Too often the bears run off with your camera while you are getting your family to pose in a nice grouping and smile at the same time.

In the summer time, it becomes overwhelmingly swarmed with tourists here. Most of them get pretty hyped up over taking pictures of wooden puffins, mountains, and moose. I'm pretty sure a good majority of them would also get hyped up at the idea of waking up a bear to get a picture of it.
Ah, but the bears have been coming into town lately. Police are shooting them off and now tourists are taking pictures of dead bears.

Waking a sleeping bear is not only illegal, it's proof of imbecility.

who would be dumb enough to do this? hey I am going to wake up this bear and ask it to take a picture with me. and then the poor bear would be shot for killing the S.O.B.

Damn photogs!

The bear needs a camera to take a picture of the person that's trying to wake him up.

I was unaware that bears had mastered the skill of operating cameras. I can see Japanese tourists doing this in a pinch. From their perspective, no holiday outing is complete unless it has been entirely captured on film. I hope the Alaskan bears have enough cultural sensitivity to just grin and agree to snap the shot when an overseas visitor makes such a request.

And, this is why Yogi Bear has never been officially convicted because of lack of photographic evidence.

What if you shoot him in his sleep and THEN take the picture?

Smile, cutie pie! Come on, please!

(Mother and daughter looking through a family photo album) "Suzie, this is a picture of your Uncle Henry with his camera as he approaches a sleeping bear ...... and this is a picture of your Uncle Henry poking the bear with a stick to wake him up.....and this is a picture of Uncle Henry all bloody and screaming at the top of his lungs as he runs away from the bear........."

I guess if there are a lot of stupid tourists, it's a reasonable public safetly law.

Who'd be dumb enough to even TRY this?! If you wake a sleeping bear, you won't have a CHANCE to take a picture!

Because a picture of a sleeping bear would just not be valuable. It's funny to imagine what idiotic incident prompted a deliberative body to draw up a bill, discuss it thoroughly, and decide, this is a law we really need to approve. I wonder what governor signed it into law.

Well, this is something I would not have to worry about; I have no desire to shoot a bear with either a gun or a camera. In fact, I have no desire to be within a 200 mile radius of a bear unless there is a very tall, strong fence between us.

Who in their right mind would wake a lseeping bear anyways?

That should be re-worded: While it is legal to shoot bears, waking a sleeping bear for the purpose of taking a photograph is JUST PLAIN STUPID.