Montana FWP captured a nuisance grizzly bear near Meadow Lake Golf Course and relocated it to the upper Whale Creek drainage last Wednesday . . .
State wildlife officials caught a 4-year old male grizzly bear earlier this week near the Meadow Lake Golf Course near Columbia Falls.
Grizzly Bear Management Specialist Tim Manley said that the bear had been reported eating apples in residential areas over the past week.
Yesterday, a couple of articles cropped up about teaching bears to avoid humans and their dwellings. The first reports on the Montana-based Wind River Bear Institute and their Karelian bear dog program. The other discusses a training program in a rural district of the Florida panhandle, an area with a substantial black bear population. Two very different areas with similar bear problems.
Here are the links . . .
Aspiring filmmakers turn lenses on Karelian bear dogs for awareness — from the Missoulian
Bear hazing (Or how to chase a bear away and not get hurt) — from The Star, Port St. Joe, Florida
It could just be statistical anomaly, but there have been 16 grizzly bear deaths in the Yellowstone region this summer. Most are natural losses, but they are much higher than normal . . .
Bear biologists are refraining from assigning a single reason for a two-fold increase in the rate of natural grizzly bear deaths in the Yellowstone National Park region.
Ten of the 16 grizzlies that have met their ends this summer have died of natural causes, according to data from the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.
Historically, humans are to blame for more than 75 percent of the bear deaths in the first half of the summer. While the rate is just 37 percent this year, it is derived from a small sample size, and biologists aren’t jumping to any conclusions.
We mentioned this last year, but it bears repeating: Human-bear conflict is not just caused by garbage, dog food and bird feeders. There is a growing problem these days with unprotected chicken coops. The New York Times ran a story a couple of weeks ago . . .
Longing for fresh eggs, Levi and Nauni Griffith began raising chickens in their backyard. They started with a few, and eventually had 116. Until late last summer, that is, when a grizzly sow and her cub, filling the night with fearful growling, got in among the shrieking chickens and then lumbered off, leaving bits of 99 birds behind…
In northwestern Montana, as in much of the country, more people are keeping chickens. And bears of all kinds are developing a taste for poultry that lures them into populated areas, presenting a dangerous situation for both people and, especially, for bears.
A grizzly bear and her cub that have been involved in a string of sheep killings near Great Falls are being relocated to the Whitefish Range . . .
State and federal wildlife officials have decided to relocate a female grizzly bear that was responsible for the recent deaths of 70 sheep on three ranches north of Great Falls.
Mike Hoggan with USDA Wildlife Services says the bear and her cub will be moved to an area near Frozen Lake in the Whitefish Range near the border of British Columbia, which puts her and her young cub about 160 miles from the ranches.
The bears were tranquilized and captured Sunday near Collins.
The North Fork has a new grizzly, shipped in from east of the divide . . .
A 390-pound grizzly bear captured west of Great Falls near Simms on Wednesday night has been collared, tagged and relocated to the north fork of the Flathead River, near the Canadian border.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Bear Management Specialist Mike Madel said the young male and his sibling are responsible for the deaths of three goats earlier this week.
The bear’s sibling was not captured and will remain on the east side of the divide, because bears tend to get in more trouble when they’re together, Madel said.
Land and wildlife managers are keeping an eye on the impact of oil and gas development on the Rock Mountain Front . . .
An interagency panel of land and wildlife managers has turned its attention to the impacts on grizzly bears from oil-and-gas exploration and extraction on the Rocky Mountain Front.
The Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem Subcommittee is geared toward delisting the grizzly bear population, with a draft Conservation Strategy for doing so expected to be released this summer.
But removing the threatened Northern Rockies grizzly bear population from protection under the Endangered Species Act is still “several years out,” said Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Even more evidence that grizzlies are starting to disperse eastward from the Rocky Mountain Front . . .
Wildlife officials are warning residents that grizzly bears are on the prairie east of the Rocky Mountain Front and precautions should be taken.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks workers tell the Great Falls Tribune that the agency has received reports of grizzlies east of Valier, on the Sun River between Fort Shaw and the town of Sun River, and along the Marias River above Tiber Reservoir.
A DNA-based grizzly bear population study is slated to being this summer in the Cabinet-Yaak area . . .
A small army will soon begin a summer of scouring the woods of extreme Northwest Montana and northern Idaho, collecting grizzly bear hair for a genetics-based population study.
The project is being led by Kate Kendall, a U.S. Geological Survey researcher who pioneered a similar large landscape grizzly bear population study in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem in 2004.
On Wednesday, Kendall was on her way to lead 70 field workers in a nine-day training session at a Forest Service work station in the upper Yaak Valley not far from the Canadian border.
Rachel Potter drew attention to this nugget. The grizzly bear is a “Species of Special Concern” in Canada, with the highest concentration of these bears being in the Canadian Flathead and, of course, points south . . .
Canada has a “major responsibility for safeguarding remaining grizzly populations,” according to a new federal government report.
Canada’s Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) met at the beginning of May and assessed thirty-five Canadian wildlife species as at risk, declaring grizzly bears a “Species of Special Concern.” . . .
British Columbia’s Flathead River Valley has the greatest density of grizzly bears in the interior of North America. As part of a wildlife corridor that stretches from Yellowstone Park in the U.S. up to the Yukon, the Flathead is a crucial habitat link for grizzlies and other animals.