The Edge of Eden: Living With Grizzlies

Finally, after a long wait and many attempts to acquire a copy of this film, The Edge of Eden: Living With Grizzlies, a documentary showcasing the work of Charlie Russell after the events he wrote about in Grizzly Heart, has been made available online. The film is fascinating and some of what's shown onscreen will be discussed in future blog posts. You can watch the film here: http://www.cutv.ws/documentary/watch-online/festival/play/6781/The-Edge-of-Eden--Living-with--Grizzlies

Currently I'm spending time in Fairbanks, Alaska with no internet connection aside from public wifi hotspots, resulting in a lack of blog updates. Fortunately I do have a few ideas I want to work on, so you can expect new posts and topics to be coming soon!

The Horrors of Bear Bile Farming

I recently inquired about a job at Bear Country USA, a bear sanctuary and animal park in Rapid City, South Dakota. The deal was pretty well in the bag until I discovered their history of killing bears in order to harvest and sell the gall bladders. Despite this being an act of illegal poaching, somehow it was handled legally under a state permit. However that happened, it killed the job prospects for me and made me realize that I had never posted a topic about the insidious practice of bear bile farming, an issue of extreme importance.

Across China and Vietnam, an estimated 12,000 to 14,000 Asiatic black bears (also called moon bears) are kept in captivity for the purpose of harvesting the bile produced by their livers and stored in their gall bladders, due to concentrations of ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), which is used in traditional Chinese medicine to reduce fever, improve eyesight, and break down gallstones. Others claim that it actually has no medicinal value at all and is instead sold as an aphrodisiac. Either way, the high demand for the bile has led to extensive farming of bears.

In the bile extraction process, the bears are kept in "crush cages" that are not much bigger than the animals themselves. While this allows for easier access to the abdomen, it also prevents the bears from standing and, in some cases, from moving at all, often resulting in the animal's skin growing around the bars of the cages. When the skin is pulled free, it can leave wounds up to three feet in diameter. Many of the bears spend most of their lifetimes in these cages and develop mental illnesses or physical defects. Hair loss, malnutrition, and loss of muscle mass afflict these bears, and they often have their teeth and claws either extracted or filed down. Many of the bears are inflicted with so much pain that they wail and moan, slam their heads against the bars of their cages, or even chew off their own paws. When the bears stop producing bile, they are either left to starve in their cages or are killed for their meat, fur, paws, and gall bladders.

The bile extraction process itself is extremely horrific, occurring through an implanted tube. Other methods involve pushing a hollow steel stick through the bear's abdomen. A new free drip method has since been developed that is regarded as "more humane"; however, in this procedure, a permanent hole is opened into the bear's abdomen and gall bladder, allowing the bile to drip out freely. Sometimes the hole is kept open with a perspex catheter, causing severe pain.

Because only minute amounts of the bile are used in Chinese medicine, a total of 500 kg of extracted bile is used by practitioner's every year, but more than 7,000 kg are being harvested, with the surplus being used in non-essential products such as wine, eyedrops, and other general tonics. The bottom line is that alternative medicines do exist and are just as effective, making the harvesting of bear bile unnecessary and irrelevant.

Chinese bear farmers inexplicably argue that farming reduces the demand for the harvesting of wild bears. Official reports indicate that 7,600 bears are farmed in China and that 10,000 wild bears would need to be killed each year to produce the same amount of bile. However, in some countries poachers are capturing and selling live bears to these farms anyway or are harvesting gall bladders from wild bears in hopes of making their own fortune. Charlie Russell witnessed - and was personally affected - by this kind of activity during his time in Kamchatka, Russia.

In 1993, Nottingham, England resident Jill Robinson visited a bear bile farm in China. She quietly broke away from her tour group and descended a flight of stairs to a dark basement, where she came face to face with the bear cages. She was horrified and, while most of the bears reacted fearfully to her presence, one reached out with its paw and touched her. Robinson reciprocated, holding the paw in her hand. From that moment on, there was no turning back.

For the next seven years, Robinson researched the way bile is used and negotiated a deal with the Chinese government. In 2000, the Sichuan Forestry Department signed a pledge with the China Wildlife Conservation Association to release 500 bears from the bile farms with the worst living conditions. This marked the first time an agency of the Chinese government had come to an official agreement with an animal welfare organization. To house the released bears, Robinson founded Animals Asia Foundation and established a bear rescue center in Chengdu. The foundation has since begun a similar sanctuary in Vietnam.

