Banning alcohol helps tremendously. Drunken teenagers used to make 30-foot dives in an area called the Cliffs at Nevada's Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Injuries were commonplace. A prohibition on drinking in that part of the park in 1995 has cut the number of plunges from roughly a dozen a year to two or three. In Glacier National Park, rangers are experimenting with Karelian bear dogs from Finland and western Russia, trained to chase bears away from roads and populated areas.
Preliminary results look good, the rangers say.
In the Great Smoky Mountains, bear attacks are down because rangers fastidiously clean up picnic areas in the evenings. They'll capture a bear at the first sign of nighttime foraging at campsites, tag it, and release it in the same area. The hope is that the capture is a greater negative stimulus than the positive reinforcement of finding food. The experimental program has been a success, according to Great Smoky Mountains parks resource management specialist Carroll Schell. The bear incident rate in targeted areas has dropped to almost zero.