A Grizzly Bear's Plea

A fantastic article in Montana's Daily Inter Lake, detailing the plight of grizzlies as they suffer the continual encroachments of human habitations, all written from the perspective of a grizzly bear. This is great to see and likely a sign that the tide is turning in favor of a greater understanding about bears and a larger tolerance for what they need. I hope to see more work like this coming out in the future.

 

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/opinion/article_7c893002-b515-11e2-a4e9-001a4bcf887a.html

"Where the Bear Walks" book now available

Despite a slight delay due to the process of settling on and creating a cover, the book version of the blog, entitled Where the Bear Walks: From Fear to Understanding, is now available for sale through Createspace. It will be listed on Amazon.com and Kindle later this week. I'll post those links when they are listed and ready to go. Until then, here is a link to the Createspace store: https://www.createspace.com/4041221 

 

Thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoy the book! It could not have been done without all of you! Now that it's completed, I fully expect to be more active on this site again with new posts.  

 

 



"Where the Bear Walks" Book April Release

Today I officially put the finishing touches on the primary text for the "Where the Bear Walks" book. Now I'll have to go back and tweak some things in the early chapters so that they read more like the latter chapters. I will also be sending individual chapters to the people profiled in the book for content review. Doug Peacock is among these and he will be out of commission for three weeks after hip replacement surgery on March 8th and cannot review the material until April. You can expect the book to be released sometime that month.

In some recent bear news, President Obama has finalized a special ruling that denies polar bears direct protection from greenhouse gases under the Endangered Species Act, in what the media is dubbing a "Polar Bear Extinction Plan." Despite the Administration's vocal concerns about the impact of global warming on polar bear populations, this new regulation is modeled after a previous Bush Administration ruling that also failed to take measures to prevent polar bear extinction. You can find more info here: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2013/polar-bear-02-19-2013.html

 

With the loss of sea ice becoming more extreme every year, more and more emaciated polar bears are turning up and some are starving to death. This has prompted a number of polar bear scientists to convene in Churchill to discuss possible options. One of those is using supplemental feeding to help stabilize the bear population should a critical point be reached. Obviously that's raised the ire of the Ministry of the Environment who are still spouting out the "fed bear is a dead bear" line but I'm pleased to hear these scientists admit that feeding wild animals during times of food shortage is not unheard of and is perfectly acceptable in these types of extreme cases. Sounds like a good step in the right direction. More info: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/is-it-time-to-feed-the-polar-bears/article8550910/?cmpid=rss1

 

Stay tuned for more updates as the book comes together. When it's finished, I'll have a link to it posted here.

Third Anniversary!

I'm two days late but no matter. This weekend marks the three year anniversary of the beginning of this blog and, as usual, it's time to reflect on how far things have come in the past year. It seems this will finally be the year when my writing efforts will be reaching a much larger audience. After the success of the Kindle publishing of my article Night of the Grizzlies, 45 Years Later (see post below), the piece has been picked up by The Inside Trial, the publication of the Glacier Park Foundation, and will appear in this winter's issue. I'm excited that something with such personal meaning for me will be getting out there in such a way.

Work on the book version of Where the Bear Walks is still chugging along. I'm around halfway through, maybe a little over, but some of the hardest sections to tackle information-wise are yet to come. I hope that my projected release date of late spring/early summer will hold true but I can't be sure; a delay is a very real possibility.

 

As challenging as the book is, recent headlines are spurring me along and keeping me working. It appears that next year, barring some miracle, grizzlies will be removed from the protections of the Endangered Species Act, making them fair game for anyone with a gun and a score to settle. Already the comments sections of related news reports are overflowing with those frothing at the mouth to take a shot at a grizzly. The truly sad thing is that many of these people have no interest in population control; they simply want the animals gone because of the reputation they've been given. I try to stay focused on this during the dark moments when I'm lost in the turmoil of writing hell. I don't honestly believe that anything I or anyone else writes will change things at this point but I know I have to do my part for the conservation of these animals and I truly hope that the book, the articles, and the posts on this blog will be sufficient enough to do even a tiny sliver of good.

