It is a weird situation! The Sierra national parks seem to be dead set against the Ursack and have been for years. Of course their bears are smarter than the average… I haven't been anywhere else where bears rip cars apart when food is stored in them.

Olympic NP is a somewhat different situation. I talked to the head wilderness ranger five years ago. He claimed that Ursack (of course that's the older models) won't hold up either to pawing mountain goats or to the guerrilla raccoons on the coast. Also, ONP has no grizzly bears or (so far) any possibility of any, so they don't pay attention to the IGBC.

Another interesting thing I found out is that Grand Teton National Park requires IGBC-approved containers (remember that the Bearikade is not IGBC-approved). On the other hand, Yellowstone doesn't allow any canisters. You have to camp at an established site where bear-hanging cables are provided. Since the two parks are adjacent, this seems to be the height of weirdness. Or is it Yellowstone's hot water that makes the difference?

One issue some officials have with the Ursack is that it is more subject to user error than canisters because the user needs to tie knots just so. Officials where there are lots of green folks out backpacking for the first time are obviously not happy about user error issues.