Thanks to the efforts of a few government agencies, campers can more easily stash their food at some backcountry sites in the Shoshone National Forest.

Last summer, a team from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the Shoshone and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services worked together to install three new food storage boxes in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

In July, the team packed the dismantled boxes on mules and horses to Granite and Beauty Lakes on the Shoshone National Forest. Each box required a separate pack animal and then were assembled using nuts and bolts.

The boxes were placed at popular campsites to provide wilderness users an easy way to secure attractants from the area’s bears. Each box provides 11 cubic feet of storage for food and other items to minimize the potential of a bear receiving a food reward at a camp and becoming habituated to people.

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation provided funding for the boxes.