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Dear friend,
The bear baiting season has started in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and it will follow soon in 10 other states that allow this unsporting and reckless practice. It’s a practice that hunting writer Ted Williams rightly labels as “garbaging for bears.”
It's because bear baiting is so rotten that U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar’s “Don’t Feed the Bears Act of 2025” is so important. His bill, H.R. 4422, prohibits bear baiting on public lands managed by federal agencies, including the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and other federal land managers.
Bear baiters are already setting up garbage sites on millions of acres of our federal lands to lure bears into shooting range. The garbage piles are a set-up by guides to offer an easy kill to fee-paying hunters to shoot the unsuspecting animals in the back with an arrow or a rifle.
The National Park Service strongly opposes bear baiting, including in Alaska where there is hunting on millions of acres of national preserves in the state. On its website, NPS says that bait stations amount to 'feeding the bears’— exactly what we don't want to see in parks because bears become food conditioned.” The authorities at NPS note that “bears defend bait stations as they would any other food source, and can be dangerous for hikers or other visitors in the area.” Agency leaders continue with their emphatic opposition to the practice by noting that “bait stations are more likely to bring bears and people into contact and create conflicts, which could result in public safety risks, bears killed in defense of life and property, or both.”
If these demerits on bear baiting are true on national parklands, they are equally true on national forest lands. The lands may be designated differently by the Congress, but the bears behave the same way no matter the sign on the front entrance. Wrong in the parks, wrong in the forests, too.
More than 220 organizations, representing animal protection and conservation, are backing the Don’t Feed the Bears Act. Hunting should not feature garbage heaps and rigged kills like this.
Baiting Seasons Opening Right Now in a Dozen States
Hunting guides who bait typically “guarantee” a kill for their fee-paying clients. It’s a no kill, no pay arrangement.
I don’t call that hunting. I call it an ambush.
The poor creatures don’t have a chance. And it’s all for a trophy.
According to a recent investigation from Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, there are 10,000 bears shot over bait sites on our federal lands, mostly in the fall, when bears are preparing for hibernation. (A few states allow bear baiting in the spring when mother bears have dependent cubs, dooming the entire family group.)
That’s right: bait piles are being hauled into some of America’s most treasured landscapes so that bears — black bears and, in Alaska, even grizzlies — can be gunned down with their rumps and backs exposed as their heads are buried in a heap of odorous, rotting food.
So we are sounding the alarm and shining a spotlight on the activity. The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management tell hikers, campers, and other forest users to “never feed bears.” But they are allowing trophy hunters and guides to put out millions of pounds of food for bears just to shoot them. These agencies should replicate the policies of the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in banning bear baiting on their lands.
Here's a Place Where Animal Advocates and Many Hunters Can Find Common Ground
“Baiting orphans cubs. Baiting is not hunting at all as it requires no woodsmanship skills and no empathy for the game,” said Dave Petersen, a lifelong hunter and editor of “A Hunter’s Heart.” “Baiting is a crutch for fakers and losers. Baiting gives honorable hunting a bad name.”
Ted Williams, winner of the prestigious Circle of Chiefs award from the Outdoor Writers Association of America, wrote a compelling news story for Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. “Garbaging for Bears” exposes how bear baiting defies the norms of ethical hunting and responsible wildlife management.
The Don’t Feed the Bears Act builds upon a landmark 2024 federal rulemaking by the National Park Service that banned bear baiting on 20 million acres of national preserves in Alaska — a rule that trophy hunters are urging the Trump administration to overturn.
The idea that such baiting was ever allowed on National Park Service land defies reason and good sense.
Will you make a donation today to help us end the cruelty of bear baiting and push Congress to pass the Don’t Feed the Bears Act?
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