2010 Grizzly Bear Project Underway

Derek and Heather Reich arrived in Montana on the evening of May 14, 2010 to begin work on the 2010 Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Grizzly Bear Augmentation and Management Project.  The 2010 project is funded by the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Foundation through a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and special supplemental funding from Jack Hanna and the Columbus Zoo.

Monday, May 17, 2010.

A Montana FWP wildlife biologists  attended a mandatory meeting in Billings, which left Derek and Heather in charge of all black bear and grizzly bear conflict calls in the Kalispell region.  That kept us quite busy. 

The biologists returned from the meeting Thursday night, taking over their duties on Friday, although we followed through on any conflict situations we had initially dealt with during the past week.  That included 2 grizzly bear calls, one unknown bear and one black bear. 

Monday, May 24, 2010.

We released a 100 pound black bear for Erik Wenum and used it as a training opportunity for the Karelian Bear Dogs, Orca and Sputnik, who are not quite 2 years old, now.  It was their first long-distance chase of a black bear off-leash and it could not have gone more perfectly.  They never actually caught the bear, but we didn’t want them to.  The bear, which didn’t seem too concerned with us yelling at it, certainly changed its attitude when it saw the dogs coming after it.  It started running and never looked back.  Hopefully that pressure will make it more wary of humans.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010.

Tim Manley received a call about a family group of grizzly bears feeding on a couple’s lawn.  We went to the site on Wednesday the 26^th to discover that the bears were feeding on the landowner’s Kentucky Bluegrass lawn, with some clover mixed in, just feet from their front door.  Obviously habituated bears.  The landowners reported that it was a female grizzly and her two young.  We pulled in three culvert traps to capture the family group.

Thursday, May 27, 2010.

We caught one of the younger bears.  It turned out that the young bears are two years old, which means mom is within weeks of kicking them off so she can go breed again.  We sedated the bear, identified it as a male bear, put an ear-tag-transmitter in its ear, then placed it back into the culvert trap to recover.  We parked him back up with the rest of the traps in the hopes of luring mom back into the area.  Interestingly, it looks as though there is some sort of damage to the bear’s left eye.

The young male grizzly upon waking up from sedation

Friday, May 28, 2010.

We caught the other young bear.  We sedated this one as well, identified it as a female and Tim put a radio-tracking collar on her.  We parked her in a culvert trap next to her brother.  Tim decided to set two snares for the adult female since she was not showing interest in the culvert trap. 

Orca “meeting” the young female grizzly