Could brainy bears be more likely to raid Denali Park campsites after feasting at nearby bait stations?

Scientists attending an international conference on bears in Anchorage this week attested to the intelligence of bruins, with one expert saying they are as smart as apes and others blasting a policy by the Alaska Board of Game that allows bear baiting on state land outside Denali National Park and Preserve.

The state's policy outside the northeast corner of the park could put campers at risk because the bear-baiting stations might give bears a taste for the kinds of human-provided food they might find at campsites, said Stephen Stringham, a longtime bear researcher from Soldotna and author of several books on the animals.

He said the Board of Game policy appears to be from "a different universe of management" than the one biologists typically engage in. Biologists usually try to prevent bears from becoming "food-conditioned" in areas where they might interact with humans, said Stringham.

The issue arose on Monday at the 24th International Conference on Bear Research and Management, a multiday event attended by ursine scientists from around the world.

Game Board chairman Ted Spraker said that "food-conditioning" is a longtime myth. He said bears become "site-conditioned" and will return to sites they've visited, but not because of the food.

If bears could become food-conditioned, they'd all be "in town, eating all the doughnuts at Safeway," Spraker said.

Don Young, the area biologist in Fairbanks for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said bear-baiting occurs not just on state land outside the park's northeastern boundary but on a huge swath of Interior Alaska where hundreds of bear-baiting stations are set up.

He said it's possible that campers across that region could set up a site near a bait station.

[This black bear got its head stuck in an old coffee can near Tok]

But it's more likely to happen near Denali because the area draws tourists looking to camp, including visitors to the abandoned bus in which "Into the Wild" subject Chris McCandless died in 1992, Stringham said.

Stringham and other biologists at the conference said bears are smart and will return to the same spot for years if they've associated it with a meal.

Stringham said examples of bear intelligence include the 20 or so techniques they have for catching salmon, including sitting in a creek facing downstream, creating an eddy for fish to rest in — and from where they can easily be nabbed.

University of Tennessee professor Gordon Burghardt said at the conference that bears can learn as quickly as apes.

In the early 1970s, Burghardt took in a pair of orphaned black bear cubs that had been found in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park — when that sort of thing wasn't frowned upon. He also studied bears in the park.

Despite their large brains, at the time bears were viewed as "basically big noses" with limited sight and smarts, he said.

But Burghardt was able to show that bears could see in color. He also learned they could essentially "count" — or estimate small quantities of items — when he repeatedly placed three raisins under 10 cups. The bears stopped bothering to knock over cups once they'd found all three raisins.

[Video: Watch an expert demonstrate use of bear spray]

Jennifer Vonk, a professor at Oakland University in Michigan who did not attend the conference, said Tuesday that bears learn some skills faster than apes and other primates.

She's studied bears using computer touch screens — the bruins select items with their noses and tongues — and found that some can quickly learn to separate one bear species from another or distinguish between photos of real animals versus animal figurines.

Vonk said a graduate student at Oakland University, Zoe Johnson-Ulrich, is finding in a study now underway that bears are quicker learners than tigers, and more persistent when figuring out how to get food from a box using a drawer, sliding door and other openings.

"The bears keep trying until they find a solution," Vonk said.

That kind of persistence could be a problem if bears from Denali learn at the bear-baiting stations to associate campers with food, said Nancy Bale, a member of Denali Citizens Council who attended the conference.

Bale said the group, a voice for citizens interested in the park's management, is worried that a bear attracted to human food at a baiting station might pillage campsites and threaten campers in the park or outside it, she said.

"We're all holding our breath" hoping something bad doesn't happen, she said.