Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks has been pretty busy recently dealing with various bear encounters and some long-term nuisance bears, including one dropped of on the North Fork. The Daily Inter Lake has a summary . . .
A man escaped mostly unscathed after coming face to face with a black bear Friday morning…
Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologists captured grizzlies near Eureka and Ferndale Thursday and trapped and killed one grizzly near Ferndale…
Probably not a big surprise to long-term residents, but it’s nice to have some recent numbers on the increased griz population. From yesterday’s Flathead Beacon . . .
The number of grizzly bears in Northwest Montana is on the rise, according to the National Park Service.
John Waller, wildlife biologist for Glacier National Park, said data being collected in the area of the northern continental divide – approximately 7 million acres between Missoula and the Canadian border – shows the bear population has risen by 3 percent annually since 2004, when there were 765 grizzly bears. Today the number is estimated to be about 950.
From a press release posted to the Flathead National Forest web site . . .
Release Date: Jun 28, 2011
Public access on the Moose Creek Road, Forest Road #210C, and the Moran Creek Road, Forest Road #5241, both located north of Columbia Falls on the Flathead National Forest, will have temporary access changes beginning Friday, July 1.
The Moose Creek Road will be closed approximately 1mile before the Moose Creek Trailhead, Forest Trail #9, and the entire length of the Moran Creek Road will be closed.
The temporary closures are designed to mitigate disturbance to grizzly bears while activities of the Red Whale Fuels Reduction Project are taking place. The roads will open when the fuels reduction work is halted this fall. The temporary road closures will be implemented again next summer when the fuels reduction project continues.
For more information, please contact the Hungry Horse-Glacier View Ranger District at 387-3800.
The North Fork Bear News is out! If you are on the mailing list, you should have it now or be getting it soon. If you are not on the mailing list, or just don’t want to wait, you can read it online here (in color, no less).
This year’s issue has lots of good content about bears, but its primary motivation is the (unnecessary) risk to “Patti Bear,” a young female North Fork grizzly. Here’s what the Bear News people have to say . . .
Dear Fellow North Forkers:
A few of us have resurrected the North Fork Bear News in response to Tim Manley’s warning at the winter Interlocal meeting that he may have to remove Patti Bear this summer if she gets another food reward. We don’t want to see that happen, and we’re confident the rest of the North Fork community doesn’t want to see it happen either. So we’ve decided to get the word out, and we invite you to do the same.
It’s been a long time since the North Fork has lost a bear because of human food rewards, and we have a good reputation for keeping our camps clean and our bears safe. Patti Bear’s story isn’t over yet – Manley says she can still learn to stay out of trouble and he’s made it clear that the last thing he wants to do is kill a bear. But now more than ever, her survival is up to us.
Preventing Patti or any other bear from getting a food reward is simple, and most of us know the drill: don’t leave food or garbage out where bears can get to it. But if it’s so simple and we know the drill, why is a grizzly bear’s life on the line because of human food rewards?
It’s a question each of us needs to ask ourselves if we are serious about the welfare of bears on the North Fork. And it’s not a stretch to say that the welfare of our neighbors and their property is at stake, too. Most of us know what a food conditioned grizzly bear can do to a cabin, or to a person.
Putting up electric fencing, cleaning up dog food or garbage, or removing dead ground squirrels from the yard can be inconvenient, and everyone enjoys seeing birds at a birdfeeder. The question ultimately becomes whether a bear’s life is worth a little extra cleanup or giving up our birdfeeders. We think it is. With a little extra effort on all our parts, Patti Bear can stay wild, free, and alive.
From the just-published North Fork Bear News . . .
The U.S. Forest Service in cooperation with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Glacier National Park and others is sponsoring a community bear fair on July 9th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Polebridge Mercantile. The event will feature educational talks, booths and displays (including a culvert trap to check out in case you’ve been curious…), great food (of course!) and an opportunity to learn more about bears and how to keep them safe. There will even be pots of flowers to give away to those who renounce their hummingbird feeders and a fushsia raffle for a couple of lucky winners. Come join the fun!
