Taking Things to a New Level

Tomorrow morning I'm headed for Sitka, Alaska to take a seasonal bear manager position at Fortress of the Bear. The owners of the sanctuary have read this blog and told me that they've observed some remarkable things with their two bears, Killisnoo and Chaik. I will be caring for the bears, overseeing enrichment programs to keep them from getting bored (as heavily detailed in Else Poulsen's Smiling Bears, which will be my Bible over the next few months), and raising any new orphaned cubs that we may obtain. It's an exciting opportunity, mostly from the perspective of this blog and my own personal research, so check back often for pictures, updates, and any observations I make, plus more book reviews and discussion topics. This is going to be an interesting adventure!

Safety in Bear Country

Throughout the course of this blog, I've tried to show how complex bears are and how little we really know about them. Considering that, we have to wonder how accurate our ideas about staying safe in bear country really are. Most of those safety pamphlets that are readily available in almost all national parks are not written by scientists or experts, but by law firms representing the parks themselves, lawyers worried about litigation who feel that pushing fear and danger will reduce the chances of a lawsuit. While most of the advice is accurate and helpful, some is not...and some could even make a bad situation worse.

For example, the advice given in these pamphlets does not differentiate between the two principle types of bears one might encounter. Instead of saying "if you see a black bear, you should do this" or "if you see a grizzly, you should do that", we are told simply "if you see a bear (of any type), do this". That in itself is not very smart advice as the rules vary depending on the bear. Black bears are normally shy and timid animals, easily intimidated and provoked. Stand your ground and make eye contact (yes, make eye contact!) to show that you are the dominant in the situation, and the bear will back down. Break eye contact even for a moment and the bear may take advantage and charge. Not to worry, though, as most black bear demonstrations of aggressiveness are only bluster and are signs of the bear's fear and nervousness, not a prelude to an attack. Talk to the bear calmly. Do not raise your voice, shout, or wave your arms as most safety pamphlets tell you to do. Hold your ground, be the one in control, and the situation will resolve itself. Grizzlies on the other hand are naturally dominant animals and will react aggressively to any dominant behavior exhibited by intruders. Like the black bear, hold your ground to show that you will not be bullied (do NOT make eye contact) and lower your head and turn it - and perhaps even your whole body - to the side. This is a display of submission and peaceful intent that most wild animals recognize. Speak quietly and calmly. This will keep you calm and in turn will keep the bear calm. Raising your voice and waving your arms could be interpreted as a display of aggressive intent and could lead to an attack.

One piece of advice given is to play dead when attacked by a bear. While that is true if the bear perceives you as a threat to his space or his young, you only have to read any one given bear attack book to find an account of someone who misinterpreted this advice and played dead upon sighting a grizzly. The result, obviously, was a vicious attack, as dropping to the ground in a fetal position is a display of weakness to a dominant animal. A bear that is only concerned with removing a perceived threat will usually break off an attack when the victim plays dead. In the case of a predatory attack, this strategy would be suicide. In that scenario, fighting back is your only option, to show the bear that you will not be easy prey. An attack in defense of cubs would only be likely in grizzly country, as black bears and even polar bears do not aggressively defend their young.

But all of these situations, the little pamphlets tell us, can easily be avoided by hiking in groups and never alone. Supposedly, a large group of people can appear intimidating to a bear, but guru grizzly conservationist Doug Peacock has controversially challenged that opinion. He claims (and I agree) that hiking alone and being quieter can lessen your chances of a bear attack as you are a silent, unobtrusive visitor. Shouting, singing, and clapping can anger a bear, in particular a sleeping bear, and whistling can sound like a wounded animal, so those could be very risky options for hikers. Remember, bears have exceptional hearing - some evidence suggesting in the ultrasonic range - and could react angrily to sharp, shrill sounds. Likewise, hiking in a group could increase the risk of an attack by being a louder and more obtrusive presence. A large number of people alone would not necessarily be more intimidating to a bear, but would give the hikers a greater sense of security and their body language would show more self-confidence than a lone hiker's would. There are no definitive right or wrong rules for hikers, except remain calm and composed. While bear bells are not especially effective, bear spray is, and will most often successfully defuse any situation that peaceful negotiation cannot.

