Handout #1
Glacier
National Park will remove 17-year-old grizzly and two cubs from backcountry
By the Missoulian | Posted: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 8:05 pm
WEST GLACIER -
Saying the decision was very difficult, Glacier National Park managers
announced Wednesday night that they'll remove a 17-year-old female grizzly bear
and her two yearlings from the park's grizzly bear population.
The
decision came after the family group repeatedly entered human-occupied
backcountry campgrounds this summer, sniffing at tents during the night and
walking into cooking areas while campers waved their arms and shouted.
Park
rangers are currently working to locate the bears in the park's backcountry in
the vicinity of Cut Bank Valley.
"Unfortunately,
this entire family group of grizzly bears has become overly familiar with
humans," said Glacier Superintendent Chas Cartwright. "Park resource
personnel have worked to keep this bear and her offspring in the wild for five
years, but given her recent display of over-familiarity in combination with her
long history of habituation, we have determined that the three grizzlies pose
an unacceptable threat to human health and safety, and therefore must be
removed from the park."
The bears
have been closely monitored in recent weeks. The decision to remove the bears
came only after a thorough review of events and the bears' overt
"conditioned" behavior toward human contact, Cartwright said.
Glacier's
bear management plan specifies that conditioned bears that display
over-familiarity must be removed.
No zoos
are currently willing to take adult bears. Every effort will be made to capture
the yearlings and relocate them to the Bronx Zoo in New York; however, at this
time the priority is to locate and remove the 17-year-old female.
Several
encounters in July indicate that the female is highly conditioned to humans.
That, coupled with the female's history of human interaction dating back to
2004, led park managers to determine that the bear poses an unacceptable risk
to public safety, and must be removed, park officials said.
Glacier's
bear management policy is to maintain natural population dynamics and, to the
extent possible, promote natural behavior in the presence of humans. So far in
2009, two separate incidents have been documented the female grizzly exhibiting
behavior that could be classified as "repeatedly and purposefully
approaching humans in a non-defensive situation."
The female
has frequented the Morning Star and Old Man Lake backcountry campgrounds, both
in the Two Medicine/Cut Bank area for the last five years. During that time,
the sow produced two sets of cubs.
Throughout
that time, both the mother and her offspring have approached hikers, forcing
them off trails, have come into cooking areas while people yelled and waved
their arms at the bears, and sniffed at tents during the night. Numerous
efforts have been made to haze them and aversively condition the bear and her
young to avoid human interactions, but those efforts have not proved
successful.
The
grizzly bear is protected by the Endangered Species Act, and as such, every
effort was made to deal with the bear's conditioning to humans in a non-lethal
manner. With those efforts failing, rangers cannot, in accordance Glacier
National Park's bear management plan, allow the bear to remain in the
population and pose a potential risk the safety of the park's visitors.
Said
Cartwright: "Glacier National Park's bear management plan and guidelines
are dynamic management tools that receive periodic international peer review.
The plan and guidelines clearly state the conditions of how we manage Glacier's
bear populations, both black and grizzlies. These tools also reflect the best
available knowledge and management techniques that bear managers can employ.
This decision [to remove the family of grizzlies] is the result of Glacier's
ongoing coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency
charged with administering the Endangered Species Act."
Handout #2
“Glacier National Park
will remove 17-year-old grizzly and two cubs from backcountry”
Your Response:
POV:
Park Managers: Chas Cartwright park Superintendent
- Want to remove female: guilty of sniffing tents and walking
into cooking areas.
- Familiar to humans
- “Pose unacceptable threat to humans” Cartwright
- “Overt conditioned behaviour toward human contact” Cartwright
- Glacier's bear management policy is to
maintain natural population dynamics and, to the extent possible, promote
natural behavior in the presence of humans.
- as "repeatedly and purposefully approaching humans in a
non-defensive situation."
