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Final Grizzly Bear Augmentation/Conflict Management Update for 2009 Season

Added by George Bettas on February 3, 2010

Grizzly Bear Augmentation Trapping and Bear

Conflict Management Contract Summary

Prepared by Heather Reich

  

 

This year’s contract for augmentation project trapping and bear conflict management was entirely funded through the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Foundation for $45,000.  Heather and Derek Reich were contracted from May to November. The contract included trapping for an augmentation female and assistance to Grizzly Bear Management Specialist Tim Manley in Region 1 of Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.

 

2009 Augmentation Project Trapping

 

The goal of the augmentation project is to capture one female grizzly bear between the ages of 5 to 10 years old, to be taken to the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem to help augment the struggling grizzly bear population.  The females will help boost the population through breeding and will contribute new genetics to the isolated population as well.

 

This year we continued using remote camera systems (Figure 1) to better target female grizzly bears and help avoid non-target captures (black bears, male grizzly bears and female grizzly bears with cubs) coupled with culvert traps.  We continued with our decision to have culvert traps active at all times.  We felt that keeping the culver traps active might increase our chances of capturing a female that may be traveling through the area and visit a site only once.  The use of the remote camera systems was continued on these culvert traps in case a target bear visited the site but would not get into the culvert.  We did not use a snare to capture any bears this season.

 

Figure 1.  Derek Reich works on a remote camera system.

 

Our trapping efforts were located entirely within the Whitefish Range, including the Stillwater drainage.  We have traditional trap sites within these areas that have been successful.  We also targeted a couple of new sites in the Big Creek drainage based on a sighting reported to Tim Manley in May of a female grizzly bear being bred. 

 

On September 17^th  we had a successful capture of a 10 year old female grizzly (Figure 2) bear in the Big Creek drainage of the Whitefish Range.  She was captured in a culvert trap and transported to Columbia Falls for processing.  Kim Annis, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Bear Conflict Specialist for Libby, accompanied by Wayne Kasworm, US Fish and Wildlife Service Biologist, drove over to Columbia Falls from Libby that afternoon.  We assisted them with the chemical immobilization and collaring of the female grizzly bear.  We were able, at that point, to confirm that she was of the correct age and showed no signs of lactating.  This made her a candidate for the augmentation project.  She did show indication of a litter of cubs in the past.  We transferred her to Kim and Wayne’s culvert trap and she was transported to Libby after she woke up from the immobilization.  The afternoon of September 18^th she was released, without incident, in the Spar Lake area of the Cabinet Mountains.  Wayne’s monitoring flights indicated that for the remainder of the fall she moved around the mountain range, hopefully establishing a new home.  She denned in a nearby area and we look forward to news in the spring of cubs accompanying her out of the den. 

 

Figure 2.  Kim Annis and Wayne Kaseworm pose with the 2009 augmentation grizzly. The 10 year old female was taken to the Spar Lake area of the Cabinet Mountains.

 

With our augmentation project trap line running from June until mid-September we did capture other bears.  Numerous black bears were captured and released without requiring chemical immobilization, along with many male grizzly bears.  We continued to collect hair samples from these male grizzlies for the DNA database.

 

Two female grizzly bears were caught in our traps that were unmarked bears, meaning they had no collar and no microchip identification to indicate they had been handled before. Both of these females had yearling cubs, making them ineligible for the augmentation project.  However, they were candidates for Dr. Rick Mace’s Trend Monitoring Project and had collars put on them for that purpose.  Both females recovered from the immobilization on site.  One female with three yearlings was captured in the Big Creek drainage, at the same trap site where we eventually captured the augmentation female.  The other female, with two yearlings, was captured in the Stillwater State Forest above Upper Whitefish Lake.

 

We did have one surprising capture as part of our augmentation trapping in the form of a 5 month old female wolf pup (Figure 3).  This unexpected capture was not a loss, however.  We were able to call down to Kent Laudon, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Wolf Manager, and he came to the trap site with Tim Manley and an assistant.  The wolf was too small to carry a collar but Kent was able to collect biological data and DNA samples from her before releasing her on site.  This is apparently the first time a wolf has ever been caught in a bear trap!  Our cameras confirmed that her pack was still in the area and, upon her release, the wolves remained in the area for a number of days, making visits to our culvert trap.

 

Figure 3.  5 month old female wolf caught in a culvert trap.

 

2009 Grizzly Bear Conflict Management

 

During the winter of 2008 we acquired two new Karelian Bear Dog (KBD) puppies to begin training for bear conflict work.  Usko and Fancy are getting older and we have high hopes for these puppies and exposed them to all aspects of the job during the 2009 contract season.  We were pleased that the puppies had a large amount of exposure to bears and far exceeded our expectations for their first season of work.

