More than 40 volunteers spread across Mount Rainier National Park today to talk with park visitors about the trouble caused by people feeding animals.

I joined the group and just got home from the park.

The park is making a real effort to communicate to park visitors the problems created when animals become habituated to humans and conditioned to learn that people mean food.

Alyssa Herr, who led the program for the park, cited a 2006 study of observed animal behavior. Of the animals observed, 54 percent relied on food foraged left behind or taken from humans and 11 percent were fed by huamns. Just 35 percent relied on natural forage.

Herr talked about a chipmunk that has learned to come out when the tour buses stop at one location and how the foxes at Paradise are teaching their kits to work the roadways for handouts.

The volunteers visited popular locations on both sides of the park to caution people against feeding animals and to watch for instances where people were actively feeding animals.

All the groups I talked to were receptive to the message and promised the only wildlife they would feed were the anxious children sitting at the picnic tables.