- every effort was made to deal with the
bear's conditioning to humans in a non-lethal manner. With those efforts
failing, rangers cannot, in accordance Glacier National Park's bear
management plan, allow the bear to remain in the population and pose a
potential risk the safety of the park's visitors
- "Glacier National Park's bear management plan and
guidelines are dynamic management tools that receive periodic
international peer review. The plan and guidelines clearly state the
conditions of how we manage Glacier's bear populations, both black and
grizzlies. These tools also reflect the best available knowledge and
management techniques that bear managers can employ. This decision [to
remove the family of grizzlies] is the result of Glacier's ongoing
coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged
with administering the Endangered Species Act." Cartwright
Park Users:
- both the mother and her offspring have
approached hikers, forcing them off trails, have come into cooking areas
while people yelled and waved their arms at the bears, and sniffed at
tents during the night.
17 yr old Grizzly female
2 yearlings
Another set of known cubs since 2005
Backcountry users at Morning Star & Old
Man Lake in the Two Medicine/ Cutbank Valley
Bronx Zoo
Endangered Species Act, US Fish &
Wildlife USA
Handout #3
Grizzly sow in Glacier will be
killed
By MICHAEL
JAMISON of the Missoulian | Posted: Thursday, August 13, 2009 11:25 pm |
WEST GLACIER - She's up in the
Nyack Creek wilderness right now, working huckleberry hillsides with her two
cubs, but this old grizzly will come back. She always comes back.
That's the problem. That's why
this time, when she returns, she'll be killed.
"No one wanted this
outcome," said John Waller, a wildlife biologist at Glacier National Park.
"This was a hard, hard decision."
All the harder, he said, because
of the tremendous work that has gone into keeping this bear alive. She's known
as the "Old Man Lake female," because for much of her 17 years she's
been hanging around the backcountry campground at Old Man Lake.
She never charged anyone, never
huffed and bluffed, never attacked. But she has been unnervingly friendly.
She'd amble into camp to see what you were cooking for dinner. She'd sniff your
tent at night. She'd greet you on the trail and insist you give way, rather than
the other way around.
Which is why, in 2005, park
rangers enlisted the help of Carrie Hunt and her Wind River Bear Institute.
Think horse-whisperer for grizzly bears.
Hunt's job is to teach bears and
people how to live and let live, and her work with the Old Man Lake female was
nothing short of precedent setting.
"She's a very gentle,
flexible bear," Hunt said. "But she has some real bad habits."
Historically, bear problems have
been solved with high-caliber answers, which is not so healthy for endangered
grizzlies. Hunt had a different plan, and the brass at Glacier Park was more
than ready to give it a try.
"I'm very supportive of the
park," Hunt said. "There isn't another park anywhere that's gone as
far as Glacier has to make conditioning a part of their bear management
program."
Conditioning - aversive
conditioning - is the art of teaching bears "no." Sometimes it means
pepper spray, or, if more reach is needed, rubber bullets and cracker shells.
But Hunt took it further, using specially trained dogs to not simply instill
fear in the bear, but to teach bears what was allowed and what was not.
It's OK, for instance, to use a
trail, so long as you give way and hide in the brush when hikers come by. It's
OK to stake out a huckleberry patch, so long as you lie low and move on when
people-pickers arrive.
Hunt's dogs didn't scare bears up
trees; instead, they worked grizzlies the way cow dogs work cattle. This, she
said, is sophisticated bear behavior modification, teaching bears how to make
good - and lifesaving - choices.
She worked more than a dozen
bears off Glacier Park's Camas Road, ending a perennial bear jam there. She
moved a grizzer off the popular boardwalk at Logan Pass in just five days, and
he never caused another day's trouble. She worked bear after bear after bear,
in Glacier and far beyond, and her success was nearly universal.
And so in 2005, Hunt was
optimistic when she joined Glacier Park rangers in the Old Man Lake
backcountry, at the scenic mountain headwaters of the Two Medicine drainage.
The female there was a good fit - a nuisance, but not aggressive. The bear also
was valued for her productivity, keeping up a regular brood of cubs and
bolstering the region's grizzly population.
