In 2023, a brazen thief broke into more than a dozen vehicles in Missoula's Rattlesnake neighborhood.

The offender seldom took anything valuable but always left conspicuous evidence, including chunks of upholstery bitten out and claw marks on the dash.

Then an SUV owner caught the culprit in the act.

A black bear had learned to open car doors in search of human food, but this time it had accidentally locked itself inside. Discovering the bear in the vehicle in the early morning hours, the owner attached a garden hose to the door handle to open it from a second-floor balcony, safely releasing the bear. But the SUV’s interior was so wrecked it was later declared a total loss.

Jamie Jonkel, FWP bear management specialist in Missoula, trapped that bear shortly afterward. “We had to put it down,” he says. “There’s not much you can do once an animal is that habituated.”

Having grown up in Missoula, Jonkel recalls when a black bear running afoul of people used to be uncommon. But since starting with FWP in 1996, he’s seen bear conflicts in the valley mushroom from 15 incidents per year at the turn of the millennium to almost 500 by 2021. Half involved unsecured garbage cans and dumpsters, with the remainder split among bird feeders, fruit trees, outdoor freezers, pet food, and other attractants.

Then came 2023, which shattered all records with 1,600 bear conflicts. In the surrounding mountains, huckleberries and other fare were limited due to summer drought. But in the lower elevations of the Missoula Valley, chokecherry, hawthorn, serviceberry, and other natural foods were bountiful, resulting in “bearmageddon,” as Jonkel describes it. He estimates 200 bears poured into the Missoula Valley, each trying to consume 20,000 calories or so per day in preparation for winter hibernation. Many found it hard to pass up easy meals.

“In the Rattlesnake alone, we had upwards of 40 bears working the garbage can circuit that year,” Jonkel says. “It was a circus trying to keep up with all the calls.”

Yet as bear conflicts hit a fever pitch, a big change was afoot at Missoula City Hall, one that should vastly decrease the number of human-food-conditioned black bears in coming years. By unanimous vote, both the City of Missoula and Missoula County adopted new requirements for residences to use certified bear-resistant trash containers. This made Missoula the largest BearSmart Community in the nation, a distinction 25 years in the making, and a model other westerncities, including Bozeman, are looking to emulate.

MAKING THE ROUNDS A black bear cruises the University of Montana campus searching for unsecured trash and other human handouts.
Photo by Rob G. Green


DEMAGNETIZING THE ATTRACTANTS

The Bear Smart Community program was first developed in Canada in the early 2000s, then adapted for the United States by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC) in 2022.

“It aims to prevent human-bear conflicts before they happen by addressing the root causes—unsecured garbage and other human attractants—with the goal of keeping people safe and reducing the number of bears FWP has to kill or relocate,” says Ken McDonald, chief of FWP’s Wildlife Division. “It’s also essentially neighbors helping neighbors.”

McDonald says FWP often has to euthanize bears habituated to human foods (hence the saying, “a fed bear is a dead bear”), as relocated bears, even when they’re released miles away, often return. Bears that hover near homes and cabins looking to raid human attractants usually must be trapped and euthanized to protect human safety.

The four-step Bear Smart program starts with a community naming members of a Bear Smart committee to assess how and where bear-human conflicts are taking place and then craft a detailed plan to address those issues. The fourth and final step is carrying out that action plan.

Missoula’s Bear Smart Committee includes FWP bear experts, representatives from the two waste-disposal companies (Republic Services and Grizzly Disposal), conservation nonprofits, as well as city and county officials and community volunteers.

“If there was ever a place for a Bear Smart Community, it’s Missoula, home of the University of Montana Grizzlies,” says committee member Chris Servheen, who served the past three years as president and chair of the Montana Wildlife Federation. Prior to that he worked as grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) for 35 years. USFWS’s current grizzly bear recovery coordinator, Hilary Cooley, works on campus at the university along with at least 10 other bear biologists. In fact, Missoula may well be home to more wildlife biologists per capita than any city on earth, one reason the bear smart idea has been brewing there for a quarter-century.

As early as 2000, neighborhood “bear aware” groups began to form and advocate for limiting human attractants. Their first win came in 2006 with an ordinance to end intentional feeding of wildlife (with the exception of bird feeders) within city limits.

Jonkel says Missoula’s topography is a bear magnet. “In late summer into fall this bowl-shaped valley is still lined with green riparian habitat. The mountain ranges all around might be dry, but three sizable rivers and a dozen smaller drainages flowing in from every direction are covered in chokecherry, hawthorn, and other natural foods,” he says. What’s more, the city’s large urban deer herd produces newborn fawns that bears prey upon, and thousands of apple and other fruit trees have been planted around the valley. “Combine that with all the people living here who have unsecured garbage, bird feeders, dog food, and other attractants, and you’ve got both a natural food cornucopia and a death trap for bears once they get hooked on human foods.”

HOT STUFF A heat map from 2011 shows the hot spots for bear conflicts in Missoula. Source: Jerod Merkle

In 2009, Jonkel helped launch a missoulabears.org website and Facebook page, which still serve as primary information resources to help reduce human-bear conflicts and increase community engagement.

The City of Missoula established a buffer zone in 2010 requiring bear-resistant trash containers if left outdoors overnight along with other measures to limit attractants in the Rattlesnake, East Missoula, Grant Creek, South Hills, and Miller Creek areas. “That was only semi-successful because those locations are only partly within the city,” Jonkel says. “You might have one side of a street with bear-resistant trash cans and the other without. We needed Missoula County on board, too, for this to truly work. It only takes one person with an unsecured trash can or dog food on their porch to train 10 bears.”

