Grizzly 399 lives on!

The now 21-year old beloved Grand Teton National Park grizzly mother, known by her wildlife management number "399" has been seen again in this, the spring of 2017, with two new cubs. Evidently after her lone 2016 cub was killed by a car, she became receptive and crossed paths with a male grizzly in time to be impregnated again. Her longevity and her fecundity are remarkable. Fortunately, the Park Service is becoming more protective of her and her successive offspring. I understand the road through the area she has long frequented has been closed to auto and foot traffic to help give them safety and privacy to just be wild bears. Perhaps she'll lead the kids closer to the main road - not good for bears but good for my soul to see and maybe photograph them - while we're there next month.

Meanwhile, Yellowstone National Park has recently seen an increasing number of "roadside" female bears, including three or four mother grizzlies and cubs born either this year or last year. The yearlings will spend one more summer and winter with their mothers before being pushed away to pursue lives of their own and to allow their mothers to breed again.

Roadside bears - in theory, mother bears raise their cubs in proximity to human activity to discourage the greatest threat to their babies, male bears that kill them in the expectation that the mother will come into heat again (as did 399 last summer after "Snowy" died) - are a hazard to people, cars, and themselves. This is Yellowstone grizzly bear number "815" who, after allowing a very sizable crowd to watch her and her year-old cub, came down from the rise where they had been napping to a pullout where cars were parked. Most people were out of their cars and some distance away, but some were close (I was not; this photo was taken with a 600 mm telephoto lens) and trying to get pictures with phone cameras and iPads, none of which have sufficient telephoto capability to assure a decent photo from a safe distance. Fortunately 815 just rooted around a bit, then led her cub past the pullout to where there were almost no pedestrians and all traffic was stopped to safely cross the road.

815's cub, born in 2016.

Legend, Interrupted

The female grizzly bear known by her wildlife management number as "399" has raised family after family of cubs near the roadside at the northern end of Grand Teton National Park since her first set of triplets in 2006. The rate of survival of her cubs has been extremely low; some disappear between their first and second years due to natural, but otherwise unknown circumstances (as is very common in grizzly bears); some have reached liberated adult status (shortly after emerging from the den following the second winter with their mother and sibs) but then gone on to be shot by hunters, hit by cars, or “humanely removed” (euthanized) after one too many encounters with human spaces. One of them, "610," is still in the area and bearing litters of her own.  She was one of the three cubs born in 2006.

399 herself is 20 years old, which is up there for a wild grizzly; her first litter (preceding 2006) consisted of one cub, then each subsequent litter was three cubs. This year when there was concern that she might not appear at all, or that she might no longer be fertile, she brought joy to everyone by emerging from the den with one light-colored baby (cub of the year, or COY) that was dubbed "Snowy" because of its pale coloration. 

Each year 399 has had triplets, starting in 2006 I've been fortunate enough to see and photograph them. Sometimes conditions for photography were very poor, but I still documented the sighting.

This year I saw 399 and Snowy only once, briefly, at many yards distant and got off one shot each of them standing in the sage. 

 Exactly five days after these two photos were captured, Snowy was mowed down by a vehicle and killed. The circumstances are not known because the driver did not report the incident as is required. He or she may not have known what it was they hit, especially if the cub ran under the wheels rather than in front of the vehicle.

 Regardless of how it transported, this loss caused great sorrow to me and to 399's thousands of fans world-wide. And was yet another blow to maintaining the fragile population of grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Take Note, Take Action

All the details of the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed rulemaking to delist Yellowstone region grizzly bears are here:  https://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FWS-R6-ES-2016-0042-0001

Look for the blue COMMENT NOW button in the upper right corner, and USE IT before May 10, which I take to mean NO LATER THAN MAY 9. Last count, pro and con comments were about equal in number. If you oppose grizzly delisting in the Yellowstone region, don't miss this chance to make your rationale known. I strongly recommend this means, instead of, or at least in addition to, signing on-line petitions and sending form letters, which carry far less impact.

