Add your name: It's time to end bear-baitng

Anyone who has spent any time in bear country has heard the adage: Don’t feed the bears. More than conventional wisdom, this protocol can save lives by establishing a boundary between bears and humans.

The practice of bear-baiting, where hunters dump hundreds of pounds of garbage, pastries, animal carcasses and other human-scented food items in the woods to lure bears into shooting distance, endangers bears and people alike by blurring the relationship between food and humans.

Though naturally skittish, bears tend to lose their fear of people when they are fed human food, and in turn can become destructive and aggressive. Each year, millions of dollars in property damage is caused each year by human-fed bears, with most of these bears eventually being euthanized.

Federal land management agencies prohibit private citizens from feeding bears on federal land, but the effectiveness of this policy is diminished by bear baiting (especially because bait stations are typically left behind after hunting season, where they can continue attracting bears).

Bears are charming and perceptive -- seeing one in the wild from a far distance can be safe and rewarding. But when bears lose their fear of humans through food exposure, they become desperate, unpredictable and dangerous.