''Basically, what I've done over the past 10 years is pilot a program where we teach bears and teach people how to live in the same areas without conflict,'' she said.

Her business, the Wind River Bear Institute, recently relocated from Utah to Florence, Mont., putting Hunt within a day's drive of the Lower 48's last remaining grizzly bear populations. It's a move that's allowed her to respond quickly to bear problems, including grain spills in the railroad corridor near Essex.

And now that she's in the neighborhood, Hunt and her methods are expanding out of people's backyards and into the backcountry, with precedent-setting work deep in Glacier National Park.

''What we're doing now has never been done before,'' Hunt said. ''What we're doing is the only program of its kind in the entire world.''

Hunt is traveling like a missionary into grizzly country, bringing with her lessons for the bears in how to get along with human hikers. This summer, students included a sow and two cubs - bears that, until Hunt's lessons, didn't mind much hanging out with humans.

''The goal,'' she said, ''was to teach the bears to prefer to do the right thing.''

The real goal, which goes back decades, has been to stop killing bears.

''I've been a bear biologist for almost 30 years now,'' Hunt said. ''Pretty early on, I got tired of seeing bears die because they got into trouble with humans.''

In 1982, after years working in Yellowstone National Park and along Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, Hunt finally decided to tackle the problem. She had moved to Missoula and was working on her master's degree, when she started thinking about nonlethal methods to ''teach bears 'no.'''

Her first efforts included the use of pepper spray. But spray only goes so far, and for a tool to be truly effective it needed a longer reach.

Soon, Hunt was partnered with Wyoming Fish and Game officials, performing tests of rubber bullets on wild bears.

''No one knew what would happen,'' she said. Would the bears turn and run? Would they charge?

Turns out, the rubber bullets worked great, effectively stinging bears into retreat. But they too were limited in range.

Her work, of course, had taken her into hunting camps and across big ranches, where she started to notice a pattern. Outfitters and landowners with dogs didn't have near the bear problems as those without.

Dogs, she realized, would give her the required range, ''and I went looking for the breed. It was then that I discovered Karelian bear dogs.''

Brown bear hunters in Finland swore by their Karelians, which unlike hounds wouldn't tree a bear. Instead, they worked grizzlies the way cow dogs work cattle.

Over the past decade, Hunt and her Wind River Bear Institute have worked bears using trained dogs to remarkable success.

''In 10 years of work, with 200 to 300 bear actions a year, working from Japan to Canada and throughout the Rockies, we have never had a bear dog hurt or a person hurt or a bear hurt,'' she said.

The trick, she said, is to distinguish between ''aversive conditioning'' and ''bear shepherding.''

Aversive conditioning, she said, uses negative reinforcement to harass bears away from people places - essentially to teach fear of people.

Bear shepherding, she said, involves sophisticated bear behavior modification, ''cuing them in very precise ways.'' Essentially, it teaches good habits, teaches a bear it can leave at any time and it can choose natural cover over garbage cans.

The program involves lots of learning - by the bears, the public, the bear managers and especially by the Wind River staff.

Its success was evident enough that this summer managers at Glacier Park decided to try taking it straight into the bear's lair.

For years, a female grizzly has stomped around Oldman Lake like she owned the place. At first, she learned she didn't have to move away from the trail when hikers came by. Later, she learned hikers would give way when she wanted the trail to herself.

Finally, she learned to lumber boldly into remote backcountry campgrounds, cubs in tow, to ''Hoover up'' any crumbs left behind.

But she never stole any food, never charged, never acted in any way aggressively. And she was productive, keeping up a regular brood of cubs and bolstering the grizzly population.

Problem was, those cubs were learning all the wrong lessons.

In July, park management invited Wind River to come in and assess the situation.

It was not without precedent. Hunt started working with the park in 1997, when she and her Karelians moved 13 black bears from alongside Glacier's Camas Road.

In 1998, they pushed a grizzly off the boardwalk at Logan Pass in just five days, and the bear never had to be trapped, never caused another day's trouble. In 2000, she successfully taught a food-conditioned grizzly to steer clear of front-country camps on the park's eastern side ''and that bear never came back.''

The bear she found at Oldman Lake was, in her words, ''flexible and soft and subordinate and easy around people.''

The challenge would be to keep her that way. The last thing Hunt wanted was a bear that wasn't aggressive to suddenly get jittery and see people as a problem requiring force.

The commitment to save the grizzly, she said, ''was an incredibly proactive thing for the park to do. They pulled together all the resources they had to try to save her, to do this properly and to give her a chance.''

With two Wind River staffers, two park rangers and three Karelians, Hunt took to the woods, set up camp and waited. The idea, she said, was to act like hikers and campers - who were shut out of the area at the height of the summer season for the work to begin.

When the dogs scented the grizzly, they barked her off the trail. She took cover in the campground, and Hunt pushed her out with shouts and exploding ''cracker shells.''

Earlier, rangers had put a radio collar on the bear, so they were able to track her - all the way over the ridge and into the next drainage.

''She really took off and at that point, yeah, I thought she probably was a very good candidate for conditioning,'' Hunt said.

Dressed in ''civilian'' hiking clothes, they ''did what hikers do,'' except with trained dogs and lots of shouting. Eventually, they pulled the dogs out, and relied only on shouting.

Every time the bear retreated, the stress stopped, a positive reinforcement for making a good decision.

The rubber bullets were never fired.

The work is not yet complete, she said, ''but we already know that this bear knows it shouldn't approach campgrounds. It's working, and she's starting to understand.''

As for the park, officials they are still waiting to see how things turn out. Whether the park backs another such attempt with another such bear remains to be seen.

If her work in the backcountry succeeds, Hunt said, in 20 years her methods will be commonplace. Should that come to pass, she said, Glacier will deserve much of the credit.

''In all my work in national parks, I've never seen a park commit like this,'' she said. "They've been pioneers with us. They knew that this was this bear's last chance, and they did it right.''