Delisting grizzly bears is extremely contentious issue, as there is a strong, vocal contingent, mostly those who live in the area who are directly impacted by the outcome of the proposal, that favors delisting. While many are eager to shoot down grizzly bears, for any number of motives, the lives and livelihoods of others are disturbed by the bears that, for example, raid their sheds for the food stored in them, or, occasionally, or worse, habitually, take down a calf or a lamb for an easy meal. Those opposed to delisting include thousands in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and other impacted geographies but also around the world. It is also highly politically charged. And while there were Public Comment forums hosted in Bozeman (north of Yellowstone) and Cody (west of Yellowstone) there was no hearing in Jackson, Wyoming, where Grand Teton National Park, with its spectacular grizzly families (including 399 about whom I’ve often written here) are so prominent.  Additionally, since the fate of grizzly bears either way has enormous impact on these national parks and the vast acres of national forest surrounding them, together comprising the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, it’s stunning to contemplate that Fish and Wildlife has consulted or coordinated the delisting plan with either agency. Nor were the numerous Indian tribes for whom the grizzly is of great spiritual importance involved in the plan.

Those who read this blog regularly already know where I stand.

Below is the essay-comment I submitted (using the blue button) to the US Fish and Wildlife Service on April 26. Out of a lot of possible arguments I chose a tack that's a little different from most others (but that's the way I am, you knew that). In retrospect I wish I'd put the punch line – that the high cost of undoing the deleterious effects of delisting, which I contend will be necessary, needs to be taken into account –at the top as well as at the bottom, since it's the only part that is germane to public policy. 

I strongly oppose removal of grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region from the protections of the Endangered Species Act.  From Europeans’ earliest accounts, grizzlies have been touted as preternaturally robust, nearly indestructible creatures; even retiring US Fish and Wildlife Service bear coordinator Chris Servheen describes them as “…a tough, resilient animal” but, importantly, adds, “that can thrive if given a fair chance.” (mtpr.org/post/usfws-grizzly-bear-recovery-coordinator-retires#stream/0)  As a long-time observer of bears and their circumstances in the Yellowstone region (where I live), I can vouch that the operative phrase is “if given a fair chance,” and that delisting will certainly deny them this key survival factor.  While numbers may have arrived at the point where statistical analysis predicts self-sustaining population levels, in reality, without protection, they will not have that chance.  As their habitat is squeezed and fragmented by human activity and increasingly degraded by climate change at the same time their reproductive success is further compromised by hunting, they will reveal how utterly fragile, vulnerable, and short-lived they in fact are. Climate change is not in our short-term control; protecting  grizzly bears by maintaining their endangered status (and other means such as public education in bear safety and the use of bear dogs to guard livestock) is.

A good grizzly population in the Yellowstone region improves the human condition. Watching bears as they go about their lives is precious opportunity for people of every ilk to be taught lessons of exceptional value. Unlike on TV, personally witnessing a  bear (or wolf, or peregrine falcon, or bob cat) hunting and consuming prey ingrains an understanding and acceptance of the circle of life, which in turn informs the *meaning  of life* for thoughtful people; in fact I would venture that such experiences are among those that make  people thoughtful. From the drama of a grizzly sow taking a newborn elk to feed her cubs comes deeper intellectual and emotional appreciation of the principle that life requires death, but death begets life. Is this a no-brainer?  A friend who taught middle school in inner city Baltimore tells me that her students were genuinely surprised to learn that their favorite hamburger lunch necessitated the death of a cow.  Would that all of these kids could spend a week or two in Yellowstone!

One might respond that hunting, which will be allowed if the bear is delisted, teaches the same things. And I would agree, except when hunting is not motivated by, and does not culminate in, the acquisition of food. Grizzly bears are not hunted for their meat; that of elk and deer is more palatable to most people and considerably less difficult to acquire. Instead the big bears are taken as trophies to be taxidermied into a reminder of the “lesson“ that if a living thing is extraordinary,  beautiful, rare, dangerous and powerful, the way to enjoy it is to take its life away, incidentally also preventing everyone else from appreciating that thing in constructive ways. This ethic is not nearly as good for regional  economies as is the presence of (in this area) millions of tourists, photographers, scientists, teachers and students, merchants, and the many others who relish being in the presence of these extraordinary, living beings and the other awe-inspiring and instructive features of Yellowstone and the Tetons of which bears are an integral part.