It was, Waller said, one of the
first times such techniques had been attempted in the backcountry. The bear had
maybe eight years of bad habits by then, but seemed easygoing and ready to
learn.
"We worked her for 10 days
that summer," Hunt said. "The park was great, bending over backwards
and going all the way for this bear."
Then they worked her another 10
days a year later, in 2006, "and she just was as good as gold."
In fact, the Old Man Lake female
melted into the wilderness and wasn't so much as seen in 2007 or in 2008.
Hunt knew she'd eventually need
some "booster" work to reinforce the lessons, but that costs money.
And the bear had dropped her radio collar, which further complicated things.
For lots of reasons, the follow-up booster work never happened.
And so Hunt wasn't exactly
surprised to hear that the grizzly sow was back in 2009. Back in campsites,
snuffling around tents. Back looking for easy meals. Back teaching her two cubs
all the wrong lessons.
At one point, Waller said, a pair
of hikers were watching her from across the lake. She spotted them "and
came on over to say 'hello.' She just continued to approach people."
If a bear is overly friendly, and
won't give way, it's considered "habituated." Park guidelines are
somewhat flexible for habituated bears. But if a grizzly repeatedly approaches
people, then it's considered "conditioned," and options become
limited.
It took three contentious hours
for biologists and park management to decide the female had, finally, crossed
the line. She would be, in park parlance, "removed" from the
population.
No zoos want adult grizzly bears,
so her fate is sealed. The yearling cubs, perhaps, can be caught and sent to
the Bronx zoo.
Critics have complained that the
park erred in not following through, especially after making such an
unprecedented initial effort. Others have suggested the initial conditioning
failed in some way.
"But I'd hate for anyone to
think that aversive conditioning failed in this case," Waller said. If
your kitchen sink clogs, he said, and the plumber clears it, and then it clogs
again two years later, "you don't say the plumber failed, do you? We just
didn't have endless resources to devote to this one bear."
Waller said the park remains
committed to shepherding bears rather than removing them, and both he and Hunt
hope the death of the Old Man Lake female - who met so many hikers personally -
will inspire renewed efforts to catch problems before they start.
"I totally support the park
in their decision to remove this bear," Hunt said, "because if they
can't do the booster work, she's way too high a risk. But I would like to see
them receive the budget to work with bears before they get to this point."
"That's our goal,"
Waller agreed, adding that "the best outcome would be to use her story as
an example of why we need to work with bears earlier."
There is no best outcome for the
Old Man Lake female, however.
A GPS signal puts the old grizzly
over the ridge right now, in a remote corner of the park to the west. But
she'll be back. She always comes back.
This time, however, will be her
last.
Posted
in State-and-regional
on Thursday, August 13, 2009 11:25 pm Updated: 12:01 am. | Tags: Glacier
National Park, Grizzly
Bears
Handout #4
“Grizzly sow in Glacier will be killed”
Your Response:
Setting: Nyack Creek
POV:
Glacier National Park Managers:
Park
Superintendent : Chas Cartwright
Wildlife biologist: John
Waller
·
"No
one wanted this outcome,"
·
"This was a hard, hard decision."
Wind River
Institute:
Carrie Hunt
Hunt's job is to teach bears and people
how to live and let live, and her work with the Old Man Lake female was nothing
short of precedent setting.
"She's a very gentle,
flexible bear," Hunt said. "But she has some real bad habits."
Historically, bear problems have
been solved with high-caliber answers, which is not so healthy for endangered
grizzlies. Hunt had a different plan, and the brass at Glacier Park was more
than ready to give it a try.
"I'm very supportive of the
park," Hunt said. "There isn't another park anywhere that's gone as
far as Glacier has to make conditioning a part of their bear management
program."
Conditioning - aversive
conditioning - is the art of teaching bears "no." Sometimes it means
pepper spray, or, if more reach is needed, rubber bullets and cracker shells.