An interesting press release posted to Glacier Park’s web site yesterday . . .
Glacier National Park is participating in a long-term interagency program to monitor the trend of the grizzly bear population in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. Bait stations, automated cameras, and traps will be used to capture and monitor grizzly bears within the park. The program attempts to maintain a sample of up to 10 radio-marked female grizzly bears out of an estimated population of 300 grizzly bears living in the park.
Bait stations and trap sites will be marked with brightly colored warning and closure signs. For safety reasons visitors are reminded to heed and comply with these signs and not enter areas closed for baiting or trapping. A man died last year seven miles east of Yellowstone National Park after he wandered into a capture site and was attacked by a grizzly bear. Trapping efforts will continue at various locations throughout Glacier National Park beginning June through October. For further information, please contact park bear biologist, John Waller, at (406) 888-7829.
From today’s Daily Inter Lake . . .
An ongoing grizzly bear population trend study got off to a good start this year with three bears being captured and fitted with radio collars in the North Fork Flathead drainage.
But that’s just the start of trapping efforts that will carry on for the next few months throughout the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which stretches from the mountains of southern Alberta to the southern end of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.
This Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks press release, posted today on the Flathead Beacon web site, is a North Fork-specific follow-up on the grizzly bear monitoring effort announced three weeks ago:
Grizzly bear population capture efforts for monitoring in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE) have concluded in the North Fork Drainage. Three bears were captured and fitted with radio transmitters during the effort. FWP Biologists will closely follow the bears’ movements.
FWP Biologist Rick Mace notes that the successful capture operation will enable FWP to monitor the survival and reproduction of grizzly bears in this important area of the NCDE. It was recently concluded that the grizzly bear population in the NCDE is growing at a rate of 3 percent per year, based on an analysis and publication by Mace and his colleagues in an upcoming edition of The Journal of Wildlife Management. Grizzly bear monitoring capture efforts now move to other areas of the NCDE. The project is primarily funded by FWP and the U. S. Forest Service.
In other grizzly bear news, an adult female grizzly and her yearling were captured in the Blankenship Bridge area of the North Fork of the Flathead Drainage on June 13. The two grizzlies were released today in the Coal Creek area. The bears were grazing on green grass at private residences. The move was a pre-emptive measure to avoid conflicts with residents.
Here’s a timely reminder to be bear-aware from today’s Missoulian . . .
There have been a half-dozen encounters between grizzly bears and humans reported in Montana this month alone, a number experts attribute to a growing bear population stuck in the low country because of the deep snowpack.
Most of those encounters didn’t turn out well for the bears. Four times, the grizzlies were shot and killed.
Yet another sign of spring is this recent press release from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks . . .
As part of ongoing efforts required under the Endangered Species Act to monitor the population of grizzly bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE), Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, the US Fish & Wildlife Service and Tribal wildlife managers are working to inform the public that pre-baiting and scientific capture operations are once again about to begin in parts of western Montana.
Biologists will begin to work this month in the Blackfoot Valley, many areas along the Rocky Mountain Front, and Swan, Clearwater, Mission, Jocko and Flathead River Valleys. Capturing will continue intermittently through the end of October. Traps will also be set periodically on private lands where bear/human conflicts are occurring.
All areas where work is being conducted will have warning signs posted along the major access points to the trapping site. It is critical that all members of the public heed these signs.
Monitoring of grizzly bear distribution and other activities are vital to ongoing recovery of grizzlies in the NCDE. In order to attract bears, biologists utilize natural food sources such as fresh road–killed deer and elk. Potential trapping sites are baited with these natural foods and if indications are that grizzly bears are in the area, snares or culvert traps will be used to capture the bears. Once trapped, the bears are sedated, studied, and released in accordance with strict protocols.
For more information regarding grizzly bear trapping efforts call FWP in Missoula at 406-542-5500 or FWP in Kalispell at 406-752-5501.