Given the environmental and human-related factors working against them, delisting grizzly bears will likely result in rapid  declines of this highly humanistically and economically valuable resource. Additionally, as has been amply documented, ecosystems change when populations of predators such as grizzlies are reduced or removed, generating cascades of unintended, unwanted, consequences. When the polity ultimately recognizes this, how many public and private dollars will be required to undo the damage, if it is still even possible to do so, in the future?

Grizzly bear 399, Grand Teton National Park

Life, Death, Yellowstone

Very much on my mind is the still-unfolding August 7 incident in Yellowstone National Park  in which a park contractor, Lance Crosby, moving through bear country apparently observing none of the standard precautions, was caught, killed, partly consumed, and his remains cached by a well-known, well-loved female grizzly bear known affectionately as “Blaze.” The moniker refers to a distinctive streak of light-colored of fur from spine to belly just behind her front legs. 

After Crosby’s mutilated body was found, Blaze and her two cubs, still in the vicinity,  were quickly culvert-trapped, and through DNA and other tests, confirmed unequivocally as having been the only bears at the scene of his demise.  With this incontrovertible evidence, Blaze was promptly "humanely removed," i.e., euthanized, per park policy. She will be necropsied, which will include meticulous analysis of the contents of her digestive system, and a detailed forensic report will be made public, when all that can be learned from her body has been.

Her still-young cubs are spending the rest of their lives at the Toledo Zoo. Deprived of a normal life at large in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with all its attendant hazards and risks to long life and reproductive success, they will instead learn that humans are beneficent sources of a plentiful year-round diet (and they won’t undergo the annual metabolic stress of wintering), and they will be sheltered from predators, medicated as needed, mentally and physically stimulated, and contribute, however unknowingly, to the evolving science of captive wildlife husbandry. And above all, if the zoo does it right, they will serve to educate the public about Ursus arctos horribilis, which recent events amply demonstrate should be a very high priority. Many people have expressed disgust for this solution, but while rehabilitation to the wild – that in this case would mean raising them in captivity and guiding them the best humans can in the art of “being bear” until they are sufficiently mature to be released in early summer 2017 -- was considered, apparently no capable facility has room for them.   

There has been enormous angry outcry about the park’s actions, as Blaze was one of those wild animals that had, over her 20 years, become habituated to the presence of human beings. She was observed and photographed by many, including people I know personally, and was an exceptionally beautiful and charming bear, no question. Every few years she bore a litter of adorable cubs, and demonstrated her prowess as a mother by the high survival rate of her fragile babies. People formed very strong emotional attachments to her as she allowed them insights into her wild life. Whether those insights were always correctly interpreted by those who loved and admired her is something worth questioning, but regardless, a large and vocal contingent believe that she should have been allowed to live.

I do not, but not because I haven’t formed my own attachments to similar bears, like 399 in Grand Teton National Park, but because in reality, other options for a preventing a 20 year old wild bear from repeating this behavior were non-existent. Relocating her with her cubs to an environment far from human habitation – say, the North Woods of Canada – would have been the second best ideal to leaving them free in Yellowstone, but bears are notorious for making their way back to their home territory even from a thousand miles distant. What’s more, inadvertent release in territory already claimed by other grizzlies would have resulted in their deaths. Confining her in a zoo or sanctuary would have been a cruel prison sentence indeed, and possibly extraordinarily risky for those charged with her care. 

The rationale (among some if not many) for destroying a bear that has fed on a person because it develops a “taste” for human flesh, can never be documented.  But what IS undoubtedly the case is that by attacking this person – whether it was a predatory attack or defensive response to a perceived threat to her cubs – Blaze learned something that she could not have known previously: hunting humans is safe and easy. Humans can’t flee and so don’t require fat-depleting bursts of energy, and they are weak fighters that can be subdued almost instantly without negative consequence (at least in a national park, where people don’t pack anything more deadly that bear spray, and Crosby wasn’t even carrying that). And humans, including the plenitude of vulnerable ones unprepared and off-trail as Crosby was, are everywhere in her territory. While probably not as full of protein and fat compared, say, to the carcass of a bulk elk or bison, an adult human could provide enough food for Blaze and two cubs to sustain more than one nutritionally valuable feeding. In other words, the payoff for a very low-risk, very small investment of energy, is large. This is the only calculation a wild bear makes.  This is the most important insight Blaze could ever offer.  

