Rochester Eccentric: “Janine Dauzy saw a lot of black bears this summer.
She saw so many, in fact, that she knew the tag numbers on about 15 of them by heart. She recognized their individual behaviors – which one stole a granola bar from a campground and which was roaming with her cubs among tents, looking for food.
She even chased them from campsites, sounding noisemakers and yelling, “Get out of here, bear.”
“The bears in Yosemite are quite smart. They know when a ranger is there,” she said, adding that some are brazen enough to leave a campsite and then return as soon as the park staff has left the area.
Chasing bears away and educating campers about proper food storage was all in a day’s work for Dauzy, 22, a 2001 Rochester High School graduate. The Western Michigan University senior has been back at school for almost a week after spending nearly three months in the park working as a transportation interpreter intern at Yosemite National Park in California.
Ford Motor Co., the Student Conservation Association, National Park Foundation and National Park Service support the internship program that involved 40 students at 25 different sites this summer.”
Technorati Tags: bears, California, environment, education, yosemite