Bears that become habituated to human food sources lose their fear of people and are typically killed as a result — a welfare tragedy rooted in human failure to secure food attractants.
Bears that access human food begin a process with a predictable tragic end. Each successful garbage raid reinforces the behavior; the bear becomes bolder; eventually human safety conflicts occur; the bear is shot. The welfare failure is collective: the individual bear pays with its life for human failure to secure food attractants. Managers sometimes describe this as the bear's fault — the reality is that it is an entirely human-caused death, preventable through consistent food storage practices that most communities fail to implement.