, park rangers and or wildlife management will come in to manage the situation, for both the protection of the bears and the visitors. This is not an easy job as there is often one resource that is responsible for managing sometimes hundreds of people. They are some of the most patient people I have ever met. If the bear gets too close to the road or the assembling crowds, they will either push the crowds back or in some instances haze the bear. Hazing is a technique where deterrents (e.g., rubber bullets, noisemakers, beanbag rounds) are administered to a bear to immediately move the bear out of an area or discourage undesirable behavior.
These problems only get worse when bears wander outside the safe confines of the parks. Speed limits are often higher than they are in the parks, and there is no bear and wildlife management to manage the scene. The learned behavior of comfort and safety around humans is often a danger for bears outside of the park. While staying close to humans in the park benefits both parties, outside the park it sets up more opportunities for human and animal conflict.
73 grizzlies were killed in 2024, marking it as one of the deadliest years for them since they were listed as endangered in 1975. All but two were human related, with the majority after vehicle collisions being classified as managed capture and removal for a variety of reasons including property damage, livestock predation, and obtaining food rewards.
Not all of these incidents involved roadside bears, but common sense dictates that bears familiarity with people within the parks would impact their behavior when they encounter people outside the parks.
There is no easy answer to this issue, and I am not pushing to abolish roadside bear viewing. To be clear, I am one of the photographers often on the roadside spending time with these incredible animals. We just need to consider that these seemingly innocent interactions have broader impacts than we ever anticipated.
