Mom and cub - WRI file photoA Lily Fan recognized the spot where the grizzly was very close to the man in the video in the update a couple nights ago. The Lily Fan has sat there several times herself and had similar experiences. It is at the McNeil River Sanctuary in Alaska. McNeil is interesting because they have a couple places where people normally sit. The bears are used to seeing them there and ignore them, just as the bears we walk with ignore us. At McNeil and with the black bears we walk with, the bears are not attracted to the people. For the people, as the Lily Fan said in her email, “It is a thrilling experience.” For the bears, it’s another day at the office. They ignore the people as the video showed.
Resting on food cache - WRI file photoAnother Lily Fan asked what makes grizzly bears attack and what gives them their bad reputation? Overall, by the numbers, a grizzly is 26 times more likely to kill someone compared to a black bear. They are more defensive when they are scared or feel challenged. They evolved under different circumstances than black bears did. The circumstances under which grizzlies kill are usually a mother defending cubs (about 70% of the kills), a bear defending a carcass or other food (about 10%), and startling them at close range. They are generally not prone to predatory attacks. Nothing is set in stone. These are generalities. Think of a bell-shaped curve. There can be the odd bear far out in a tail that doesn’t behave like the rest.
Footprints in mudWhat is interesting, though, is that when they get used to people and find them non-threatening, they don’t feel like they have to attack. I’ve seen amazing examples of that when people pushed the envelope with some of these “habituated” bears. Habituated simply means an animal or human that has become accustomed to something to the extent that the animal or person generally ignores it. I saw a couple women lean over a big sleeping grizzly in Alaska and sing it a lullaby. That was enough to get the bear to open an eye and then close it and ignore them. Another similar bear kept sleeping with people only 5-10 feet away but reacted quickly when it got a whiff of a mother with cubs passing by maybe 50 yards away. After determining that the mother and cubs were not threatening, the bear lay down and continued its nap with the people still nearby. We all were marooned together on a little island that became an island with a rising tide. It was exciting and interesting but not scary at all. The bear was used to people and not the least interested in us, and we all recognized that immediately. All the pictures in this slide show http://www.bear.org/website/live-cameras/slide-shows/brown-grizzly-show.html that a Lily Fan referred to a couple days ago were taken in the area just mentioned—most of them in Hallo Bay in Katmai National Park—one of my favorite places for bear-viewing.
Bear Family and Me in CzechGordon Buchanan’s name came up twice in the last two days. One was from a Lily Fan in Ireland where she watched him give a slide show about his time here in Minnesota. The other was from a Lily Fan in the Czech Republic who saw one of Gordon’s programs from here translated into Czech. It makes us feel good that the message is being spread.
An honor today was being given boxes of forest history data, original maps of forest stand origins after fires, pictures of forest succession in the same place year after year, and other materials collected by Dr. Miron “Bud” Heinselman (1920-1993) whose book on Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) ecology is a classic. His long career as the U. S. Forest Service as the Principal Plant Ecologist was spent studying fire history and forest ecology. He and I spent good days in the woods together—him revealing insights into forest ecology and me showing him bears. His data will enhance the Northwoods Ecology Hall. In retirement, Bud worked with congress to make the BWCAW what it is today.
No update tomorrow night. Donna and I got a special invitation to the Thanksgathering from its main pianist (our own Judy McClure) and its leader (Ray Thielbar, who made the big carved North American Bear Center sign out by the highway). Much of the music will be the old hymns. It will be a date night with us singing along with all the other old folk who know those hymns. It’s a gathering of all the churches in Ely with each church contributing special music. Can’t miss it.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center