Mark Aughton

In an effort to multiply the number of people reached by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's Bear Wise program, Coordinator Mark Aughton came up with an inexpensive plan to dramatically increase reach. Then he found someone to pay for the plan.

Aughton's plan worked; you might say it went viral. The number of those reached by the critical safety information went from a little more than  22,000 prior to 2022 to 2.2 million reached last year. That's a full 100-times more in the short three years since the former National Park Service employee arrived in the Cody Region from Florida.

"At the end of the day, the highest quality type of outreach we do is going to be in person. But it's severely limited based on the number of people you can actually talk to, and especially in a [lightly populated] state like Wyoming," he said. "That's kind of where [the plans] came from, just accepting that we're going to be limited in the number of people we can reach in person, and trying to figure out ways to circumvent [perceived limits]."

Being seen

Wanting to reach folks who visit Wyoming and, whether they know it or not, need to become more aware and respectful of the Yellowstone Ecosystem's toothy critters, Aughton turned to transportation centers to share the word.

At a certain point, reaching out to locals about important Bear Wise information is a repeat service. There's no harm in reminding residents about safety on the landscape, however, the messaging is more critical for visitors who haven't grown to respect our large, toothy critters.

First, he contacted Yellowstone Regional Airport in hopes of running Bear Wise information on their video system. They were happy to help.

"Yellowstone Regional Airport was kind enough to run our ad for us the entirety of the bear season free of charge," Aughton said.

That meant most visitors flying in were able to watch the video — often more than once— while waiting for their luggage. About 72,000 people flew in and out of the airport last year.

There was a charge of about $100 to place pamphlets in the airport's well-picked-over local informational racks, but with a chance to reach tens of thousands of visitors, the fee was sort of a nothing-burger. A tank of gas in a Game and Fish green pickup truck costs significantly more than that.

Next he looked into the relatively new phenomena of gas pump TV. Most people visiting the area — devoid of public transportation options —  will be driving. Aughton found that learning important lessons while pumping some fuel is a great way to build awareness.

"We ended up reaching something like 360,000 people in 2024. In 2025, the program expanded and reached 2.1 million people with a cost of approximately $56,000," he said, adding "compared with like traditional digital advertising, it has way higher engagement. Most people leave their phones in the car when they pump gas. That's very typical. And there's a number of studies that show that engagement with gas pump TVs are 90-plus percent, and that's across numerous different third party studies. Whereas, with traditional digital advertising, it's less than one out of every 1,000 people will engage with the content."

The campaign cost about $10,000 in 2024 and $56,000 in 2025. But Aughton found an extremely generous benefactor in the Safari Club International Foundation, which offered to pay the entire bill for the department. You'd think Aughton had a degree in public relations, but nothing could be further from the truth.

"I'm just a large carnivore biologist and the Bear Wise coordinator. A lot of this stuff is just me trying to think outside of the box, figuring out ways to reach more people," he said.

What's up his sleeve as an encore

Aughton is now looking into geo-fencing to reach more people as they travel through areas with few officials available to pass on messaging. Geo-fencing alerts are automated notifications triggered when a GPS-enabled device, vehicle, or person enters or exits a pre-defined virtual boundary. These alerts, delivered via text, email, or app notifications, are used for security, asset tracking and marketing to monitor movements in real-time.

The department wants to try to do some geo-fencing in the Beartooth Mountains. However, before you think they will be similar to Amber Alerts (which takes over your phone and sound off a loud alarm), the system Aughton is working on will simply text or email folks when they cross into the invisible boundaries for heavily occupied bear habitat.

"There's a few different levels of severity for wireless emergency alerts. This [system] is at the lowest threshold. Amber Alerts are close to the top. So this is going to be more like just a your standard, you know, high temperature advisory, or a high wind alert, or something like that," Aughton said.

The alerts will only come to your cellphone once, not every time you cross the geo-fence boundaries and the department plans to piggy-back on the Park County Sheriff's Office alerts software.

"This is one of these things that we're excited to try it. I'm sure there will be a couple of hiccups here and there, but we kind of want to iron all of that out in this first season that we're going to try it out, and we want to be careful that this is not a thing that becomes overused," Aughton said. "We'd like to save it for areas that just don't have enough agency presence on the ground and are starting to account for a pretty significant number of conflicts where we can alert people."

In person works best

Despite raising the bar on bear messaging, the new programs won't slow in-person training opportunities. Last year the department held 163 different in-person presentations at 82 separate events. Aughton and other team members do presentations and training at events like workshops, school programs, camps, training for businesses and organizations whose employees spend a lot of time in the outdoors.

"We were able to double the amount of people that we reached in person from last year to this year, and we reached over 12,400 people," Aughton told the Game and Fish Commission earlier this month. "In total, we ended up reaching over 2.2 million people between all different categories and the digital media categories, the number of people that reached or that actually landed on our Bear Wise Wyoming web page, it's more than likely significantly higher if you include all different branches of digital media."

The efforts also help mitigate misinformation about grizzly and black bears. The two species are responsible for by far the most human conflicts in the state. Aughton said there are more calls for conflicts with grizzly bears, possibly actions taken by folks who don't see black bears being as dangerous as grizzly bears, despite the fact that black bears are more likely to look at humans as a food source.

"Less than 2% of all grizzly bear attacks are predatory in nature," Aughton said in a Tuesday interview with the Tribune. "Ninety-eight-plus percent of all grizzly bear attacks are what we consider to be aggressive, defensive attacks, and that's where you get too close to the young or to the food or to the personal space of the animal — all three potentially — whereas nine out of every 10 fatal black bear attacks is typically predatory in nature."

Aughton suggests you carry bear spray on your person any time you're out in Wyoming's wild spaces. It not only works on bears, but will also send animals like moose, big cats and even feral dogs running the other way. He said carrying bear spray is much more effective than a firearm, but suggests you carry both backcountry if possible.

"A lot of people ask, 'Well, which one should I carry?' And the answer is, 'it's not an either or question,'" he said. "If you have the training and the ability, carry both. I go to my bear spray first."

The reason he said he prefers the spray is that it's born out in conflict data over and over again.

"If you want to get the bear to stop what it's doing immediately, or as fast as possible, if you wanted to change its behavior, bear spray is pretty consistently shown to get them to stop or change their behavior immediately," he said.

No matter what you're carrying, Aughton suggests you "practice, practice, practice."

"We really try to drive home the point," he said. "If you're unfortunate enough to have a bear charge you, most people are going to basically be on autopilot. And if you haven't practiced, it's going to be significantly more difficult to act calmly, or, you know, at least confidently prepared in that moment."