Smokies cities make strides toward ensuring bear, human safety with new trash bins

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to an estimated 1,900 black bears—about two per square mile—with more than 14,500 of these iconic mammals roaming the four-state mountain region. Bears share their territory with increasing numbers of human neighbors, which can lead to conflict that turns dangerous for bears and people alike. Gateway communities around the park and initiatives like BearWise are working to address these issues, raising awareness among residents, visitors, and businesses about best practices for wildlife conservation.

One such community, the City of Gatlinburg, recently committed $2.8 million to eliminate what had been a dependable smorgasbord for downtown bears. The city is distributing 460 bear-resistant dumpsters to the restaurants, hotels, and other businesses spread through its urban core.

“Gatlinburg has eliminated a really large non-natural food source for these bears,” said Janelle Musser, black bear support biologist for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. “So that’s really important, because that’s going to keep bears healthier in general, and it’s going to keep people safe too.”

Gatlinburg’s population has exploded dramatically in recent decades, whether tallied in terms of human residents, bears, or visitors. Since the early 1990s, the population of black bears in Great Smoky Mountains National Park has roughly tripled, while the number of human residents in Sevier County, where Gatlinburg is located, has doubled. The short-term population has ballooned as well—the park recorded 63 percent more visits in 2023 than it did in 1990.

“That in and of itself is going to create more conflict,” Musser said.

Higher populations mean more chances for humans and bears to cross paths—and more trash luring bears into human communities.

The dumpster program rolling out this year aims to reduce those interactions. Implemented through a September 2023 ordinance from the Gatlinburg City Commission, the program provides $2.8 million for 460 bear-resistant dumpsters, which the city’s sanitation department is now distributing to its customers. The city will own and maintain the dumpsters, while customers pay $75 each month for trash collection and maintenance. The switch will be complete by December 31, when the city will stop collecting trash from privately owned dumpsters.

The dumpsters are expensive—about $6,000 apiece—but with a functional design that latches automatically when the door is closed, they’ve proven effective.

“Those dumpsters really are working, and you can see that just by looking at them,” Musser said. “They are covered in muddy pawprints.”

Gatlinburg is not the only Smokies city making strides to secure its garbage. In 2021, the City of Asheville launched a program offering its residents 95-gallon bear-resistant trash carts that automatically lock when the lid is closed. The program costs customers $10 per month with a minimum one-year commitment.

“They have proved so popular, there has been a rotating waiting list since the program was introduced,” said Kim Miller, communications specialist for the city.

Asheville has distributed more than 1,800 carts so far, purchasing 340 more in 2024 and approving funding for an additional 340 carts in the new fiscal year. The city also works with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission to pursue and test third-party options, such as straps to retrofit existing trash carts. Thanks to “in-house” ursine testers at the WNC Nature Center, the city determined that the straps are indeed able to withstand the bears’ attempts to overcome them.

“These locks provide residents with peace of mind knowing that their trash is secure and inaccessible to wildlife, helping to reduce potential conflicts and promote coexistence,” said Sanitation Division Manager Jes Foster.

Additionally, a free food scrap drop-off program operated in partnership with Buncombe County aims to reduce unwanted bear interactions while also cutting waste. It’s available in locations throughout Asheville and Buncombe County.

All these efforts seem to be making a difference. In 2020, the city received 182 bear-related complaints from its residents. In 2023, it logged only 28 such calls.

Keeping bears out of dumpsters may sound like a trivial goal, but it’s critical to preserving the health and safety of both people and bears. Most bears prefer natural foods, like acorns and berries, a much healthier diet than the leftover pizza slices and french fries they might find in a restaurant dumpster. Reliance on trash as a food source can have more immediate, deadly consequences. When bears learn to associate humans with food, they can become aggressive and dangerous—putting humans at risk, but also endangering the bear’s life by diminishing its natural fear of people. When such bears cause property damage and physical injury to people and pets as a result, wildlife professionals are forced to euthanize them.

“The dumpsters have been a huge improvement in guaranteeing that we can coexist with the bears, which is ultimately what everyone in Gatlinburg wants,” said Marlee Montgomery, facilitator for the Smokies BearWise task force.

Montgomery, who in addition to serving as president of the family business Montgomery Amusements is also on the board of directors for the Gatlinburg Chamber of Commerce, said that the business community seems pleased with the new dumpsters. Musser concurred, saying that restaurant managers she’s spoken with talked about “how fantastic it’s been not to have to clean up trash all the time.”

