“New analysis of more than 300 bear encounters suggests our canine companions often increase odds of conflict and rarely serve as early warning systems many recreationists assume,” reads a subhead in Mountain Journal. The thing is, that study reaches no such conclusion. But you have to read beyond the abstract to understand that.
Mountain Journal is not alone. Let’s look at a brief list of takeaways published elsewhere just to establish that none of them seem to know how to read science.
“A new peer-reviewed study, The Canine Conundrum: Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country?, dug into conflicts similar to what the video depicts, by analyzing 326 reported human-bear conflicts from 1901 to 2023 involving dogs.”
“The study found 54 per cent of conflicts were started by dogs. In the encounters researchers included in the study, five people and 56 dogs were killed, and 170 people were injured.”
“Lana Ciarniello, an independent researcher who co-authored the study, said researchers found when a person goes hiking with at least one other person, the odds of a negative bear encounter decrease by 50 per cent.”
“However, when a dog is involved, the chances of a negative bear encounter increase because ‘a dog really adds a chaotic factor into the mix of recreation,’ said Ciarniello.”
Again, the study finds no data supporting that conclusion.
“Hiking with your pet dog may make you feel safer in bear country—but a hiker’s recent encounter and a new study prove that the numbers don’t add up,” writes Backpacker, which is now part of Outside. The numbers don’t add up to support this take.
There’s plenty more examples, but all are equally dumb, so I’ll stop there.
How did so many people get this so wrong? Three reasons: 1) the study is published behind a paywall, with only the abstract freely available. 2) the methodology sets out to create work relevant to a hyper-specific audience, not the public. And 3) the dataset studied is almost absurdly limited and doesn’t bear (get it?!) comparison to wider information.
Let’s work through all three.
The Problem is Money
I understand the irony, since I’m writing about this on a subscription-model newsletter, but information wants to be free. The study is published by The Wildlife Society and costs $16 to access. Reprinting it is specifically prohibited by the terms of use, so I can only share snippets and my conclusions with you here.
Having worked as a journalist for 24 years, I can report with some authority that journalists are both lazy and cheap. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that much of the material you’re seeing written about this study is drawn from the freely-available abstract (above) only, and not a deep dive into its methodology or data.
And that’s a problem, because abstracts are where researchers are able to break from their numbers and editorialize their opinions about conclusions. So what’s getting reported isn’t based on numbers, it’s based on an opinion designed for a specific audience, not the general public.
Hell yeah ladies, kick that bear’s ass.
The Methodology is Designed to Support a Predetermined Conclusion
One of the biggest issues with the science that everyone likes to cite about bear spray’s efficacy is that no one understands that study was designed for a specific audience, looking for a specific answer. And since that audience is not the public, and our safety was not the question being asked, its conclusion is rendered irrelevant to our needs.
Yes, I’m talking about Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska, which was created by Tom Smith and Stephen Herrero, two of the same scientists who put together this dog-bear conflict analysis.
In the spray study, the purpose was to present relevant agencies with the information they needed to issue their field workers with bear spray. As such, incidents where people were unable to access the spray or similarly failed to get it deployed in time were excluded from the results, and only incidents they deemed successful were included.
Could a ranger roll down their vehicle’s window and scare a bear away from a dumpster by spraying it? Turns out the answer was yes, and that was good enough for the purposes of that study. The sample size of actual bear attacks—the thing you and I would want bear spray to provide a solution to, was too small to draw conclusions from, and didn’t indicate success in that role.
Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country? has similar limitations.
“Insights provided here are intended to help wildlife managers create effective guidelines regarding the presence of domestic dogs in bear habitat,” is explained clearly by the study’s text.
To conduct the study, Smith and Herrero went looking for publicly available reports of dog-bear conflicts:
“All incidents included in our analysis involved at least one bear, one dog, and one person who was at immediate risk of injury (e.g., not in a protective structure such as a cabin or vehicle), injured, or killed,” explains the report’s methodology.
Why is that a problem? “We recognize that data used in this study are biased in that people generally only report adverse interactions with bears, not benign ones. Consequently, we assume that for the most part, people and their dogs pass through bear country without incident.”
As was the problem with the bear spray study, people are drawing conclusions here from a study that was never intended to be relevant to the general public.
The Smith-Herrero database famously excludes Alaska’s Defense of Life and Property records, which are elsewhere considered the largest and most authoritative source on human-bear conflict.
The Dataset is Absurdly Limited
A 2009 study conducted by the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife estimates that each year there are at least 43,000 documented complaints of human-bear conflict across North America.
Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country? Examined those reports for years ranging from 1901 to 2023, and only managed to find 326 such incidents that met the criteria explained above.