 

We were able to assist Tim Manley with grizzly bear management a handful of times this year.  As we saw in 2008, 2009 offered a good berry crop that lasted a few weeks longer than anticipated, allowing for little grizzly bear conflict during the fall season.  I have highlighted a few of these conflicts:

 

In May 2009 we did assist Tim Manley with two sub adult female grizzlies showing signs of habituation in the North Fork of the Flathead River.  These sub-adults were familiar to us as bears we had dealt with in the fall of 2008.  As part of the management of these bears, we helped Tim with their hard releases to provide aversive conditioning.  We also monitored the bears and applied aversive conditioning on site as needed. 

 

In the spring we attempted to capture a female grizzly bear and her three yearlings that were showing signs of habituation in the Bigfork area south of Kalispell.  After two weeks, we were unsuccessful in their capture.  A landowner reported seeing the female aggravated with only two yearlings and, after this report, no one saw the bear again.  We are unsure what happened, but wonder if something traumatic occurred causing her to lose her third yearling and abandon the area.

 

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Black Bear and Lion specialist, Erik Wenum, oversaw the capture of a female grizzly with two yearlings that had killed some chickens east of Creston, Montana.  Both Tim Manley and Heather Reich were out of town during the events, so Derek Reich assisted Erik Wenum with the capture and handling of the grizzly bears. Tim Manley returned in time to take over the release of the family group.

 

Erik Wenum also provided us opportunities to assist him with black bear conflict.  We appreciated this as it allowed the puppies to gain a large amount of exposure to bear releases while on the ground with them.  This was invaluable training for the puppies.

 

The Karelians were utilized several times again this year both in aversive conditioning efforts, but also in other capacities.  The KBDs were called in by Tim Manley and FWP law enforcement officials once in the fall to go in to a site where hunters had encountered a female with cubs and shot at the family group (Figure 4).  The KBDs were used to track the injured bears in case any bears were dead or mortally wounded.  We were on site within approximately 4 hours of the shooting  No bears were found and vocalization from the family group indicated to us that they were mobile and we chose not to pursue them further than we had already tracked.

 

Figure 4.  Heather Reich with Karelian Bear Dogs Usko and new puppy, Orca, on site where a family group of grizzly bears had been shot at approximately 4 hours earlier.

 

We were called in by a FWP law enforcement officer to see if the KBDs could locate a supposed horse carcass being used to bait bears for hunting.  We were unable to locate any such carcass. 

 

Tim Manley asked for the KBDs assistance to locate the reason for a bear’s stationary locations.  The bear had been located in the exact same area for over a week and Tim wanted to confirm whether or not the bear was dead.  We spent two days going over the area of the bear’s location and, on the second day, one of the puppies scented in to a deer carcass.  The deer had been cached by a grizzly bear and there were fresh grizzly bear signs all around the area.  This allowed us to confirm that the reason for the stationary locations of the bear was obviously that he was feeding on this carcass and was not dead.

 

Other Projects and Events

 

We continued assisting other projects as needed.  Tim Manley asked us to assist him in the chemical immobilization and collaring of bears in the Condon area of the Swan Valley.  University of Montana Graduate Student, Mark Ruby, is using data from collared grizzly bears in the Swan Valley for his graduate project.  Tim Manley had set a trap in the area in order to capture additional grizzlies to add to his study. 

 

We presented our augmentation project at two fundraising events this year, the first of which was hosted again by the Long family in Stevensville, Montana. The second was hosted by the Hanna family in Bigfork, Montana.

 

We also took part in the Bear Fair in Condon, Montana and did a small presentation at the Iron Horse community in Whitefish, Montana.

 

Glacier National Park asked for the assistance of Tim Manley and ourselves to chemically immobilize and help transfer a sub adult grizzly bear from a culvert trap to a shipping crate.  The bear had been removed from the park and was to be transported to a zoo on the east coast.

 

Jack Hanna joined Tim Manley in the field for a couple of days for his television show “Into the Wild.”  They spent some time with us at one of our trap site as well.  It was a pleasure to spend time with Jack and share the field work with him for use on his show.

 

Two Fun Closing Notes

 

With the assistance of FWP law enforcement, in June we addressed a call for a black bear breaking in to cabins on Wild Horse Island in Flathead Lake.  We did not want to set a snare because there were children playing on the island, so we needed to take a culvert trap to the island.  FWP law enforcement provided a boat and physical assistance for getting the culvert in and out of the boat (Figure 5).  We did not capture the bear, it most likely swam off of the island, but it was an adventure getting the equipment out there.

 

Figure 5.  FWP law enforcement along with Heather Reich, arrive with a culvert trap to Wild Horse Island.

 

In October Tim Manley captured an albino black bear (Figure 6) that was showing signs of habituation and food conditioning.  Tim was able to get permission from Glacier National park to release the bear within the park.  We had the pleasure of being on site when the bear was released.

 

Figure 6.  An albino back bear being released into Glacier National Park.

 

We would like to express our appreciation to the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Foundation for their continuing support of this project.  We also thank Tim Manley for his friendship, trust, and guidance while we are in the field.  His overwhelming knowledge of bears allows us to target the best areas and increase our chances for a successful capture and his certainty in our abilities helps us be confident in our efforts. 

 

Thanks to everyone for another successful season.

 

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