But the bears of Gatlinburg are used to finding their meals in town, and that expectation won’t change overnight. Thwarted by the new dumpsters, bears are likely to look for unsecured residential trash cans, outdoor grills, birdfeeders, and unlocked cars. Those sources are more hit-and-miss than the dependably full dumpsters, but preventing bears from accessing them is still vital to breaking their reliance on human food. While no hard data is yet available, Montgomery reported an anecdotal increase in bear activity at trash receptacles other than the dumpsters, a “very enlightening” finding pointing to the widespread participation needed to address the issue.

“We thought the main issue was the dumpsters, but in truth, it’s all of the trash,” she said.

Bear management is not a new domain for Gatlinburg’s government. The city has been partnering with TWRA since 1999 to reduce human-bear encounters within city limits. Over the following year, a city ordinance established a zone in which bear-resistant dumpsters and garbage cans were required and a TWRA rule prohibited intentional bear feeding in city limits, as well as within the Chalet Village North Subdivision. Since 2002, Gatlinburg and TWRA have split the cost of a bear management officer position, a trained TWRA wildlife officer who deals with conflict bear issues, educates citizens and visitors, conducts routine garbage can compliance checks, and guides city leaders on how to reduce bear attractants.

“The city has taken this very seriously for the better part of two, going on three decades,” said Seth Butler, director of operations and communications for the city.

In the past, relocating problem bears has been a go-to management tool for wildlife officials, but the numbers show that’s no longer a viable option. In 2020, for example, TWRA relocated 24 bears from Gatlinburg and euthanized nine, but its call volume for bear-related complaints didn’t change “one bit,” Musser said. Meanwhile, new research has shown that relocation is often a death sentence for bears—a study of 32 GPS-collared bears relocated between 2015 and 2021 showed that 62 percent were harvested, killed on roads, or euthanized due to conflict with humans, while 22 percent simply returned to their original home.

Musser said she gets bear-related calls from “pretty much every part of Sevier County,” but Gatlinburg is an epicenter for these issues—in 2023, 14 of the 33 bears TWRA handled and 154 of the 1,230 bear-related calls it received were located there. Five of these bears were relocated, and nine were euthanized.

Gatlinburg’s location at the busiest entrance to America’s busiest national park, which also holds some of the best black bear habitat in the Appalachians, guarantees that humans and bears will continue to cross paths there. That’s why, when the Smokies BearWise task force relaunched in 2019, it focused its efforts on Gatlinburg. In January 2023, the task force wrote the city a letter requesting action.

“For human safety as well as economic stability, and to protect this iconic form of life in the Smokies, we need to stop the intentional and unintentional feeding of black bears in developed areas in park gateway communities,” the letter read. “We therefore request support from the City of Gatlinburg for city- and county-wide programs raising awareness and implementing bear-resistant garbage containers throughout Sevier County. With Gatlinburg leading the way, our hope is that other park gateway communities will adapt the same policies and ordinances.”

In response, the city passed the September 2023 ordinance, which in addition to establishing the dumpster program slightly expanded the zone in which these dumpsters must be used.

“We hope that taking the steps we’re taking of trying to be good stewards is going to be something that people can look at and say, ‘Gatlinburg did something good there, to not only make their town better but to make sure the bears are kept safe,’” Butler said.

Musser and Montgomery both applauded Gatlinburg’s efforts but said there is still more to be done to protect bears in the city. The next priority is to ensure that trash receptacles throughout the city are bear-resistant.

“Now that the bears can’t find what they’re looking for in the dumpsters, they are much more eager to expand their boundaries,” Musser said.

Before advocating for new regulations, Smokies BearWise will explore funding options for trash can purchases. Truly bear-resistant products are expensive, and requiring their use without offering a program to defray the cost could impose financial hardship on Gatlinburg residents.

Managing interactions between the myriad bears and people flowing through Gatlinburg each day is a never-ending job, but the city is making progress—and leading the way. In May, the Tennessee Department of Transportation installed 80 bear-resistant trash cans along seven scenic byway routes, with 50 deployed to East Tennessee locations. The program is part of an ongoing effort to reduce roadside litter, which is also a magnet for bears.

“That was exciting to see,” Montgomery said. “I know there’s been some reluctance from the surrounding cities and counties to jump on board, but I really think that with what they’ve seen in Gatlinburg and how successful that’s been, the tide is changing.”