Living Off Industry SpoilsPhotograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic
A mama grizzly bear and her two cubs scavenge for food in a Prudhoe Bay Dumpster and illustrate a major issue around Prudhoe Bay-animals becoming accustomed to feeding on human trash.
Prudhoe Bay is operated by BP, and ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil are also major owners of the oil field. Management has taken serious steps to try to control scavenging animals, like switching to Dumpsters with lids on them and educating workers not to feed bears or foxes.
"The oil companies did a really great job from the late 1990s until the last four or five years, and they are still doing pretty well in the oil field itself. But in the community of Deadhorse, which is right outside of the fields, things have really been slipping a bit," said Dick Shideler. Shideler fears that local bears, which were painstakingly and sometimes lethally weaned off scavenging in the late 1990s, may become food-conditioned all over again with a growing influx of new workers. |