Incredibly, when the rescued bears began arriving at the sanctuary, workers reported that they initially reacted fearfully and aggressively to people but became friendly and warm when they began to understand that they were being cared for and were not in any danger, demonstrating a very forgiving nature.

While the formation of Animals Asia is a major victory, the horrors of bear bile farming and poaching still continue. It is a monstrous, inhuman torture that must be stopped. We've already seen in this blog how exposure of bears to such kinds of human violence can instigate aggression and attacks on people, so there could be a very dark, negative impact to all of this beyond the effects on the animals. It could very literally come back to bite us. For more information on bile farming, including ways to help, please visit www.animalsasia.org

Tolerance of Grizzlies

New and interesting article from the Helena, Montana newspaper about the role public education will play in the management of grizzlies. It's about time somebody took this idea seriously.

http://helenair.com/lifestyles/article_a55f8940-6be3-11e0-a720-001cc4c03286.html

Book Review - The Story Of Brutus

With all the bear people I've introduced you to in this blog - from trainers to zookeepers to biologists to conservationists - it's truly criminal that I have not yet included Casey Anderson in that list, despite the fact that he is one of the top bear communicators in the world and has successfully raised a grizzly bear to be his best friend. What better way to correct that error than with a review of Casey's 2010 book The Story of Brutus.

Casey Anderson, now the host of National Geographic's Expedition Wild, met a young grizzly cub named Brutus in a wildlife preserve where Anderson had built a unique relationship with Brutus's father (which is detailed in the first chapter of the book). With the likelihood that Brutus would be euthanized due to overpopulation at the preserve, Anderson started the Montana Grizzly Encounter, a rescue and educational facility, for Brutus and other captive bears born into unfortunate situations. Seeking advice from Doug Seus, Casey learned firsthand how to interact with bears at a face-to-face level and Brutus has since become not only Casey's co-star on television but his right-hand man as well.

The book details many of Casey's childhood wildlife adventures, including early experiences with his father. The encounters related are stirring, thrilling, sometimes hair-raising, and always entertaining. Along the way, Casey refutes many misconceptions about bears, pleads a case for saving the grizzlies, and even attempts to teach Brutus to fish like a wild bear. Scattered throughout are amazing insights into his relationship with Brutus and how that relationship is maintained. Finally - and perhaps most remarkably for the bear enthusiast - Casey relates two accounts in which Brutus seems to shed actual tears of joy, an incredible look into the true emotional capability of these animals.

Overall the book is a great read and another valuable look into the heart and mind of an animal that is misunderstood by so many. Highly recommended and I can't wait for Casey's next literary outing.

For more information: www.grizzlyencounter.com

In Defense of Polar Bears

After focusing primarily on grizzlies and black bears in previous posts, I felt it was high time that the polar bears got to have their say in the matter. This is a post that I've been wanting to do for the better part of a year but it's been a long process tracking down all the source material and compiling all of the pertinent information, because - of all the bears - we seem to know the least about the polar bear. One thing that most people do seem to agree on is that the polar bear is the most predatory of the main three in North America, the only one that will frequently regard people as a food source. But is this really true? Despite a few nasty encounters, including some predatory attacks, evidence suggests that this is not the norm.

While bears are primarily classified as omnivores, the polar bear is the only one that is a true carnivore, a necessity due to the lack of vegetation in their icy environment. This is what leads to the common thought that they will usually prey on man, though polar bear attack statistics are extremely low when compared to grizzlies and black bears. While it is true that this is mostly due to the fact that man and polar bear share very little space together, it could also be an indication that the polar bear is not as aggressive as it is often thought to be.

In The World of the Polar Bear, Norwegian Thor Larsen says that he has experienced at least a dozen attacks from polar bears, but that all of them were provoked. Russian researcher Nikita Ovsyanikov, who lived and walked with the polar bears of Wrangel Island and who wrote two invaluable books about the experience - Living With The White Bear and Polar Bears - has had over fifteen hundred encounters with these animals and says that only three of those encounters were with bears that tried to kill him. Even then, he says that he made mistakes that provoked that behavior. In all three incidents, he says that he was able to stop the attacks by carrying a stick, behaving in a confident and aggressive manner, making himself look larger with his parka, and using pepper spray, which has a 100% success rate against polar bears due to the sensitivity of their extremely keen noses (they can often scent seals from up to 25 miles away).