But Hunt took it further, using specially trained dogs to not simply instil fear in the bear, but to teach bears what was allowed and what was not.
It's OK, for instance, to use a
trail, so long as you give way and hide in the brush when hikers come by. It's
OK to stake out a huckleberry patch, so long as you lie low and move on when
people-pickers arrive.
Hunt's dogs didn't scare bears up
trees; instead, they worked grizzlies the way cow dogs work cattle. This, she
said, is sophisticated bear behaviour modification, teaching bears how to make
good - and lifesaving - choices.
She worked more than a dozen
bears off Glacier Park's Camas Road, ending a perennial bear jam there. She
moved a grizzly off the popular boardwalk at Logan Pass in just five days, and
he never caused another day's trouble. She worked bear after bear after bear,
in Glacier and far beyond, and her success was nearly universal.
And so in 2005, Hunt was
optimistic when she joined Glacier Park rangers in the Old Man Lake
backcountry, at the scenic mountain headwaters of the Two Medicine drainage.
The female there was a good fit - a nuisance, but not aggressive. The bear also
was valued for her productivity, keeping up a regular brood of cubs and
bolstering the region's grizzly population.
Park Users:
17 yr old Grizzly female:
“She never charged anyone, never
huffed and bluffed, never attacked. But she has been unnervingly friendly.
She'd amble into camp to see what you were cooking for dinner. She'd sniff your
tent at night. She'd greet you on the trail and insist you give way, rather
than the other way around.” (Waller)
2 yearlings:
Another set of known cubs since 2005:
Bronx Zoo:
Endangered Species Act, US Fish &
Wildlife USA:
Handout #5
Plan to kill griz attracts
protests, but Glacier official says bear is 'undue risk'
By MICHAEL
JAMISON of the Missoulian | Posted: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 7:15 am |
WEST GLACIER - Three people are
camped beneath the cliffs at Morning Star Lake, in the stone-cold shadow of
Medicine Grizzly Peak.
Unlike other Glacier National
Park campers, these three are packing rifles, and tranquilizer guns, and a big
bear cage. They're here to catch and kill a grizzly bear, and to carry her cubs
off to the zoo - and that has outraged a handful of bear lovers.
Karen Stefanini sent the park $50
from her home in Boston, seed money, she said, for a rescue mission. She still
holds hope for a stay of execution, and calls the 17-year-old sow grizzly
"a precious bundle of love and joy."
Stefanini represents one-half of
a deeply divided and emotional public, when it comes to wild grizzlies.
"Some want to demonize the
bears as bloodthirsty killers," said Jack Potter, "and some want to
turn them into Mary's little lamb."
The reality, of course, lies
somewhere in between, which is where Potter makes his living as Glacier's chief
of science and natural resources.
"We're trying to manage for
an entire population of grizzly bears," Potter said, "but now we're
caught up talking about this one bear."
This one bear - called the Old
Man Lake female because that's where she hangs out, in the backcountry
headwaters of the park's Two Medicine drainage - has a long history with
people. She's never been too aggressive, but she has proved disturbingly
friendly. She wanders through campgrounds, sniffing dinner and snuffling around
the thin edges of nylon tents.
"Instead of avoiding people,
it's almost like she's attracted to them," Potter said.
She uses park trails, and
sometimes shadows hikers like a great rangy hound.
But she is, Potter said, no
stray. She is as unpredictable as any wild grizzly bear - perhaps even more
than some, what with her yearling cubs in tow.
"To say that this bear will
never do anything aggressive, that's a huge leap of faith," Potter said.
"And we're not willing to take that risk. We tried to avoid this, but here
we are."
In fact, he said, park officials
have made extraordinary, even unprecedented, efforts to keep the female alive.
She's been in trouble for a decade, and has sported a radio collar since 2004,
and as far back as five years ago even some of the biologists charged with
protecting endangered grizzly bears were recommending she be killed.
But park staff took a gentler
approach. She was, after all, not overly aggressive, and she kept up a steady
brood of much-needed cubs.
