Don’t Feed the Bears Act of 2025

This legislation aims to prohibit the intentional feeding of bears on Federal public lands to end the hunting practice known as bear baiting and reduce dangerous interactions between people and bears. It addresses concerns that feeding bears, even for hunting, habituates them to human food, leading to increased conflicts, property damage, and potential safety threats to humans, often resulting in bears being killed as "nuisance animals." The bill mandates that the Secretary of the Interior enforce existing regulations on National Park System lands and wildlife refuge areas to explicitly prohibit bear baiting. Furthermore, the Secretary of the Interior, for Bureau of Land Management lands, and the Secretary of Agriculture, for National Forest System lands, are required to adopt and enforce new regulations within one year to ban intentional bear feeding, including for hunting purposes. These regulations will include an exception for extraordinary cases when bear feeding is determined to be necessary for the welfare of the bear, the preservation of public safety, or for authorized wildlife research. This comprehensive approach seeks to align federal land management practices with the widely accepted principle of not feeding wildlife.