These regulations and precautions help decrease the chance of personal injury or property damage. However, bear damage and confrontations are still possible even when all of the above guidelines are followed. Continuing high levels of conflicts between humans and black bears have prompted the National Park Service to investigate a variety of methods to reduce these interactions. The goal is to keep the bear population wild and to retrain conditioned bears to subsist on natural food, rather than human food. Iin order to achieve this, the National Park Service provides intensive visitor education, strict food storage regulations, and is now experimenting with reconditioning of bears.
Bears are intelligent creatures and can learn from negative experiences.
Other agencies have been successful in retraining conditioned bears using loud noises, rubber bullets, and dogs. This summer, park rangers and biologists will be using non-lethal aversive tactics to chase bears out of developed areas of Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne Meadows. During your overnight stay, expect to see and hear park staff patrolling public areas for bears. You may hear park staff yelling at and chasing bears, sometimes with a Karelian bear dog. You may also see or hear park staff using a shotgun to shoot noisemakers or rubber projectiles at bears.