Polar bears can often be the most curious of all bears and have been known to follow people across ice flows, wander into camps, and even poke their heads into tents. With the image of a man-eater in mind, these bears are usually killed right away, without even signs of aggression being apparent. So is the polar bear that peeks inside your tent looking for a meal, or is he simply curious about what's inside? In 1978, Naomi Uemura made the first solo trek into the North Pole and wrote about the experience in National Geographic. He tells the story of a polar bear that entered his camp and approached his tent. Tucked away in his sleeping bag, Uemura was sure he was doomed, particularly when the bear began shredding the tent. However, after one sniff of Uemura in his sleeping bag, the bear turned and padded away.

In October of 2003, the nuclear submarine USS Honolulu surfaced near the North Pole. A lookout onboard spotted three polar bears nearby, who promptly wandered over to the strange thing and began to curiously investigate it, showing no fear, despite having never seen such an object before. In 1990, Nikita Ovsyanikov was reading in his cabin on Wrangel Island one night and suddenly found that the structure was surrounded by polar bears who were peering in the windows and pawing at the walls. Ovsyanikov simply went outside, shooed the bears away, and closed the shutters. Charles Jonkel wrote of tranquilized and captured polar bears, saying that they were as docile as black bears when approached by investigators. Many other researchers who work with the bears on the ice flow have said that they are no more aggressive than the average North American black bear. The gentle side of the polar bear can even be seen in a series of remarkable photographs in which one of the white bears returned to a campsite every night for a week to play, wrestle, and cuddle with a chained-up sled dog (see photos above).

Churchill, Manitoba is considered to be the polar bear capital of the world but there have only been two recorded attacks there since 1717. The locals do face many problem bears, though, but they are easily deterred. More info and even a few amusing stories of face-to-face encounters can be found at the website for Polar Bears International: http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/bear-essentials-polar-style/human-interaction/attacks-and-encounters

Polar bears are also considered to be one of the most intelligent of all bears, as Else Poulsen shows in her wonderful book Smiling Bears. One of her captive polar bears pointedly demonstrated to her why frozen chickens don't make acceptable toys: they thaw out in water. The bear demonstrated this by first catching and holding Else's attention, then using her paw to slosh the bird around in the pool until it thawed, and then slapping it out of the water to show that it would fall apart.

I've shown throughout the course of this blog that there is much we don't understand about bears - all bears - but I think it's very clear that there's even more we don't understand about polar bears. We've come a long way in how we think about black bears, we're still working on changing how we think about grizzlies (though the tide is turning), but we still have a long way to go before we appropriately change our way of thinking about polar bears. That's why it's time to give them the chance to say their piece.

Interesting tidbits: Polar bears are only found near the North Pole, not Antarctica. An easy way to remember this is to keep in mind that the word "arctic" comes from the Greek word for "bear", while the word "antarctic" is from the Greek meaning "without bear".

References and recommended reading:

Smiling Bears by Else Poulsen, 2009
On Thin Ice by Richard Ellis, 2009
Polar Bears: Living With The White Bear by Nikita Ovsyanikov, 1996
Polar Bears by Nikita Ovsyanikov, 1998
Polar Bears International: www.polarbearsinternational.org

The Great Bear Conundrum

In The Grizzly Maze by Nick Jans, author, photographer, and biologist Matthias Breiter says that the more he learns about bears, the less sure of them he is. He says, "If someone asks me why a bear did something, I'll say I don't know. Years ago I would have known." I admit there are times when I feel the same way.

As you delve deeper into the bear world, the first and principle thing you learn is what a conundrum they are, like a jigsaw puzzle that never quite comes together, and these apparent contradictions in behavior become more unavoidable the further you go. Some people get frustrated with this, throw up their hands and walk away, while others struggle to make these contradictory pieces all fit together within the larger picture. That's not always easy to do.

Of all the bear species, the grizzly may actually be the easiest to pin down. The bears along the coastal areas of Alaska and British Columbia are generally the most docile and the most tolerant of people - as are those in areas with little to no hunting - whereas the grizzlies of interior Alaska, where food supplies are scarce, and Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, where there has been a long and dark history of confrontation between man and bear, are more aggressive and often more predatory. Of course none of this accounts for individual personality, temperament, and experience which can all dictate how a bear behaves in a particular situation.

The black bear, however, is not as clearly defined, considering how dramatically their temperaments change according to geographic location. Through the work of Lynn Rogers, Terry DeBruyn, Benjamin Kilham and others, we've clearly seen how typically docile the black bear is across the eastern half of the lower 48 states. In these areas, there have been very few black bear attacks, yet the animal is unfairly demonized. There are many examples of black bears and humans peacefully co-existing, with the bears apparent aggressiveness only manifesting as "bluff" behavior. The bears usually do whatever they can to avoid confrontations and prefer to end things peacefully. In other words, they seem to react to an encounter with us the same way we would react to an encounter with them: with the desire to get out of the situation alive and unscathed!