Happy St. Valetine's Day 2015

Please accept this red rose from Jake, citizen of Montana Grizzly Encounter, Bozeman, Montana, as a token of his happiness and love of life in celebration of St. Valentine's Day.

MGE is a wonderful sanctuary for grizzlies that cannot be released to the wild. If you're ever in the mood to be entertained by happy bears out of their behind-the-scenes "dens" for fresh air and exercise, MGE is THE place.

Jake loves his sister Maggi especially.

Grizzly 399 Shares Her 2014 Secrets

Three weeks ago we returned from ten marvelous, as always, days in our favorite part of the world, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. 2014's marvels included hikes to fascinating locales new to us plus a few favorite places we haven't checked on in a while, our first (at long last) river otter sighting, catching up with beloved friends, and a photo ops galore. Premier among the wildlife-sightings was our favorite grizzly bear 399, known to her fans as Queen, or Lady, of the Tetons. She is the exceptionally fecund bear that likes to bring up her young broods near the roads in the 5-1/2 mile region spanning two visitor areas, Colter Bay and Jackson Lake. Last year we relished watching her three new triplets play along a side-road just far enough away to be considered safe. Indeed, 399 was wholly focused on eating grasses, roots, flowers, insects and worms while the kids alternately nibbled and grubbed and cavorted, all ignoring their thrilled paparazzi.

We got up early on our third morning to go look for wildlife, which is really just code for "look for bears." Only a mile or two down the main road we could see the indubitable sign of wildlife activity ahead: many dozens of cars parked along both the shoulders and people all running in the same direction, more or less loaded down with camera gear. Who should be eating and playing along the south side of the road but our most familiar and favorite grizzly, 399 and two year-old cubs. This how we learned that one of the three had not survived the winter. Big fierce muscular grizzlies, especially young ones, it turns out, are in fact very fragile and at high risk for death before they are sufficiently mature to reproduce. It's not known what happened to the third cub, though there is speculation that before the bears even denned for the winter it was separated from its mother. In their first and second years, grizzly cubs cannot survive alone, especially as winter approaches.  Although they can feed themselves plant and insect material and eat from carcases (and, alas, human food supplies and garbage, though this no longer happens in Yellowstone/Tetons) they come across, they still need their mother to hunt meat for them and occasionally, to nurse them. In this photo, one of 399's axillary mammaries is clearly visible  behind her left foreleg. Note her nice grizzly-style claws, too.

Here she is with one of her year-old cubs, for size comparison. This nose-down posture is how we see bears most of the time as they eat-eat-eat all summer to assure reserves to make it through another winter.

399 was huffing (inaudibly to us, but we could see it in her expression and movements) at the second cub, about 50 feet behind this beautiful mirror of a snow-melt puddle, to "come along now!" The other cub was quite busy overturning rocks and pieces of wood to find tasty ants and worms. To me it seems unlikely that such large animals can satisfy a big portion of their caloric needs by eating plants and small invertebrates, but they do. 

Adding to the romance of watching these bears is the stunning scenic backdrop of the Grand Teton mountain range. Her characteristic shoulder hump is very evident in this shot.

The rangers, like this guy in the Smokey the Bear hat and reflective vest, work very hard all summer to protect not only park visitors but these habituated bears that really are not skittish enough around people. I call this photo "Baby Bear Mayhem" as one of the cubs makes its way across the road and stops to look at the paparazzi. All traffic is stopped of course. The folks on the left side of that tour bus got a great look at the cub. Note the license plate on the big black SUV! Many people come to the park purely to watch and photograph bears.

The cubs made it across safely but one continued to evidence curiosity about its watchers. Frankly, it would be much better if it were shyer.

Finally Mother Bear 399 found herself reacting to the passing of an over-sized camper.

But then everyone went back to priority bear business, namely, cashing in on the nutritious green grasses and flowers before they naturally dry out as the season goes on.

People often ask how close I was when I take these kinds of pictures. Here's a wide angle on this scene. Although it looks like there are no longer a lot of people around, in fact the rangers do not allow people to pull over near the bears, so as the family gradually migrated from one side of the road to to the other, to the pond, and along the grassy hill, the rangers regularly barked orders to the watchers to back up, and eventually, to move their cars well down the road as well. In this picture I am at the vanguard of a large crowd of photographers (many blessed with much better glass than I) with maybe 50 or 70  cars behind us.