 

But I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Two Articles Available on Amazon Kindle

After spending a few months submitting some of my writing to magazines for publication, I decided instead to publish two of them independently as edocs on Amazon kindle. Night of the Grizzlies, 45 Years Later is the one I most sought to publish but the finished version is too outsized for magazine publication and the subject has too much personal meaning for me to just cut it down to a manageable length. I felt this was the best way to get it out there; continuing to pursue magazine publication could well take until the 50th anniversary! The essay is much more in-depth than my posting about it here and, of all my pieces, it's the one I feel the most pride in.

 

As a bonus to all of you, I've included an additional essay entitled Brown Bears World: Fortress of the Bear that details the triumphs, tragedies, pitfalls, and hardships of saving orphaned cubs in Alaska. The piece is critical of actions taken by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which many publications are unwilling to run. For $0.99 you can get them both and the funds will go into the writing and publication of my book Where the Bear Walks: From Fear to Understanding which will be available later in 2013. I also have a short article, A Summer With The Bears, that will run in the July/August issue of Alaska Magazine.

 

Here is the link for the kindle essays: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B04B0KY

 

I greatly appreciate your readership and your support! Thank you!

"Where the Bear Walks" sample chapter

Work on the book is coming along better than expected, though I fear that it may be shorter than I would like. I'm almost finished with chapter six and getting ready to start outlining chapters seven and eight. To tide you over, here is a brief sample chapter from the book. I chose this one because it's an era in bear history that I've never really discussed on the blog. This is the first chapter in a section chronicling the dark history between man and bear. The rest of the book will profile those few individuals whose cutting-edge work is devoted to overturning the old dogmatic beliefs that caused something like this to happen in the first place. Enjoy!

                                               ****

                                          

It’s hard to believe that an estimated 100,000 grizzlies once roamed North America, with roughly 10,000 of those in Southern California alone. From the Mexican Rockies through the Southwestern deserts, from the vast Great Plains to the coastlines of the Pacific Northwest, grizzlies that sometimes topped out over 1,000 pounds prowled the landscape. These were the days before the westward expansion, before the arrival of the white man and the European, when the West was still wild and untamed.

    It’s telling that the conflict between the two species did not really begin until the white man came, bringing with them the American penchant to dominate and subdue all that stands before them. The Native Americans lived alongside the grizzly with few problems. In fact, many tribes revered the bears, giving them names such as “grandfather” and “elder brother”, due to the many characteristics they share with man. To some, they were gods and creation legends that revolved around the grizzly were told and passed down (they viewed the black bear as cowardly due to its timid nature and did not consider them real bears), while some believed that women could morph into bears. Others believed their ancestors were reincarnated as bears and treated them with great reverence and respect. The tribes that hunted the grizzly did so as a rite of passage or a religious experience, a task not to be taken lightly.

    The long-standing peace between man and bear ended abruptly in 1804 when Lewis and Clark began their famous expedition west. Having no knowledge of the great bears, the men often surprised them at close range, foolishly chased them, or otherwise provoked the animals into attacking. The explorers were quick to use their weapons, marveling at how difficult the animals were to kill. Some bears fell under no less than eight rifle balls, prompting the men to write of the unnaturally aggressive temperament of the beasts. In truth, that extreme aggression was caused by the ineffectiveness of the primitive weapons to do little more than cause maddening pain.

    There is no doubt that Lewis and Clark contributed heavily to science (the discovery of the grizzly, ironically, is considered to be their greatest*), and to the birth of our civilization, but there can also be no doubt that they were the first to paint the grizzly bear in an unfavorable light. When their published journals became popular in 1825, the image of the grizzly as North America’s most fearsome beast was burned into the minds of the public. As told around thousands of campfires and printed in as many books, Lewis and Clark’s misunderstanding of the grizzly’s powerful build, curious nature, and hair-trigger defensiveness became so further embellished that, when the westward expansion finally began, along with it came an assortment of guns and traps suitable enough to take on this sinister brute.

