Re: Bear Activity

Yosemite Valley

Parking lot incidents went down this week with only two cars being broken into by bears. Campground activity seemed to pick up a bit, however. The Pines Campgrounds seemed to be a hot spot this week for numerous bears. As apples ripen, more bears may be coming in from areas outside of the Valley for the extra food source. This is a particularly important time to keep your food stored properly 24 hours a day so that bears that are not normally in the Valley do not become accustomed to human food.


Backcountry

Bear activity in Glen Aulin has continued this week. Most incidents in the backcountry occurred at Glen Aulin. There has been a bear in the Little Yosemite Valley area as well. Weather you are

I'm curious about the numbers going up this year, seems like the numbers had been going down every year up till now.

What I'm wondering is if the influx of foreign visitors to Yosemite might have something to do with this, since foreign currency is worth more, thus more foreign visitors eager to feed Yogi Bear, or whatever?

Just a thought. Another one perhaps is since it's been a dry year comparatively, perhaps the animals are more willing to move into the human areas?

I ran into the bear at Glen Aulin a few times during my stay. It was a juvenile. There were some other campers who really didn't get that whole "keep food away from bears" thing. One night they tossed their leftover rice about 10 feet behind their campsite, and were amazed when a bear came through a little later.

A youngster, very light tan, sauntered into the Hetch-Hetchy backpackers camground when I was there end of May ... but much more memorable was the quite large black adult up in the high(er) country north (and higher) than Tiltill Valley during my hike about 5 days later ... I came around a corner ... looked ahead ... poof, out of nowehre, there he stood .... amazing animal ...