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All Grizzly Bears Articles
The death of Brian Matayoshi in a grizzly bear charge last summer was a classic conundrum for the people who work toward the day bears and humans can share the northern Rocky Mountains. "We are providing education, but it's not being received," Chris Servheen told the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee at its winter meeting in Missoula on Wednesday. As coordinator for grizzly recovery with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Servheen keeps track of bear incidents throughout the Rocky Mountains. And this year's run-ins appear to show we have successful strategies to avoid conflict, but we're not using them.
The interagency grizzly bear committee is meeting in Missoula. Experts from the United States and Canada are exploring ways to ease pressures between grizzlies and humans.
Province to amend wildlife act - The province introduced a new amendment to the Wildlife Act on Monday, Nov. 14 that, if passed, could result in fines of $230 for "the mismanagement of attractants (such as food, compost and garbage waste) that could invite dangerous wildlife, such as grizzly and black bears, cougars, coyotes and wolves." The change was part of an omnibus bill by the Attorney General and is not yet law.
If you're hiking in the foothills near Hinton, you might find deep dents in the soil, accompanied by the scrapes of a paw.
Make that a grizzly-bear paw. In spring and fall, the bears dig in the foothills and nearby alpine areas in search of a nutritious root that a University of Alberta graduate student hopes could help researchers identify important habitat for the bears, which were designated a threatened species in Alberta last year.
An adult female grizzly bear was shot and killed on Saturday after charging a pair of Kalispell elk hunters and injuring one of them near the Continental Divide about four miles south of Marias Pass on U.S. Highway 2.
Anthony Willits, 31, and Gregory Louden, 29, had earlier in the day shot a bull elk, taken out a portion of the meat, and were returning to the carcass when they encountered the sow and two cubs.
The men reported that as the sow grizzly charged them they shot it once before it bit Willits in the lower left leg below the knee. Louden shot the bear three more times, killing it.
When Matt Blaney stands up at the front of the tour bus parked on an old logging road, he has a can of pepper spray in his hand, a relaxed smile on his face and the rapt attention of his guests.
Using a mix of natural charm and the special training he got from customer service experts at London Drugs, he makes sure people understand one simple rule. Do what he says and you can safely get astonishingly close to some of the biggest carnivores in North America.
In July, a grizzly defending her cubs attacked a couple hiking in Yellowstone National Park, it killing the man.
Again in Yellowstone, a man hiking alone was fatally mauled by a grizzly bear in August. In September, a Montana black bear hunter was attacked by a grizzly bear he mistakenly wounded. The guy's hunting partner tried to save him but ended up shooting and killing him.
GREAT FALLS - An increasing grizzly bear population is expanding east from the Rocky Mountain Front in western Montana as individual bears discover that the plains contain abundant food, a grizzly bear expert says.
Mike Madel of Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks said some bears appear to have discovered that food sources are better on the plains than in the mountains. He noted that in the past young bears trying to make it on their own were showing up on the plains, but now there are adult females that are passing their knowledge to their cubs.
A former Canmore author came to town to shed light on what he sees as the way forward for grizzly bears in the area.
Jeff Gailus author of the Grizzly Manifesto and, a forthcoming title, Little Black Lies, spoke to the role that he sees for Parks Canada, given what he characterized as an ineffective effort by the province of Alberta to protect its bears.
WILSON — Grand Teton National Park has closed portions of the road between Moose and Wilson because of the presence of feeding grizzly bears.
Bears are feeding on chokecherry bushes and other plants in the area. Intermittent closures have been in effect since last Friday because people have been parking their vehicles too close to the bears.
METRO VANCOUVER - Nick Didlick wasn't sure what to expect when he hiked into the thick rainforests of the upper Pitt River Valley and set up a remotely activated video camera on a trail beside a salmon-spawning channel.
The professional photographer and fishing guide recalls returning two weeks later, crouching down and peering at the small image on the camera and realizing right away he had captured something special.
"I looked and said, 'Oh my God, this is a grizzly,'" said Didlick, who first saw what he believed to be grizzly tracks in the valley in 2005. "I guess it wasn't a good place to be alone."
Chloe O'Loughlin is welcoming the B.C. Liberal government's "huge announcement" that it plans to legislate a ban on mining and oil and gas development in the Flathead River Valley.
But the Vancouver-based environmentalist cautions that the move is just a "good first step", as more needs to be done to ensure the area in the province's southeastern corner is protected.
BILLINGS, Mont. - A grizzly bear that fatally mauled a hiker in Yellowstone National Park was killed after DNA evidence linked the animal to the scene of a second hiker's death a month later, a park official said Monday.
The decision to euthanize the 250-pound female bear was meant to protect park visitors and staff, Superintendent Dan Wenk said.
CALGARY - Some of the world's foremost bear experts are looking at new ways to prevent grizzlies from getting killed along railway tracks inside Banff National Park.
A dozen bears have been killed and a half dozen cubs orphaned in the last decade and experts estimate there are now only between 45 and 60 grizzlies left in the park.
Last year, Alberta reclassified the species as threatened because of rapidly dwindling numbers.
MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) - State wildlife officials say a 2-year-old male grizzly bear that had been captured after breaking into a bee yard east of Deer Lodge has died of complications from the immobilization medications administered to the bear.
Fish, Wildlife and Parks bear management specialist Jamie Jonkel says the 280-pound bear had broken into a bee yard, protected by an electric fence, multiple times last week. The bear was captured Sunday by the U.S. Wildlife Services and handled by FWP. It died Tuesday.
Jonkel says biologists had planned to relocate the bear to a site in the South Fork of the Flathead River valley.
For the past three years Bear No. 8's behaviour was becoming increasingly worrisome.
It sprinted after cyclists, charged dog walkers and held a Canadian Pacific train hostage when it stood its ground on a grain car and wouldn't let workers near.
On Monday, the six-year-old male grizzly bear stalked two people in Banff National Park, chasing them up a tree, where they sat in fear and panic for two hours.
Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Bear No. 646 was eventually tracked to a location 1.7 miles southwest of the trapping/mauling site. It was shot dead from a helicopter by U.S. Wildlife Services at 7:15 a.m. on June 19.
After the incident at Kitty Creek, all bear research trapping operations were halted for 50 days until new protocol was established by now-retired IGBST head Chuck Schwartz. Even with the layoff, officials managed to capture a record 95 grizzlies in 2010, 75 of those for bad behavior. In all, 295 grizzly-human conflicts were reported in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), the most since record-keeping began in 1992.
BELLA COOLA - Recent flooding along B.C.'s Central Coast has been devastating, destroying homes and roads, but there are much wider implications that are only now becoming clearer.
The floods wiped out much of the salmon spawn in Bella Coola. It is the best source of food for local grizzly bears trying to fatten up for the winter.
Yosemite National Park - A video of a pair of adorable bear cubs who delighted visitors at Yosemite National Park, where they were filmed wrestling in the middle of the road, has gone viral receiving hundreds of thousands of views in just a few days.According to the the video description the mother bear and her cubs were filmed by park visitors who were returning from a day hike at Hetch Hetchy, a popular destination for hikers in the California national forest.
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - Researchers are planning to collect grizzly bear fur samples snagged on barbed wire as part of a three-year study in northern Idaho and northwestern Montana.
The study, which begins next summer, should give a more precise estimate of the number of grizzlies in the 2.4-million acre Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem, said Kate Kendall, a U.S. Geological Service scientist at Glacier National Park.
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