As we move farther west, though, the black bears aggressiveness increases slightly. While it can't be said for sure, it's possible that this is a result of the drier and more desolate conditions of the west and how that impacts potential food sources. There have been a slightly larger number of black bear attacks in the west and northwest than anywhere along the eastern seaboard. Progressing further north into Oregon and Washington, black bears are a more formidable presence than they are in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Moving even further north into British Columbia, the coastal black bears and those inhabiting the offshore islands are as docile as those in the eastern United States, obviously because of the rich abundance of food sources. Moving into northern interior B.C., though, the black bear suddenly becomes a very different animal, one that is sometimes compared to the tigers of Asia. Here the bear is much more predatory and has been responsible for a number of deaths and injuries. As an example, from 1978 to 1994, there were 27 attacks and 2 fatalities attributed to grizzlies, whereas there were 78 attacks and 9 fatalities attributed to black bears in the same time period. In the worst of these attacks, killing sprees were evident, with the bears killing multiple victims and caching the bodies. These bears have also been known to attack in defense of kill sites and cubs, something that has not been observed in the more docile eastern U.S. black bears. It's theorized that this increased aggression and predatory drive is a direct result of isolation and lack of contact with people, but some researchers point out that many black bears in Alaska live in those same conditions and are fifty times less aggressive than the inland B.C. bear. It's now speculated that there could be something genetic behind this level of viciousness. Even though grizzlies typically despise black bears, I have to wonder if perhaps some crossbreeding between the two species may have resulted in a more aggressive genetic strain, though there is no evidence to support the idea.

What makes this an even bigger conundrum is the fact that there is no one easy answer to explain this, something that I've found to be true in a number of bear-related incidents that I've heard of. Any of the above mentioned possibilities could be explanations or maybe these black bears are more aggressive as a result of their having to co-exist with grizzlies, who often prey on the smaller bears or kill them just for fun. Maybe this is what keeps them on edge and willing to attack, but these conditions also exist in Alaska and the black bears there seem more reclusive because of it. Either way, it's important information to be aware of, as many of those who have fallen victim to these abnormal black bears are visitors from the U.S. who live with their more docile cousin and who expect the same characteristics to be prominent throughout the species.

Another Strike Against Bear Research

As stated elsewhere on the blog, Lynn Rogers of Minnesota's North American Bear Center has done more to change people's attitudes about black bears than anyone else, his work often being compared to Jane Goodall's and Dian Fossey's. His efforts to put a webcam in the den of a pregnant black bear has become a worldwide sensation, a sensation that's only gaining strength now that Rogers has established two den webcams for the world to watch this winter.

For years, Rogers has been pleading with the Minnesota DNR to provide special protections for the radio-collared black bears that are the subjects of his work. Attempts to work with hunters to spare the bears has had its successes and its failures. While many hunters have agreed to cooperate and spare collared bears, others have seemingly declared war against Lynn and his work. Signs posted by Lynn politely asking hunters to spare radio-collared bears have often been torn down, leaving other hunters unaware of the request and a number of study bears have been lost as a result.

After the Lily the Black Bear phenomenon took flight last year, many fans of Lily on Facebook pushed for Lynn to ask the DNR to illegalize the hunting and killing of radio-collared bears to prevent the same fate from befalling Lily and her cub, Hope. Lynn ultimately chose not to pursue this option, hoping instead to work with hunters and educate them about the necessity of research bears. The end result did not go quite as planned. In September of 2010, a study bear was killed and the bloody radio collar mailed anonymously to the DNR by the hunter. It's an action that many feel was done for spite and one that prompted Lynn to finally move to help illegalize the hunting and killing of research bears. Despite noble efforts, however, the Minnesota DNR announced this morning that they will not offer special protection for radio-collared bears, as you can read about here: www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/blogs/117087053.html

As opposed to this decision as I am, I can't say I'm really surprised by it. After spending as much time as I have studying and researching bears, I've seen more spiteful attacks against bear advocates and researchers than I can even keep track of and this is just one more in a very long and growing list. What is it about bears that instills such a strong negative backlash, particularly from wildlife managers? Is it really just lack of education or is there something more? Considering the small number of radio-collared bears and the benefits to science that they provide, I don't see what the problem is here.

Now it seems the question is becoming not "how do we get the DNR to protect the bears", but "how do we protect the bears from the DNR?"