And so rangers worked with
private contractors to teach the bear some manners. They rousted her with
pepper spray and rubber bullets, and shotgun shells that popped like fireworks.
They shouted and waved their arms and pursued her with specially trained dogs,
and spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours trying to haze her from
humans.
And for two years - 2007 and 2008
- she laid low, doing what people want bears to do, which are the things that
keep bears alive.
But in 2009, Potter said, she
came back, started following people around, allowed her cubs "to
free-range around the campgrounds."
She was bolder than ever, and it
quickly became a recipe for possible - perhaps probable - disaster, so Potter
weighed his options.
He could ignore the problem. But
how to justify that decision, if someone were eventually mauled?
He could monitor the problem,
waiting for her to do something really bad. But again, by then it's too late.
He could try more "aversive
conditioning" to haze her away. But he'd been there and done that, and
here she was back, worse than ever.
He could transplant her somewhere
else, or put her in a zoo. But nobody wanted her.
"I think we've done a lot
for this bear," Potter said, "but it's reached this point. She
clearly presents an undue risk."
What if her cub bawled at a hiker
and she reacted, he wondered? What if she taught her cubs that hanging around
with people was OK, and that led to tragedy a generation out?
"Some people seem to want us
to wait until there's a body before we act," Potter said. "Well, we
don't work that way."
"Those are real risks,"
admitted Donald Witulski. "I can accept those concerns. But I still have a
hard time with the park killing a bear that's never even been aggressive.
There's got to be a better option."
He, for one, recommends closing
the backcountry to give her some room, and the former forester from Idaho also
suggests moving campgrounds out of the huckleberry habitat bears like most.
At least, Witulski said, rangers
should leave her alone until next year, when the cubs will be old enough to go
their own way
"It's her house," he
said, "and she's been there for 17 years. She's raised a family. It's not
our home, it's hers."
Witulski says that if the Old Man
Lake female is a "problem bear," then it's because "we made her
a problem. This bear didn't get conditioned to humans without some help."
Stefanini agrees, and takes it a
step further. "I think they should keep people out of that place," she
said. "I don't think hikers should be cooking in someone else's home and
not invite them to dinner. That's just rude."
Grizzlies, she said, "are as
intelligent as the great apes, which makes them more intelligent than most
campers."
Potter counters that the threat
is immediate, and the park cannot wait a year for the cubs to grow - and learn
their mother's bad habits. The die is cast.
Still, Witulski and others say
they will contribute to Stefanini's rescue fund; and while it's doubtful they
can save this bear, they may be able to better fund the park's bear management
team, thus saving other grizzlies.
But Potter - who sees bears die
on railroad tracks and on highways and at the hands of hunters who can't tell
the difference between a black and a grizzly bear - believes the money might be
better spent purchasing protected habitat for the species. Bears need wild
corridors to get from place to place, he said, and never more so than in a
warming world.
But those are long-term and
abstract causes; habitat protection doesn't look you in the face with a cub's
wide eyes, and conserving a species just isn't as sexy as saving a mama and her
babies.
Conserving a species, Potter
says, means mitigating for risk and not breaking trust with the broader public,
and sometimes that means hard decisions. Decisions like sending three armed
rangers up the stony flanks of Medicine Grizzly Peak.
If they can trap the female, he
said, the job will be relatively straightforward. If not, they'll have to shoot
her on the go, and free-dart the cubs, and then lift them out in a helicopter.
Unless it's cloudy, in which case they'll wheel the 100-pound yearlings out
with hand carts.
It's a carefully planned
operation, just as the decision was carefully debated, but that makes it no
easier for Witulski to accept.
"Right now," Witulski
said, "the grizzly mother is up in the high country with her cubs in one
of the most beautiful places in the world. When the park ranger pulls the
trigger and kills this majestic animal, a little bit of all of us will die -
the free spirit is gone."
Reporter Michael Jamison can be
reached at (406) 862-0324 or at mjamison@missoulian.com.
