Research 

Large predators are returning to landscapes where they have been absent for centuries, but human preferences complicate their recovery. Communities often resist predator recovery because of perceived risks, limiting what managers call social carrying capacity, or the level of human tolerance for coexisting with wildlife. Yet practical methods for measuring and integrating social carrying capacity into management decisions remain limited. To address this, we combine geospatial and survey data to model individual tolerance for the frequency and severity of grizzly bear encounters. The resulting estimates predict and map zip code-level tolerance across the region. Findings show that people tend to overestimate management’s tolerance of encounters than current federal guidelines. This approach provides a pragmatic tool to incorporate social carrying capacity into decisions about predator recovery and reintroduction, helping balance ecological goals with public acceptance. 

We collected wildlife risk perceptions from 688 Grand Teton National Park visitors during the summer of 2024. If a trailhead sign for wildlife risk was associated with a generic grizzly bear, 52 percent of respondents said they would either cancel their plans or move to a new trailhead. But if the grizzly bear was a celebrity (specifically, Grizzly 399), about half as many people (27 percent) said they would cancel or move. Among the visitors with knowledge about Grizzly 399, that number dropped to only 14  percent. Many more people continued with their plans when the heightened risk was associated with a celebrity animal, but they also said they would be more cautious. Understanding how people respond to changes in wildlife risk is important, but equally important is how these responses may differ across settings. The influence of wildlife celebrity status on visitor behavior matters when trying to protect people and animals in national parks and other public lands.