Bottom line, bears are highly intelligent, complex animals, and they should be treated as such. If you're going to be spending any amount of time in bear country, the smartest thing you can do is educate yourself about bear psychology, body language, and communication. Unfortunately, with the exception of Stephen Stringham's When Bears Whisper, Do You Listen, there isn't a lot of available information on the subject. Stringham's follow-up, entitled The Language of Bears, is set to be released in spring 2011. While most books contain some measure of helpful information on the subject, these two will be the definitive works, but I unfortunately don't feel that I can devote much to the topic without having first read both titles and one is still a year off. Nevertheless, I'll try to compile as much as I can from what info I do have into an upcoming post.

Bear Intelligence

Because of the slow, plodding nature of bears, they're not really thought of as being all that intelligent, even though circus bears are trained to ride bikes and roller skates, play musical instruments, and other routines of such remarkable complexity that no other animal could master them. Most people overlook this instead of realizing that it speaks to a high level of intelligence and cognitive ability within the bear. In fact, they've been found to have a brain almost as convoluted as that of a human being and many biologists readily admit that bears are equal to the great apes and even dolphins in their intelligence. Some take that a step farther and claim that some bears have the IQ of a three-year-old child.

What's most interesting is that this level of intelligence and cognitive reasoning is not often observed among bears in the wild. A possible explanation for this is that a bear in the wild is so driven by the single-minded purpose of survival and finding enough food before the onset of winter that the full scope of what they're capable of must often take a backseat to wild instinct. Researchers like Else Poulsen and Doug Seus have shown that when a bear is kept in captivity, well-fed, cared for, and given a stress-free life, the other side of their nature becomes more apparent and takes precedence over instinct.

Doug Seus has worked with grizzlies for 33 years and says that never a day goes by when he's not amazed by what they're capable of. He says that his Kodiak Bart the Bear was at least as intelligent as a chimpanzee and was still not that remarkably intelligent as grizzlies go. He recounts a story in which a flash flood had washed a Coke can and a thorny hawthorn tree into a ditch alongside his Utah home. Bart attempted to retrieve the can but was deterred by the sharp thorns. Looking back and forth from the can to a two by twelve plank lying nearby, Bart picked up the plank and used it to press the branches down so he could retrieve the can.

Else Poulsen witnessed some of the most amazing evidence of intelligence while working with captive bears as a rehabilitator for a zoo. A grizzly would run her paws over herself in a washing motion to indicate that she wanted a bath and would use her nose to point to the part of her body that she wanted washed. If in pain, the bears would point with their noses to whatever it was that hurt and would then bite down on their paws to indicate pain. One young bear - shunned from play by two older bears - did the same thing, apparently to indicate emotional pain. The polar bears showed the greatest intelligence, one very pointedly demonstrating to Poulsen why frozen chickens don't make good toys: they thaw out in water! Likewise, Charlie Russell's bear Chico seemed to understand Russell's interest in bears and taught him a simple greeting that they shared only between each other.

Lily the Black Bear was seemingly smart enough to associate her den cam with Lynn Rogers. Whacking it with her paw during play, she gazed wide-eyed at the camera, sniffed it, licked it, and cooed reassuringly at it in the same way that she would to calm her cub, all of this apparently an apologetic gesture.

Larry Kaniut's Alaska Bear Tales tells the story of a hunter who encountered two grizzlies. He shot and killed one and pursued when the other one, a female, ran. He cornered the grizzly in a river trying to climb a steep embankment, but the slope was too muddy and she kept sliding back into the water. Trapped between the slope and the man, the hunter said the bear moaned and wailed when he raised the gun. Surprised, he lowered the gun....and then raised it again. He did this repeatedly, getting the same reaction each time the weapon was raised. Finally, he says that the bear lowered her head into the water and drowned herself. As disgusting and horrifying as the story is, if it's true it says a lot about a bear's cognitive ability and - for me - explains why some attacks against humans are so aggressive and merciless.