    The killing began in California. With the westward flow of humanity, cattle inevitably followed, soon becoming a big business. As early as the late 1830’s, large tracts of prime grizzly habitat were being converted to pasture and farmland. With the advent of large-caliber weapons and repeating rifles, and the fear that cattle would make easy pickings for the large bears, ranchers and farmers hired professional hunters to exterminate grizzlies on their land and some of these hunters were rumored to have killed as many as 200 bears in one year’s time.

    Those grizzlies unlucky enough to fall before the bullets were taken alive for use in public grudge matches against 2,000 pound Spanish bulls. More often than not, the bears would actually shy away from the bulls, attempting to dig a hole to hide in. But when the bull struck and blood was drawn, the confrontation usually ended quickly. The battered and bleeding grizzly would then be subjected to round after round of the fights until it finally succumbed to death, to the great delight of bloodthirsty spectators.

    Eventually public outcry against bear/bull fights finally put an end to the barbaric sport, but there was never to be any such outcry against the mass slaughter that was occurring and the killing continued until every last grizzly had been exterminated from the state of California.

    In the late 1870’s, large cattle ranches laid claim to open grasslands in the West and immediately ran into wildlife problems. While true predators like wolves and mountain lions were responsible for most of the stock killing, it was the grizzly that got most of the blame. Bears are actually very inefficient predators and usually resort to scavenging and feeding on carcasses left behind by other animals. When a rancher would go in search of a cattle carcass, he would find a grizzly feeding on it and naturally assume the bear must have been the killer. As it was in California, professional hunters were hired to shoot grizzlies on sight and some of these men were unspeakably cruel in their practices.

 

*It was actually Spanish explorers in the 1500’s who should be given this credit.

 

    James “Bear” Moore was one of the most deranged. His face half mangled from a bear he had wounded, he specialized in trapping grizzlies inside a small cabin structure and then would wreak his own personal vengeance by impaling them for hours with white-hot iron rods. When he tired of the torture, he would shoot the hapless animals. Others would corner grizzlies in culvert traps, douse them with gasoline, and light them on fire.

    As the wildlife war raged on, a more effective solution was devised: strychnine. Believed to be a quick and painless death, this slow-acting poison actually causes severe muscle spasms and it can take up to half an hour for its victim to finally die. Stocked in mercantile stores throughout the West, this lethal concoction would be the grizzly’s final downfall. Even the newly-created U.S. Forest Service, more concerned with appeasing ranchers than with protecting wildlife, joined in on the poisoning campaign. Then the U.S. Congress created PARC, the Predatory Animal and Rodent Control Division of the Department of Agriculture, and set in motion a “final solution” for predator control. Massive doses of strychnine and strychnine-laced beef were spread across the countryside by hundreds of government agents.

    And no one said a word. No government employees or Forest Service rangers or ranchers or civilians ever questioned what was being done. They did their jobs and reaped the monetary rewards for their silence.

    The last grizzly in Texas fell in 1890, then in South Dakota in 1897. The grizzly was declared extinct in Mexico in 1920, then California – once one of the greatest strongholds for the great bear – in 1922. Utah’s last was killed in 1923, Oregon’s in 1931 and Washington’s in 1936. New Mexico lost its last in 1933 and Arizona in 1939. The final holdout was a female in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, killed in 1952. A hundred thousand animals had been reduced to only a few hundred.

    The remaining survivors had fled into the high mountains of Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks in an attempt to escape the bounties and the bloodshed and today they are the last enclaves of the North American grizzly outside of Canada and Alaska. The establishment of those parks is probably all that stopped the holocaust from following them until there were none left. Now those survivors are waiting. Waiting for a change. Waiting for a day when they’re once again free to roam, when these last strongholds are not all they have left.

