Whether a grizzly bear becomes famous or infamous, or lives anonymously in some remote wilderness, often depends on location and luck.

Some bears live out their lives without ever getting into trouble with people. Others become habituated as cubs to associate people with food. These are often doomed to untimely death.

Other bears operate between these two extremes, alternating between the high country when there are good crops of whitebark pine nuts and army cutworm moths, to cruising valley floors, farmyards, backyards and trash bins when seeds and moths are poor.

"When there's a good food year, we don't have many problem bears," said Mark Bruscino, head of the grizzly recovery program for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

The department is up to bear No. 550 - all the bears that have been radio-collared, tracked and studied since 1975. Bruscino and his bear biologists have worked with hundreds of bears, some more notable than

others, but all designated by number.

In the early days of grizzly bear research, John and Frank Craighead designated bears by name and number. Memorable monickers included Cutlip, One Eye, Beep and Loverboy. But that practice has long been discontinued.

For Bruscino, bear No. 104 was memorable as a classic roadside bear. She endeared herself to tourists and Cody residents alike, and mostly stayed out of trouble.

First captured as a 2-year-old in 1984, she had become habituated to the idea that people have food. Biologists were not optimistic that she could change her habits. After all, a fed bear is a dead bear.

Somehow, though, No. 104 learned her lesson and reverted to wild foods. Yet she continued to hang out with her cubs along the North Fork Highway, between Cody and the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park.

"She must have crossed that highway thousands of times," Bruscino said. "No. 104 became one of the most photographed bears in the region."

She and her cubs became successful models of bears living near people and not getting into trouble, he said. She was a good - and prolific - mother, raising eight cubs that researchers know about. Wearing a radio collar, she was a rich source of information for wildlife biologists.

Bear No. 104 even made the movies - featured prominently in a National Audubon documentary, "Grizzly & Man: Uneasy Truce," narrated by Robert Redford, in 1988.

The odds caught up with No. 104 in 2001. She was caught on a bridge over the North Fork River when a truck came by. With nowhere to go, she was struck and killed. Her last cub disappeared into the woods, only to meet a bad end. Tourists at the nearby Pahaska Teepee Resort area turned the cub into a "fed bear" and it was shot a couple of years later.

"Bear 104 was atypical," in that she was extremely tolerant of people but never got too close, Bruscino said.

Today, visitors to the Draper Museum of Natural History at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody can see bear No. 104 in a diorama. Chuck Preston, the curator and director of the Draper Museum, said it was "bittersweet" when the museum was looking for a new grizzly bear specimen, and they learned that No. 104 was dead and therefore available.

"She continues to be in the public eye," Preston said. "To this day, we continue to get phone calls and e-mails about Bear 104, that people took her picture 10 years ago."

Bear No. 104 had lived for 19 years at boundary between nature and people, Preston said.

"She's something of a bear parable, representing that uneasy balance," he said.

Since grizzly bears were removed from protection of the federal Endangered Species Act on May 1, Bruscino and his counterparts in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, Idaho and Montana have been responsible for the bears and any human/bear conflicts that arise.

"I'm incredibly encouraged by the increased public awareness of bears and how to safely live and recreate in bear country," Bruscino said. "It has increased dramatically over the past 15 years."

Wyoming has most of the grizzly bears and habitat in which the bears can expand, and thanks to long-term education efforts, Wyoming has a more fully developed education program that has reached children and adults alike. The "Bear Wise" program has saturated communities east and south of Yellowstone, with literature and programs about how to be "bear wise" at home, work and play.

Bruscino and his bear team members usually try to give a bear at least one chance when it gets in trouble - unless it becomes food-conditioned as a young and impressionable sub-adult. Moving such a bear into the backcountry doesn't do any good, Bruscino said. He or she just comes back to get in trouble again.

Bruscino said he tries to look at the cause and severity of bear/human conflict, as well as the animal's age, sex, history, relative value to the population and health. Females are considered more valuable than males, for

example. A raided bird feeder might mean just putting the feeder away, while a bear that breaks into a building is a more serious situation.

There are few alternatives to killing a repeat offender. Zoos don't want or need more bears, preferring zoo-born cubs to wild and more unpredictable bears.