The Story of Garbage Bear

Nature Photography by Barbara Jordan

Garbage Bear

In June of 1996 I traveled to Alaska to photograph wildlife, primarily humpback whales. I was scheduled to leave from Petersburg aboard the Delphinus with Captain Ronn Paterson. I had heard from other photographers that the dump in Ketchikan was inhabited by a large number of bears that fed at the dumpsite, so I decided to head to Alaska a couple of days early and visit the Ketchikan area with the hope of photographing some black bears. I arrived late in the evening in Ketchikan.

There were still a few hours of daylight, so I headed out to the dump to see if I could spot any bears. I was at the dump only a few minutes when I saw a black bear rummaging through a trash pile. I approached the bear slowly, until I was about 30 feet away from it. The bear glanced my way a few times,then continued to dig through the huge trash mounds.

As I was photographing the bear I realized there appeared to a radio collar around the bear's neck. I took several pictures before the bear wandered deeper into the piles of trash. As I packed up my equipment and headed back to the car I felt really disappointed that the only bear I saw and photographed was a collared bear.

The next morning at breakfast, I was browsing through the local paper. On the front page was an article about the garbage dump bears. The article gave the history of the dump. Two years prior to my visit, garbage dumping at the local site was prohibited since arrangements had been made to barge the garbage to another location for dumping. As a result, the local habituated bear population no longer had the food supply that had been available to them for years.

At the time the garbage dumping was stopped, the bears that fed at the dump were trapped, fitted with radio collars and transported to the mainland. The bears were tracked to make certain they did not find their way back to Ketchikan. Any bears successful in finding their way back were destroyed, since they were deemed to be a danger to humans, due to their habituation to human garbage.

The article went on to say that two days prior to my arrival a collared bear had been spotted in the Ketchikan area. The bear, referred to in the article as "garbage bear" had made the journey from the mainland to the island by swimming across the Behm Canal. Local law enforcement personnel were trying to locate the bear so that it could be destroyed.

I suddenly had this horrible, sick feeling inside. A sense of guilt penetrated my thoughts. How could I have been so disappointed that the only bear I saw and photographed was a radio collared bear. How incredible it is that this beautiful animal managed to find his way back to the dump where he had been raised, only to find the food supply was gone. I could not believe the bear I had photographed the night before was a "wanted bear." The bear's only reward for such an amazing trip from the mainland was a death sentence.

I will always remember Garbage Bear and that his habituation was what led to his death sentence.