In Stephen Herrero's Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance, the story is told of a radio-collared black bear being tracked on foot by a researcher while the man's father patrolled overhead in an airplane. In order to throw off his tracker, the bear built several nests in different locations, then entered a stream, backtracked 50 yards, and slipped into thick foliage. The man refused to give up and by late afternoon, the sun was melting the snow and rocks appeared. The bear used this to his advantage, stepping from rock to rock, leaving no trail behind. Finally the researcher picked up the tracks again and followed them until they stopped, disappearing into thin air. This time the bear had walked backwards, placing his feet precisely into his tracks, and went back in the opposite direction, eluding the man.

Ben Kilham's Among the Bears recounts his experiences raising several different sets of cubs in New Hampshire. Not only did his work show how impressionable they are in their youth and how one bad experience during that formative time can scar them for life, but also that they're capable of altruism, a quality that was previously only thought to be found in human beings. But not only did they show altruism for other bears, but for other forms of life that they encountered! They demonstrated how clever, intelligent, and adaptable to changes in their environment they really are. Testing that intelligence, Kilham presented them with a mirror, hoping to find evidence of self-awareness. In every case, the young bears reacted as if they were meeting another bear, but after sniffing the mirror and running circles around it to find the other bear, they seemed to decide that they were looking at their reflections. They were observed dragging objects in front of the mirror and playing while watching themselves. Kilham concluded that it would never be enough to convince most scientists, but it seemed to him a demonstration of some level of self-awareness.

Perhaps the best and most famous example of this level of intelligence being observed in the wild was with the Mud Creek Grizzly of Glacier National Park. The bear had been captured twice by biologists over a two year period for research purposes. Finally the bear decided he'd had enough of that and began to fight back. After a trap site had been set up with bait and cameras, he would sneak into the area, tear down the plastic strips that marked the trail to the site, set off the traps with rocks and sticks, steal the bait, gnaw on the camera until it popped open, remove the film cartridge, and smash it on a rock. This happened several times before biologists decided it best to leave the animal alone before it started taking its frustration out on people....as one research bear did in 2003. This bear was first captured by biologists during the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska and was tracked down, tranquilized, and captured every summer thereafter. When released for the last time, the researchers reported it as exhibiting "strong, abnormal aggression towards human beings" (Gee, I wonder why). A short time later, the bear was killed and identified as being responsible for the deaths of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend. That should be a very clear warning to biologists and researchers whose actions towards an animal that they don't fully understand could end in disaster somewhere down the line. Unfortunately, it's a warning that I don't think many will even bother to acknowledge.

These are just a few of the countless examples of bear intelligence and cognition that are out there, so the next time someone says you're smarter than the average bear, you can rest assured that you're pretty well off.

Highlights From The Den

If you haven't been following the Lily the Black Bear den cam over the last couple of months, then you've missed quite a show! With a Facebook following of almost 100,000 fans in only two months, Lily and her cub - named Hope - have seemingly become worldwide sensations and have helped change a lot of people's ideas about what black bears are really like. Now that it's late March, Lily and Hope will be leaving the den soon and leaving the day-to-day lives of their loyal fans, so if you haven't been watching (and, honestly, why haven't you been watching?), now is a good time to give you a peek into what you've missed.