Let’s do some quick math, poorly. 43,000 incidents x 122 years = 5,246,000 total incidents of documented human-bear conflict. Smith and Herrero were only able to find 326 incidents that met their criteria for dog+human+bear+risk or occurrence of injury. That means there’s a 0.006 percent chance that the study’s conclusion—that dogs make bear encounters more dangerous—even gets a chance of occurring.
And remember, that’s only in documented conflicts. There’s no way to know how many people across North America run into a bear in any given year without any conflict, but it’s probably safe to assume that the total number is well in excess of 43,000.
And, dig deeper into the study and you can find further restrictions that skew its conclusions even more.
“While the people involved in these incidents did not report the level of training their dogs had received, it is our assumption that most were untrained companion dogs as opposed to well-trained bear dogs, such as Karelians and livestock guardian breeds that have proven to be significant aids in bear country,” the study’s methodology explains.
And that’s a problem, because an ongoing study here in Montana is finding that the simple presence of a Kangal like our youngest dog Teddy can reduce visits to private property from grizzly bears by 87.8 percent. In addition to being a badass, Teddy is also a companion animal. And in my admittedly limited sample size of the three dogs currently present in our living room, she’s no more effective than her mutt brothers.
Plenty of people own a dog capable of deterring bears, even if they didn’t set out to own a bear dog.
The real purpose of this study appears to be a recommendation that leashes are mandated and recreationists pursue training in their deterrent of choice. But that doesn’t make for sensational headlines.
Are There Any Real Takeaways Here?
Let’s throw some numbers around, just to try and get our hands around what the larger picture might look like for bears and dogs here.
The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates that 42.6 percent of American households own a dog. The Canadian Animal Health Institute says roughly 35 percent of households in Canuckistan own a dog.
In an attempt to create the worst possible result for dogs, let’s run with that 35 percent number. And given that outdoorsy and rural people are more likely to both own a dog, and have bear encounters, let’s just make a giant assumption and apply that number to those 43,000 conflicts documented annually.
If 35 percent of 43,000 human-bear encounters involve a dog, then we can assume that at least 15,050 dog-bear conflicts are occurring annually in North America. 15,050 x 122 = 1,836,100.
Smith and Herrero were only able to find 326 incidents that met their human, dog, chance or occurrence of injury criteria across 122 years. And only 170 documented human injuries. So, with all the obvious caveats about these numbers in no way describing reality beyond narrow study parameters, what they actually found is that your risk of injury if your dog tangles with a bear is only 0.009 percent.
I’ll take those odds next time I’m hiking my dogs in bear country.
Top photo: “Superintendent Horace Albright, eating pancakes with bears, at Lake Lodge, Yellowstone National Park.” NPS.
A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, plan outdoor adventures, and prepare for real life, and who promises he’s less salty in real life than he sometimes comes across as on the Internet.
Being a dog owner in Colorado who lives on property that backs up to open-space and I frequently walk with my dog in (black) bear frequented woods, I have had numerous encounters with bears while with my (leash-less) dog. I have yet to have what would be considered a negative experience with a bear. Once my dog chased the very large bear and I thought that was the end of my dog. He popped back out of the bushes wagging his tail about 30 seconds (that felt like an eternity) later. Every other time the bear would just casually walk off and we would give them space and carry on. Of course I reported none of this so these positive interactions go unreported, which was my main takeaway from your excellent article. 😃 thanks for all your great stories and perspectives!
As an ecologist, statistician, and member of TWS I’m chagrined that this paper was published. I’m not going to write a review but just in a very quick cursory skim I see the paper is riddled with inferential errors partly resulting from their sampling methods to begin with. As mentioned, only human-bear encounters resulting in some altercation that ALSO involved dog presence were selected. NOT all bear-human conflict incidents.
So let’s go to the author’s initial (directional, mind you which would yield greater statistical power) null hypothesis: The presence of domestic dogs in bear habitat increases the probability of human-bear conflict because of the coevolutionary, antagonistic relationship between members of Ursidae and Canidae.
This hypothesis CANNOT be tested with the data collected! Specifically, preceding ‘because.’ They did NOT include bear incidents not involving dogs (let alone all interactions where there were no altercations and hence no reporting). This should have been caught by the reviewers and editors (and major professors or PIs).
Then the last half of the hypothesis, following the conjunction, is laughable and certainly would do Kipling proud (a just-so story).
There are many other criticisms easily found in this paper and ultimately it is of little value. A predetermined outcome, selective data harvest, incorrect inference. Extrapolations and the authors’ own prejudice were replete (I’m not going to quote directly but the statistics that they use to banish all hope in the good will of your dog) 35.9% of dogs did not come to the owner’s rescue: do the math! 2/3 of dogs did!
What is unfortunate is that , as Wes points out, people only read abstracts and this abstract will be used to justify companion dog restrictions on public lands under the guise of ‘science.’ It is poor science at best. And incorrect in that the data used, analyses performed, and inferences made do not support even the title.