This was without a doubt the most rewarding time spent with 399 and her many cubs since I first spotted them in 2006. This year we were lucky to see the family twice more before we left the park, though never as clearly nor for such a prolonged and fruitful bear-watching session.  The rangers were certainly harried, and many park visitors contentious about not being allowed to just stop and get out of their cars, especially along a crowded intersection later in the day such that there was a great deal more traffic to contend with. It concerns me that the bears are utterly nonchalant about traffic, and so many people are either oblivious to their need for distance or alternately, not interested in seeing the bears and aggressively trying to get past the "mayhem," both set-ups for bear and/or people disasters.

Yellowstone 2011

I haven't kept track of -- though someday maybe I should reconstruct -- the number of times I've been to Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton NP, and the Greater Yellowstone Area, though regardless of the number, it's never enough. The area is vast, and varied, ever-changing, ever-beautiful no matter what the weather, season, or the altitude, latitude or longitude at which you stand. KLK and I were there for 10 days in early June this year. Here's a run-down of what all we saw and experienced that goes in our "first ever" column:

Since gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995, wolf-watching has been a major fascination for many people. In the winter of 2010, several of the historically predominant packs whose territories were in the Lamar Valley area and thus relatively easy to watch from the road were extirpated by mange. By the summer of 2011, other packs were moving in to replace them, but numbers are still down. But not the watchers, to be sure, they're still there in numbers. See them up there at the top of the hill with their spotting scopes aimed and ready?

But if wolf numbers are down, what are they watching? Surprise! Unrelated (presumably) to the reduction in wolf numbers, this year there has been an unaccountable explosion of watchable badgers (Taxidea taxus) in the old wolf territory. Although I've seen badgers there once or twice before, it was only with the help of people who had already spotted them, and with lots of magnification. This year, there were several dens very close to the roads, and eminently photographable. Here's a mother with a couple of her kits:

Bison (Bison bison) are ubiquitous and iconic. They're everywhere in Yellowstone and are also frequently seen in the Tetons. Like the badgers, bison bring their babies into the world in May and June. But we've never had the thrill of watching an actual birth. This trip, we missed the exact moment by just a very few minutes. We were stopped in traffic, people were out of their cars along the roadside, and we could see a large herd of bison cows with their orange calves peaceably doing what bison do (mostly eating), when all of a sudden we heard a cheer go up. I looked up to see a stream of blood coming out of the back end of a bison, and knew what had happened: her labor was was at last over. At this point traffic started to inch forward, until, within a few minutes, we got our turn to look: 

You can just see a little bit of umbilical cord between the baby's shaky legs. Note, too, the older calves snoozing in the background, and how this exciting event isn't even registered by the others.

But not all is always well among the bison. In spite of their massive size and power, they are still subject to starvation, old age, injury, and predation.We spotted this very sorry old bull plodding along the roadside, by himself, in the pouring rain:

He's extremely thin, scarred up, he has a swelling or lump on his left rear hock. And something else very serious going on: He has no tail. And, he has no anus. On close examination of the enlarged photo, the tail looks like it's been gone a long time (or even perhaps was never there), but the anal condition looks relatively new. Did the injury cause the sickly condition, or did the sickly condition result in vulnerability to attack (wolf, bear, cougar)? Or, we speculated that it might have been a birth defect, given how symmetrical the opening directly into this guy's rectum is. Mother Nature can be cruel indeed. 

Chicken-sized blue grouse (Dendragapus obscurus), fairly common in the area, are notoriously easy to tame, and, stupidly or otherwise, often unafraid of humans. We came across this handsome guy, with his feathery  legs and orange eye-wattles, hanging out at a pull-out along one of the high-altitude passes in Yellowstone. 

He was there for two days in a row, and not just unafraid: he was downright interested in people, and seemed to particularly like me. I let him approach and bent down to see how tolerant he would be of my hand. He pecked at it, never quite making contact; if I leaned forward, he acted very offended, puffing upright and opening his wings (more intimidating, you know!), gobbling at me. But if I walked away, he followed, walking 6 or 8 feet behind. If I sped up a little, he sped up too. It seems unlikely he was looking for a hand-out, so far as I know, grouse don't go for potato chips and marshmallows, preferring seeds and insects found in their home range.I guess we'll never know what he was thinking.

