[pct-l] Why remove bear lockers

[Marion Davison]

When we hiked the JMT in 1996 we had an extensive conversation with a 
backcountry ranger in Yosemite on this topic.  We were complaining about 
the fact that Sequoia-Kings Cyn had bear lockers scattered all over the 
backcountry while Yosemite had scarcely any.  The ranger explained that 
each national park is sovereign, in a sense.  Its primary mission is to 
preserve its unique resource.  Therefore each national park makes its 
own rules as it sees fit, to preserve its unique resource.  So there was 
no point in expecting Yosemite to follow the same rules as SEKI.
The Yosemite rangers object to the backcountry bear lockers because 
their very presence creates backcountry campground "ghettoes" with large 
numbers of people camped in close proximity to the box every night.  The 
area around the box gets trampled and overused.  They would much prefer 
that everyone use a bear can and camp well off trail, out of sight, and 
highly dispersed from other users. I suspect that the SEKI rangers have 
come to the same conclusion, and that may be the primary reason they are 
considering removing the bear boxes.
Why are Northern California bears so much less likely to bother hikers? 
  The answer to this is really easy.  In the national parks, bears are 
not  hunted.  So you find the worst "gangsta" bears in the national 
parks.  They are habituated to approaching humans, having nothing to 
fear from us.  Outside the parks, bears are hunted during bear season, 
so they are much more fearful of human contact.
The best large chunks of wild high-altitude territory in the Sierras are 
within the national park boundaries, so we used to do most of our hiking 
within the parks.  In 2003 we spent 50 nights in SEKI and Yosemite 
backcountries in  the summer, and we had annoying "gangsta" bears in our 
camp on 8 of those nights, despite using bear cans and keeping a clean 
camp.  Since then we have stayed out of the parks, hiked with a big dog, 
and haven't seen a single bear.  We sleep a lot better at night.
Marion