Yosemite National Park’s innovates and educational black bear program KeepBearsWild.org

Yosemite National Park is working to keep its black bears and visitors safe. Historically, the park’s bear population was used as a tourist attraction with garbage filled feeding pits where visitors could get an up close view of a real live bear. It was very popular, but when the pits were closed, the bears learned they could find the human food in cars and campsites. This caused serious human-wildlife conflicts in the park. Today the effects still linger, but a new program: KeepBearsWild.org has been developed to help humans and bears avoid any conflicts. It’s a new website, hoping to reach a younger generation, that allows park visitors to better understand how to be safe around bears and gain a greater understanding of Yosemite’s bear population. Sonia Aronson and her colleagues at the Media Enterprise Alliance School report on the successes and impact of the park’s new Keep Bears Wild program.