    As previously stated, the legend of the killer bear is still with us. The days of Lewis and Clark have left us with that inaccurate and misinformed idea and we have yet to let go of it. To this day, fierce battles are waged over the future of the grizzly and what the bear is actually worth. There are a disturbing number who feel that the mass extermination should be re-implemented and should continue until the species is extinct. Fortunately, their voices are not the loudest and there are even more individuals who are standing on the frontlines every day, trying to save what’s left of these bears and trying to change the world’s perception of them.

    With the eradication of the plains grizzly, the roaring gunfire that echoed throughout the western states finally faded to a grim silence. But silence was meant to be broken. It was misguided fear of the grizzly that nearly destroyed him and, in the decades that followed, the bear was completely taken for granted in Glacier National Park. Garbage dumps were publicly opened for bear feeding shows, trash was dumped in culverts and ditches behind alpine chalets and, running underneath it all, was the equally misguided belief that the great bears were not really dangerous…

Copyright © 2012 Chris Nunnally Where the Bear Walks: From Fear to Understanding

"Where The Bear Walks" the book is officially underway!

I've posted before my plans to adapt this blog into book form. Now that I've returned home from Glacier National Park, I feel that the time is right and I've officially begun. I had tried once or twice to write the beginnings of an introduction only to find that the opening is the most difficult part. I've now written a handful of pages in half an hour and the gates have finally been opened. Words and ideas are bursting forth now. The introduction, which I expected to be the hardest part, is now looking like a piece of cake. I still expect it to be a slow process, but at least the journey is finally underway.

 

****

 

My final days in Glacier proved to be of some interest. The black bear that I mentioned in the previous post returned while I was sitting outside my cabin one evening. he came down out of the woods, crossed the driveway, looked back at me for a moment, then hobbled on towards the river, a noticeable limp in one of his front legs. Word got around very quickly about the injury, but no one knew what had caused it. The bear seemed to disappear until just before I left town. I saw him that last night at the river. He appeared at dusk, still limping, swam across the water, and hobbled off into the woods, snapping sticks the whole way (I cannot stress the importance of snapping sticks while hiking. Every bear that I've heard in the woods has done this as they walked to warn other bears that a larger animal is approaching. This is a much more effective technique for recreationists than simply talking or yelling).

 

As incredible as the encounters with the black bear were, I longed to see a grizzly or, as the Indians called them, "the real bear", noting that the timid nature of the black bear doesn't even lump it into the same category. While camping at Many Glacier in late September, I got my wish. We had observed early that morning a young black and silver grizzly feeding on a hillside through binoculars. A hike to spectacular Iceberg Lake later that morning brought us to the crest of that same hillside and, waiting in the trail about a mile in and 100 yards or so away, was that very same grizzly. He had been walking the trail headed in our direction until he saw us coming, then he seemed to become undecisive as to what he should do. We could easily see that the bear's mouth was hanging open like a dog's, a clear body language signal that indicated complete relaxation. He was not at all stressed to encounter us. We waited in the trail for a long time, watching him as he foraged for wild flowers. He started moving further up the trail and we moved with him, keeping him in sight but maintaining that 100 yard distance. Other hikers showed up and we all just stood, watching quietly. It was late in the season after all when bears are forced to scramble for calories to get them through hibernation, so we didn't want to push him away if he had found a viable food source. Finally, he seemed to sense that we wanted to move on and he moved off the trail and down the slope into thick grass, allowing us to pass only thirty feet away. We didn't see him again, but we did stand six feet away from a mother deer and her young and were pleasantly surprised to find the lake still very much full of ice, making it a very good trip all around!

 

Back to work on the book for now. I'll keep providing updates and offer a link to the book on this site when it's finished.