Kootenai NF plans to install bear-proof food boxes
With black bears and grizzly bears roaming around northwestern Montana’s backcountry, interaction with humans will occur from time to time. In an effort to help protect the bears from getting themselves into trouble while increasing safety for campers, Kootenai National Forest this summer plans to install up to 100 bear-proof food storage boxes.
Mary Laws, recreation program manager, said such types of food-storage boxes have become common in places like Glacier National Park and Canada.
“We’re going to purchase them this spring and hopefully have them on site by early May,” Laws said last week. “We’re looking at doing small contracts to install them. Most have concrete pads that you bolt them down to.”
The installation of the food storage boxes was initiated through stimulus funds that the Forest Service received through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. After advertising, the forest has compiled a list of interested contractors to complete the work.
The food storage boxes are designed to protect the bears from getting to what the Forest Service refers to as “attractants” – food, drink, livestock feed and pet food.
“I was in a campground once where there was a problem with a bear in the area,” Laws said referring to a site not in the Kootenai. “One night, a family was sitting there around the fire ring and they saw a bear sitting at their table.”
The incident put quite a scare into the family and the bear ultimately had to be destroyed. With bear-proof food storage boxes, such incidents can be more easily avoided.
As far as campground locations, Laws said the containers will go into “a lot of the more popular ones like Spar Lake, Bull River, Howard Lake, North Shore – all over the forest.”
A number of the containers will be installed at the popular campgrounds and Laws said that the forest will probably install a few at the smaller sites as well. Laws said the forest is currently looking at units capable of 20 to 30 cubic feet of storage.
The Forest Service plans to offer information to the public about how to use the food containers to keep the attractants away from bears and other critters.