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All Work Articles
As if Whistler's resident black bears didn't already have huge challenges ahead this fall, an international media circus last week only served to trivialize the animals' plight and fuel public ignorance.
Reporters from Vancouver, across Canada, into the U.S. and as far away as the U.K. delighted in the story of a bear wandering into Whistler's Fat Tony's Pizza and eating several pies while onlookers shot video and laughed at the scene.
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.
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.
For more than two decades, Simon Jackson's life has centred on 400 bears. When he was 7, he saw his first wild bear, a Kodiak, while on a camping trip with his parents. The camping trip ignited Mr. Jackson's interest in bears and at the age of 13 he began his 16-year campaign to save the spirit bear, also known as the Kermode bear, named after Frank Kermode, former director of the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria.
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.
Next summer, grizzly bears will follow their noses to census sites.
Enticed by the smell of fermented cow blood and fish guts, they'll crawl through corrals of barbed wire to sniff logs doused with the mixture. Unbeknownst to them, the big bruins will be leaving DNA samples behind.
Researchers will collect hair snared on the barbed wire. Through DNA testing, scientists will be able to identify individual grizzlies and determine their gender and blood lines. The three-year study will yield more precise estimates of the number of grizzlies in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem of North Idaho and Western Montana.
Alberta environmental groups called on the provincial government Monday to reduce the number of roads and trails in bear habitats.
Pointing to two recent studies, the groups said the concentration of roads in some areas exceeds the province's own limits. And they say more roads means more access for the public, which is putting more pressure on the bears.
KALISPELL, Mont. - A young female grizzly bear fitted with a satellite collar for more than a year embarked on several lengthy swims across portions of Flathead Lake, wildlife officials in Montana said.
Rick Mace with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks said the 4-year-old grizzly made the swims after being captured on the west side of the lake near Flathead Lake Lutheran Camp late last summer.
Four years ago the Alaska Legislature offered Gov. Sarah Palin and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game a special deal: $400,000 to "educate" voters on predator control. The money -- spent mostly on a video, glossy brochures and public presentations -- was meant to persuade and reassure Alaskans that predator control is essential and effective.
Firmly convinced he's doing the right thing, the new director of the Division of Wildlife Conservation at Fish and Game, Corey Rossi, is taking predator control to new levels. For the first time since statehood, Alaska has targeted grizzly bears for large-scale population reductions, not by hunters but by agents of the state.
British Columbia's coastal grizzly bears often have a hard time securing their life requisites, as humans interfere with much of their day-to -day existence. Grizzlies face a myriad of threats, from the degradation of their habitat by industrial forestry, to their direct killing via trophy hunting. They also face fierce competition for their most important food source, wild salmon, from commercial and sport fisheries.
That competition may have gotten more extreme this summer, as BC's north coast commercial salmon fishermen have discarded over 20% (by weight) of their catch, including 1.4 million pounds (636 metric tons) of chum salmon. Many of these fish are from stocks that federal fisheries scientists have described as 'conservation concern'. One-half of these chum discards came from areas in and around the Great Bear Rainforest.
Most of the discarded fish are not expected to survive because salmon hauled up in nets and onto decks need careful handling to be released back to the water unharmed.
FORT COLLINS, Colo. - The collar of the wild is coming.
Lisa Wolfe, a veterinarian at Colorado Parks and Wildlife, fed and monitored Rascal on Monday as he walked on the treadmill.
And in the same way that the smartphone changed human communications, what might be called the "smart collar" - measuring things that people never could before about how animals move and eat and live their lives - could fundamentally transform how wild populations are managed, and imagined, biologists and wildlife managers say.
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — Nothing evokes the passion of a certain sect of Lake Tahoe residents quite like the issue of black bear management. Nevada's re cent legalization of the state's first bear hunt, coupled with the killing of a nuisance bruin in July that was captured in the Raley's parking lot, has inspired some residents to band together to formulate solutions.
While NoBearHuntNV.org is a formal organization created to oppose the bear hunt, the latest movement to center on bruin issues is more informal, consisting of a handful of local residents who are taking it upon themselves to photograph trash re ceptacles that are out of compliance with the Incline Village General Improvement District's trash ordinance.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement is investigating after a guard at BP's Endicott oil field apparently mortally wounded a polar bear by shooting it with a pyrotechnic shotgun shell in a hazing incident.
BP spokesman Steve Rinehart said Wednesday that the security guard, who works for the contractor Purcell Security, was hazing an aggressive polar bear on the night of Aug. 3 in an attempt to stop it from moving toward a housing unit at the North Slope oil field. He said the guard believed he was firing a non-lethal bean bag round from his 12-gauge shotgun.
WINNIPEG - A wildlife biologist from Minnesota says black bear problems this summer can be solved without killing any more bears.
Lynn Rogers, director of the Wildlife Research Institute and the North American Bear Centre in Ely, Minnesota, said studies show that putting food out for bears at a designated site - a practice known as diversionary feeding - can keep black bears away from populated areas but doesn't condition the bears to human food.
KALISPELL (AP) - State wildlife officials have captured a female grizzly bear south of Marias Pass and relocated the animal to the Cabinet Mountains as part of an effort to boost the grizzly population in northwestern Montana.
The Daily Inter Lake reports the 2- to 3-year-old bear was trapped by state Fish, Wildlife and Parks personnel in the Puzzle Creek drainage and released near Spar Lake south of Troy on July 27.
It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice.
But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for possible scientific misconduct.
Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist, oversaw much of the scientific work for the government agency that has been examining drilling in the Arctic. He managed about $50m (£30.5m) in research projects.
Two famous grizzly bear mothers have swapped a cub in Grand Teton National Park in what might best be described as an example of animal altruism, biologists said this week.
The roadside family drama of grizzly mothers 399 and 610 and their total of five cubs-of-the-year unfolded in front of thrilled crowds near Willow Flats last week.
Grizzly 399 and her daughter from 2006, grizzly 610, have previously been seen with three cubs and two cubs, respectively.
The survivors of a grizzly bear mauling Saturday night in the Talkeetna Mountains are speaking out about the attack. A group of teens were backpacking deep in the wilderness near the Chutlina River when they say a grizzly bear jumped on them.
Seven young men who were part of a 30-day National Outdoor Leadership School program leaned on their training, trust, and faith to not only survive a bear mauling in the Alaska wilderness, but to live to talk about it.
Plans to allow firearms in Canada's northernmost parks so people can better protect themselves from polar bears should not be extended south, experts say, despite recent incidents in British Columbia and Wyoming.
Parks Canada made headlines with the announcement this week, but Alberta guides, wildlife experts and parks staff interviewed expressed no interest in bringing a similar strategy to this region.
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