Photo courtesy K.L. Kuehnel

And of course there are deer, of many sorts (white-tailed, mule, and their relatives the elk and the moose) throughout the Greater Yellowstone Area. Along the wonderfully scenic Chief Joseph Highway connecting Cody, Wyoming with the Northeast Entrance of Yellowstone, we came across a herd of mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) waiting (fortunately!) to cross the road. 

(From a 2009 trip along the same route)

There was no traffic, so we stopped to allow them to pass. One by one they ventured across our lane, then each suddenly stopped stock still to look down at the yellow and black center line. After considering  for a moment, each then leapt way up over the line as if it were a 4-foot fence, and dashed up the opposite hill to join its waiting mates. We were laughing so hard it took too long to get my camera out, so I caught this young lady, the last to cross, just at the moment she successfully completed her mighty hurdle. 

Bears are notoriously fond of bathing and swimming, and very fun to watch as they do so. But of course they sometimes enter the water out of necessity or other serious intention as well. As KLK climbed down to explore on the hard-to-reach shore of the Yellowstone River just above where Tower Creek runs into it, very swollen and swift with snowmelt after this exceptionally snowy winter, I stood on a high bluff enjoying the magnificent view. 

Photo courtesy K.L. Kuehnel

All of a sudden I saw what looked like a large dark basketball bobbing purposefully cross-current...it was a black bear (Ursus Americanus) whose agenda that day happened to take it from one side of the river to the other. Extraordinarily, powerfully, its long route across the river was almost perpendicular to the shore, with very little downstream drift. KLK caught this moment as it stepped onto the far shore. It's good to have a nice benign demonstration once in a while of how strong bears truly are! 

Photo courtesy K.L. Kuehnel

Bears, it turns out, aren't the only critters interested in water. We often carve time out of our wildness experience to visit the wonderful Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana, for more intimate views of these beasts that, for one reason or another, but almost always following unfortunate interactions with humans, cannot be released to the wild. They're well cared for there, although as usually the case with such facilities, they don't have much room to roam, and extra effort has to go into providing appropriate stimuli to prevent the development of mental illness. The bears, for example, are rotated in and out of the public viewing area, and between bears, the staff hides treats and toys among the rocks and brush that the bears then have to seek for healthy entertainment. But I'd not seen anything on that order for the wolves (Canis lupus) until this year, when their little wading ponds were stocked with small fish. A couple of them seemed to be fascinated with the fish, but I was fascinated with the bears, so KLK stayed to watch them. He reports that one of them finally caught and consumed a small fish. Who knew these magnificent meat-eaters would consider that fun? Sorry he didn't get an action shot, but here is one of the fishing wolves, watching intently for its chance to bite!

Bear Country

I have always loved to hike. By hike, I mean walk in the wilds for a few miles, maybe up to about 8 of them if the terrain is pretty flat, though 6 is ideal before my crummy old feet give out. I suppose I limit myself by carrying a heavy pack of camera equipment – two cameras, two lenses – binoculars, lunch, water, maps, bird book, cell phone (which, if I’m hiking where I really like to, is out of range).  Someday maybe I’ll get over the need to be optically over-prepared and lighten my load, but until then, I’m traveling heavy.

View of Swan Lake Flats, Antler Peak, the Gardiner River and Gardner's Hole from Bunsen Peak in Yellowstone; please click to enlarge

Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and the surrounding national forests offer unlimited hiking possibilities, although I tend to repeat my favorite trails when I can. In Yellowstone it’s Mt. Washburn, its smaller, more easily do-able cousin Bunsen Peak (the photo is a panorama stitch of photos taken atop Bunsen last time I was up there), Slough Creek to First Meadow, Lone Star Geyser and beyond to a couple of great back-country thermals, Hellroaring Creek; in the Tetons, it’s Colter Bay to Jackson Lake Lodge, Phelps Lake from Death Canyon trail head or the Rockefeller Preserve, Two Ocean Lake...the list goes on, but the best part is that there are a vast number of trails out there I’ve yet to set foot on.  Isn’t that great?