First is a video clip of Lily giving birth to Hope on Friday January 22. This video alone dispelled one myth about bears: that they sleep all winter, give birth in their sleep, and wake up in the spring with cubs. As you can clearly see, Lily is very much awake when the little bundle of joy arrives. After the birth, a bear hunter posted on the Lily Facebook page that he would never again shoot a bear after hearing the cub cry like a human baby.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBNtANbW5vE

Next is a "highlight" clip showing mother/daughter moments in the den, Hope being left on her own when Lily goes out to forage. If you listen, now and then you can hear the chipmunk chatter of Hope as she nurses. I believe it's clearest towards the end. This is a sound that bear cubs make to let their mothers know that they're content. http://www.bear.org/website/lily-a-hope/den-cam-video-clips/361-march-13-2010-den-highlights.html

Finally, a clip of Lily and Hope playing in the den. After two months of Hope keeping Lily awake almost every night, Lily turns the tables and Hope doesn't like it very much. This also shows that bears do not sleep all winter. In fact, they're wide awake most of the time and occasionally leave the den to stretch for a few hours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DzJwF_ZF80

Over the last week, as the weather's been getting warmer, Lily has been leaving the den more and more, leaving Hope behind to exercise her legs and adjust to Mama's abscence. Hope viciously protested this at first but has become more accepting of it over the past few days as her legs are getting stronger. Finally, early this afternoon, Lily left the den and took Hope with her. Five hours later, they returned for the night. This should be seen as a sign that they will soon be leaving the den for good, so if you haven't watched the Lily cam yet, you should while there's still time. You can view it at either www.bear.org/website/lily-a-hope/live-den-cam.html or www.wildearth.tv/static/wildearth/channels/we_bear_den.html They're well worth a watch.

Lynn Rogers - owner of the North American Bear Center, near where Lily has made her den - monitors and tracks the movements of the bears in this area by fitting them with radio collars. This should also protect them from hunters, but it doesn't and Lynn has lost several black bears that were supposed to be radio-collar protected. Currently the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is debating on illegalizing the hunting of radio-collared black bears, but it remains iffy as to whether or not they will enforce that law. Lynn is very close with Lily and is doing everything he can to ensure that he doesn't lose her. He visits the den every few days and Lily always comes out to greet him, cooing softly to the cub, assuring her that they are in no danger, but she is wary of people she doesn't know and would not approach a hunter with a gun. That doesn't make her any safer, unfortunately.

To help the Minnesota DNR make the right decision in regards to protecting radio-collared research bears, many of Lily's Facebook fans have been sending them letters and e-mails and signing petitions, hoping to make a difference. Below is a link to a video that I edited and captioned. It's an idea that I had in a dream and it stayed with me for days until I decided to make it a reality. I would love to e-mail it to the Minnesota DNR in the hopes that it might have an impact: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d036Tk0zMTQ

Fighting The Grizzly Wars

If one were to sit down and read only the most important books about bears, a good place to stop might be David Knibb's Grizzly Wars, a study of the attempts to preserve grizzly populations in North America and the attempts of the general public and government agencies to drive the last traces of the animal into extinction. In many ways, the book would make the perfect summation of one's own personal bear education.

The story begins with the mysterious sightings of grizzly bears in Washington's Cascade Mountains, the slowly mounting evidence that a small population of grizzlies may be trying to re-establish itself there, and the efforts - some almost desperate - of Fish and Game wildlife managers to sweep it all under the rug, despite the presence of some undeniable evidence. With the Bush Administration's removal of the grizzly from the protection of the Endangered Species Act (citing it as a waste of tax dollars), the fight begins, following U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials who were unlucky enough to be given the job of challenging that removal and standing up for the rights of an animal that is feared and hated by so many.

At a public meeting, one of these hapless officials was confronted by an elderly woman. "So you're one of those bastards in favor of grizzly bears," she said. She railed and cursed at him for a few minutes, telling him that he would be responsible for the death of her grandchildren, and then she spit on him....and that was only the beginning of the meeting! By evening's end, he had received NINE death threats, including a man who swore that he would be waiting outside the building with a gun at the end of the gathering, a threat that was fortunately only a bluff.