In 2016, Missoula modified a fencing ordinance to allow electric fences around garbage storage facilities, orchards, gardens, and chicken coops. But as bear conflicts continued to escalate, and as Missoula’s population grew, so did complaints from the public. The stakes increased in the fall of 2021 after FWP confirmed Missoula’s first resident grizzly in decades in the North Hills between town and the Snowbowl ski area—an adult female with three cubs captured on a game camera. Less than 24 hours later, those bears raided a chicken coop. Before the week was out, a North Hills rancher reported they’d broken into an abandoned cabin. FWP wardens found unsecured garbage outside the cabin and a freezer full of rotting meat within. These grizzlies continued to raid cabins and garages into the fall but avoided capture.

The following spring, a mountain biker discovered a severed grizzly bear leg lying in the middle of the Snowbowl access road. What caused the amputation remains a mystery, but in late May, FWP biologists managed to capture two of the grizzly offspring— one missing a front leg—in Twin Creek northeast of Bonner. It’s still unknown what became of the mother bear and the other sibling.

Since then, FWP has documented additional grizzly activity in the Missoula area, “but so far none have exhibited food-conditioned behavior,” Jonkel says.

Luckily the same measures Missoula is taking to limit attractants for black bears should also help discourage grizzlies.

In 2023, the city and county adopted new regulations for using IGBC-certified, bear-resistant trash containers delivered to most residences by local waste-collection companies. To give these companies time to purchase and distribute the upgraded cans, Missoula crafted a three-phase rollout that started in May 2024 with the Rattlesnake and Grant Creek areas, followed by the University of Montana, Pattee Canyon, and Farview areas in May 2025. By May 2026, most of the valley should be switched over to bear-resistant cans and dumpster enclosures.

SCRATCH AND SNIFF Bear-resistant trash cans keep bruins at bay but play nice with garbage truck dumping mechanisms. Photo courtesy of Missoula Conservation District

As Missoula prepared to approve the new regulations, the nearby small community of Potomac in the lower Blackfoot Valley asked to join in. In recent years, grizzlies have become much more common in the Blackfoot. One huge male grizzly caught on camera in Potomac looked nearly as big as the dumpster it was sifting through.

“To me the most amazing part is that Potomac residents raised their hands and said, ‘Regulate us, too,’” says Radley Watkins, executive director of the Missoula Conservation District. “We’re talking about a rural community where regulations are not normally viewed as favorable, but they said, ‘Please loop us in.’ I can’t think of another time where I’ve seen a community like that ask to be regulated.”

Jonkel says bear complaints from Potomac have dropped significantly since residents switched to bear-resistant trash containers. “The year before the ordinance kicked in, things were insane all over Missoula County. Our management approaches of trapping, relocating, and euthanizing just weren’t working. But once the community removed the main attractant, there was a marked change in conflicts.”

Bert Lindler is also a member of Missoula’s Bear Smart Committee and a longtime volunteer at area “bear aware” events. He lives in Missoula’s Grant Creek neighborhood, where he has served on homeowner associations and neighborhood councils since the 1990s.

“This area has struggled with bear problems for more than two decades,” he says. “The night before trash day used to be a bear block party up here. We worked with the trash companies to arrange a later pickup to help residents put trash out the day of collection, and the problem is largely resolved now that everyone has switched to bear-resistant trash cans. We still have bears occasionally getting into trouble, but they’re not roaming the streets at 3 a.m. anymore knocking over every can.”

FRUIT NINJA Apple trees offer up an irresistible delicacy to bears, drawing them into a death zone for conflicts with people. Photo by Laura Verhaghe



GOOD IDEAS ARE CONTAGIOUS

Montana is home to an estimated 13,000 black bears, which roam every corner of the state, along with an expanding population of roughly 1,500 grizzlies. Although Missoula is now America’s largest Bear Smart Community, it wasn’t the first. That prize goes to the tiny historic mining town of Virginia City, Montana, population 242.

A destination for thousands of visitors headed to Yellowstone National Park, it’s also situated along a popular corridor for bears. Virginia City Mayor Justin Gatewood says when he moved there in 2001, bear encounters in town were common- place as bruins took advantage of unse- cured trash cans.

“We had bears toppling trash cans right on historic Main Street,” he says. “They got very conditioned to an all-you-can-eat buffet right in the middle of town. Then as a community we changed out all the garbage cans for bear-proof containers starting in 2017. It’s made an enormous difference. The town feels much safer, and we have far fewer food-conditioned bears causing problems.” Virginia City began this effort more than 10 years ago, bolstered by a range of partners including People and Carnivores and a USFWS Cooperative Recovery Initiative grant that paid for bear-resistant steel garbage cans in downtown and a secure dumpster site for residents.

With Missoula joining the effort, this program is catching the attention of other towns across Montana. Whitefish, Gardiner, Big Sky, Alberton, Choteau, and Polebridge are all at various stages of becoming Bear Smart communities.

“Knowing how many communities are struggling with bear conflicts, it’s really encouraging to see all that interest,” says FWP wildlife research assistant Lori Roberts, who headed up the committee that crafted the Bear Smart program. “I see community members, nonprofits, and other groups using our templates to approach their community to say, ‘Hey, we know there is a problem, and here are some proven ways we can help reduce bear conflicts and increase human safety.’

“FWP staff do our best to educate each individual household, but there are only so many of us,” she says. “When a community rallies around the Bear Smart idea, though, you really start to see a large reduction in bear conflicts. It’ll never be zero, but we can substantially reduce it.”