There’s plenty of hiking in the other places we go as well, especially in the many other national parks that we have been to, or are yet to visit; there are even interesting trails in the ‘burbs of Chicago. A couple of autumns ago KLK started out on a trail at Peninsula State Park in Door County, Wisconsin. We were surrounded by tall, straight deciduous trees, their green, red, and gold leaves fluttering against the blue sky in the sunny breeze. But something was missing...it took me only a few yards from the trail head to identify exactly what it was: there was no possibility of seeing any “charismatic megafauna” and in particular, no chance of encountering a bear.

Given the state of current events--the fatal mauling of a hiker in Yellowstone by a female grizzly bear who felt he threatened her cub; a black bear nibbling on a camper in his tent in Leadville, Colorado--anyone reading this has doubtless by now concluded that I am crazy.

Bear Honker

I have seen bears while hiking (though the vast majority of my sightings are from the road, largely because that’s where I spend most of my park time), and I do carry bear spray and rehearse its use in my head; when I hike with others, I always remind them before we set out that we must not hike too far apart, and if we spot a bear, stand shoulder-to-shoulder so we look big. Or bigger, maybe. Instead of “bear bells” (aka, dinner bells from the bear's point of view) which, take it from me, can’t be heard more than 30 feet away along a rushing stream, around a blind bend in heavy brush, or in a forest full of trees swaying in the wind, I carry what I call a “bear honker,” a $3 bicycle horn, to let bears far and wide know there’s a stranger in their territory before inadvertent confrontation. I’m pretty sure that obnoxious noise carries far enough, as I’ve had oncoming hikers comment, irked, on the distance from which they heard me coming.

There’s no doubt that the risk of a rendezvous with a bear, be it black or grizzly, heightens the pleasure I get from hitting the trails. Of course there are other thrilling possibilities as well. Once KLK and I were heading up to Avalanche Peak in Yellowstone, when we heard a great crunching up ahead. I just knew it was a huge, and grumpy, grizzly. I knew it and my heart was pounding in my throat. We froze. Then what should emerge from the brush but an immense bull moose with a magnificent full rack. It stopped mid-trail, and, calmly chewing his cud, looked us up and down, then stepped into the tall trees to our left and, faster than imaginable for a 1,200 lb animal, vanished.

Cinnamon-colored black bear, Yellowstone

On another occasion, a friend and I were two-thirds along the short trail to Trout Lake when I spotted a cinnamon-colored black bear about 30 yards off the trail. He was minding his own business, but I didn't want him getting the idea of following us after we passed. So I squeezed my bear honker and yelled I HAVE BEAR SPRAY!!! (which was true) and jumped up and down and waved my arms and repeatedly ordered him to skedaddle. He looked at me like I was surely some kind of major village idiot, and I suspect he was right. In any case, his little bear brain wheels turned slowly and deliberately, as going away wasn’t on his agenda, but ultimately, after several minutes of my terrifying threat display he decided discretion was the better part of valor and turned tail. A lot of adrenalin at the time, but in retrospect, probably a tempest in a teapot.

Grizzly bear along the roadside, Yellowstone National Park

Part of the inspiration for this post comes from “Up the Crick,” a story by Tom Reed in the May-June 2011 issue of Wyoming Wildlife News. Wyoming Wildlife, an excellent publication by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, is of course highly responsive to the interests of hunters and fishermen, but unfailingly so from the viewpoint of a highly responsible conservation ethic.  

Reed’s superb 25 column-inch story is about the vibrancy and inspiration that comes from being in bear country and the mental and physical clarity it demands. He concludes, “I know there are other opinions out there, those would rather have an absolute serenity in the wild, would rather not have even the ghost of a grizzly in the territory. I am different. I would rather feel that shock of a hammering heart, would rather hit the soprano note in my “Hey BEAR!” and would rather be alive in a country where we have learned to tolerate and respect. This is the difference between the wild and the deep wild. Or, perhaps this is the difference between just another piece of country, and one that holds mystery and an adventure, a feeling of what it once was when it was all this way. I like having that charge of fast-twitch electricity in my neurons and blood. I like the charge.” I could not have put it better myself.

Grizzly with three cubs, Grand Teton National Park