The area where "Yogi" most resembles a real-life black bear is his persistant cunning in obtaining "picanic baskets", and this is the real topic of this article. The original inspiration for the cartoon was the antics of the black bears of Yellowstone Park. The "yogis" of Yellowstone are no more. Reportedly, hundreds of these bears were shot by the rangers in the early 1970's; eradicating populations of black bears that had lived for generations by begging and pilfering from the tourists. Thus, the real-life counterpart to Yogi Bear had his life ended by the barrel of a rifle. The current black bear population lives on natural foods and is wary of and avoids humans, which is how the rangers feel it should be, and who could disagree with them? Yellowstone is meant to be a sanctuary for WILD animals.
But the legend never-the-less continues on in other parks, especially Yosemite in California, The Porcupine Mountains Park in Upper Michigan and The Great Smoky Mountains Park in the Appalachians. Here, black bears show off their cunning, resourcefulness and sheer determination in obtaining "picanic baskets" and much else from unwary tourists. They continue the Legend of Yogi in a way that would make the old bear proud. Lest you think this is a joke, at times in both Yosemite and The Porcupines the black bears have succeeded in stealing the food of as much as 2/3ds of all the visitors. The rangers in these parks, though, would be horrified at the wholesale slaughter that the Yellowstone administration resorted to. They do have to kill bears at times but they really hate to do it. A ranger at Yosemite said it really tears him up to shoot a bear after he has looked into those gentle, warm, trusting, brown eyes. The bears in these areas do not live in anything that could be called true wilderness and there seems to be no point in trying to hold them to the same standard of wildness.