As the meetings went on, so did the opposition. Fear caused by misconception ruled the hearts and minds of the public, who proclaimed the grizzly to be nothing more than a murderous killer and that if there were any in the Cascades, they should be hunted down and destroyed. It's telling that most of these ideas came from people who did not live in bear country and whose ideas were fueled by Hollywood theatrics, whereas the biggest support came from those who did live in bear country and who did not consider the grizzly something to be feared. Finally, a nationwide poll showed that 97% of the country favored restoring grizzly populations. Unfortunately, America is no longer a country in which the people have a voice, so the government and wildlife officials persisted in brushing aside the issue. Jon Almack, a state wildlife manager, says that he personally observed a "strategy within the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to deny, discount, and dismiss the evidence about Cascades grizzlies." Wildlife managers know that if they continue to deny even the most irrefutable of evidence that they can delay grizzly recovery for as long as possible, maybe even until there is no longer a species left to recover. The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee now estimates that it could take as long as two hundred years to restore grizzlies to the Cascades.

This is a shocking prospect! The idea that wildlife managers, who are supposed to be for the protection of wildlife - especially endangered wildlife - would instead be stalling the issue until it's too late, is difficult to fathom but it's exactly the reason why this book would be the perfect summation to your own bear education, because it drives home just how important that education is. I've read volumes on both sides of the bear bandwagon and taking all of that information and putting it together as a whole has been a revelation! This book shows what can happen when that information doesn't come together. Bears are too complex to focus on only one side of their story; it must be taken as a whole. This is a field of study that is about to blow wide open and most people either don't know or don't care and that's precisly what leads to some of the attitudes in this book. It's partly because of those attitudes that the book was written in the first place. It's why I started this blog. The book doesn't end with much hope except to say that progress will never be made unless people are properly educated and are made to see that living with the grizzly is a blessing, not a curse. That's the goal we're working towards but it's going to be a long road getting there.

Is a Fed Bear Really a Dead Bear?

Putting the final cap on the habituation vs. food conditioning argument, here is a link to an excellent article by Dr. Lynn Rogers who manages the North American Bear Center in Minnesota, home of the Lily the Black Bear den cam. Some of Lynn's ideas in this article are not very popular with wildlife managers and that's one of the things I like the most about it. It's going to be hard - maybe even impossible - to win people over to this way of thinking, but it's still a battle worth fighting.

www.bear.org/website/lily-a-hope/live-den-cam/343-is-a-fed-bear-a-dead-bear.html

Further Thoughts On Food Conditioning

Tackling the subject of habituation vs. food conditioning on a blog like this is enormously difficult simply due to the scope of the issue. It would take several books and a bibliography of references the size of a book to present readers with enough information to analyze the data on their own. After doing more research, I have to concede that whether or not food conditioning will create a dangerous bear depends greatly on the bear itself.

Because they are so remarkably intelligent (equal to primates and dolphins), bears develop individual personalities that are formed by their experiences, much like people. While some can be peaceful and even friendly, some can be vicious, nasty, and destructive. In Beauty Within the Beast, a story is told of a female black bear who was fed by an elderly couple living in a cabin in Alaska. As a result, she became a bully and often forced her way into the cabin to get any treats she could find. Despite her tendency to intimidate the couple into letting her do whatever she wanted, she never attacked or injured them, not even when they proceeded to beat her with a frying pan. With her aggressive bullying, however, it's possible that she would have become dangerous. On the opposite end, Summers With The Bears tells the story of another elderly couple in Minnesota who befriended - and often hand-fed - several black bears over the course of six years. The animals never became dangerous, never damaged their home or property, and disappeared whenever strangers dropped by for a visit. In fact, one of the bears was strongly protective of the couple, at one point actually defending them from a strange bear that wandered into their yard with seemingly unfriendly intentions.

If you have the time, an excellent research paper on this subject by Lynn Rogers can be found at www.bearstudy.org/website/images/stories/Publications/diversionary_feeding_of_black_bears_9_june_2009.pdf