Another sure sign of spring: A new bear study.

From today’s Daily Inter Lake . . .

A new and expansive effort to monitor the Northern Continental Divide’s grizzly bear population will capitalize on a creature comfort for bears: the irresistible urge to scratch their backs on trees.

The research project mainly will be aimed at determining whether collecting hair samples from rub trees over three successive years can provide a reliable measure of whether the region’s grizzly population is stable, growing or shrinking.

It will be led by Kate Kendall, the U.S. Geological Survey scientist who spearheaded two previous grizzly bear population studies based on genetic analysis of bear hair.

Read the entire article . . .