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Grizzly Bear Project Update – July 6, 2010

Added by George Bettas on July 6, 2010

June 13, 2010 – After setting up an electric fence around the horse carcass, Tim, Derek and Heather finally began capturing bears. Today saw the capture of a subadult male. A second trap’s door was down and we realized that a hatch door on the culvert trap, which usually is clipped closed, had not been secured and a second bear had actually squeezed through the hatch and gotten out of the trap. We made sure that trap was secure and reset it.

“Heather explaining to a resident how the grizzly bear escaped through that small hatch”

The captured male was chemically immobilized and given an ear tag transmitter because he is too young to have a collar put on him. We put him back into a culvert trap, parked him under some shade and left him on site in order to keep the other bears in the area, in the hopes of capturing more of them.

“Subadult male grizzly prior to chemical immobilization”

“Resident “meeting” subadult male grizzly”

We were able to get errands done in the afternoon, but at 10:00 PM we received a call from Tim Manley that he had to go set a trap for a bear that killed a lamb. He was wondering if we had any bait and, when we came by to pick up the bait we had, Heather jumped into the truck to assist him. Upon arriving at the house, Tim and Heather were shown the location of the dead lamb, which was inside a paddock. When the flashlight was put on the lamb, a small black bear was at the carcass and feverishly trying to pull it through the fence, but there was no chance of the bear being successful. Tim chased the bear off of the carcass and Heather removed it. We set the trap right next to the paddock, using a little bit of hide from the lamb to put in the trap.

Tim and Heather left the site and were home by 1 AM.

June 14 – We captured a second subadult male grizzly bear at the horse carcass location. This bear was much smaller than the first one, so it also had an ear tag transmitter affixed to it. We placed it in a second culvert and removed both bears from the area, leaving three traps still set in case the other bears returned.

“Heather and Tim working on subadult male grizzly”

“Orca meeting subadult male grizzly”

Heather and Derek took both bears into the South Fork of the Flathead River and released the two grizzlies together at the same site. They returned home by 5:30 and received no more calls!

June 15 – Derek went out to the site with the horse carcass to check the cameras as no bears were captured. No bears appeared on camera, but we all agreed to run the traps for a few more days in case any of the other bears returned. Heather took advantage of the slow day to run errands to get some much-needed supplies. All of these captures had left her bear handling kit low on supplies.

June 16 – No grizzly bear captures. Tim Manley assisted another bear biologist with a grizzly bear that had gotten into trouble. Meanwhile, Derek and Heather went to Ferndale to set a trap for a black bear that had ripped into a shed and got garbage and bird seed. We talked to the landowners about properly securing the shed to make it more difficult to get in to the shed. We also identified other items in the shed, including 3 large cans of bird seed, that needed to be removed and stored in a more secure situation. We provided a “Critter Gitter,” which is an obnoxious little box that is motion activated to scream an annoying sound while blinking lights. It is effective as a very temporary deterrent.

We also went into the woods behind their house and picked up all of the garbage the bear had removed from the shed and fed on in the trees. We loaded all of the garbage up in our truck and took it to the dump for the landowners.

June 17 – No captures. Day off! What a treat!!

June 18 – No captures. We decide it’s time to pull the traps away from the horse carcass. The electric fence we provided for them was left in place around the horse carcass, after we re-bury it. We hooked a wire from their existing electric fence to the smaller fence to power it. Derek and Heather also pulled a trap set for a black bear that had been getting birdfeeders. The bear was not being seen anymore, after the landowners secured their bird seed.

Derek and Heather then went out to Whitefish to set for bear that tried to break into a woman’s home. A wonderful spitfire of an 80 year old woman who lives alone woke up to what she thought was a burglar trying to break into her house. She got up and found a bear banging on her windows. She went out on to the porch (told you she was a spitfire!) to scare it away and it, instead, came toward her. She quickly got back into the house and called us.

The landowner was pretty sure it was a grizzly. We tried to find definitive evidence of a grizzly bear, but could not find anything. Based on her color description of the bear, we were pretty confident it was a black bear, but we’ve been fooled once already this season. We set the trap in her driveway. However, the bear had not gotten into any type of food, so we were not sure that it would come back.

June 19 – No captures, Tim went on a monitoring flight and returned to report that the bears seem to be heading up into the mountains. However, there are still a few in the valley.

Derek and Heather receive a call about a brown colored black bear killing chickens about a mile from where we set in Whitefish. We move the trap to that location, consult them on proper electric fence set up and proper storage of garbage and securing a beehive at the neighbor’s house, who also have chickens and geese. The owners of that house were out of town, so we worked with the caretaker to better secure the birds, at least.

June 20 – Derek and Heather get a call from the location of the chicken killings in Whitefish, the bear returned but did not get into the trap. We took a second trap out there and placed it next to a chicken coop, re-bait the other trap and further push the need for secure electric fencing around the chickens. “Even if we move this bear, there will be others, you need to take responsibility and secure your chickens.”

June 21 – Tim Manley caught a black bear that got into garbage on the east side of the valley. Derek and Heather assisted him in chemically immobilizing the bear and putting ear tags into its ears for future identification. We left the bear in a culvert trap for the night to fully recover from the immobilization.

June 22 – Derek and Heather take the black bear from the 21^st down the south fork of the Flathead River to release it. This was another good training opportunity for the puppies to be released on a bear, and further hone their ability to chase a bear safely.

We then met Tim Manley to assist him in transporting and setting up a large trap in Trego, Montana, where there had been sightings of three grizzly bears in the Kootenai range. This mountain range is further west of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE) and west of highway 93, which is the border of the designated recovery zone for grizzly bears up here. To have bears outside of the recovery zone is always of interest for us to find out who these bears are and where they are going. Therefore, Tim Manley wanted to try and trap a few to put collars on them.

The trap being set is what we call the Automated Bear Trap (ABT). A monster of a trap that comes with a satellite dish and, upon proper set up, can be monitored and controlled via the internet. Initially we set the trap on Forest Service property.

June 23 – We return to Trego to move the ABT on to private property, after getting approval from the landowners. This allows us to not worry about equipment being stolen and there won’t be as many people at risk to walk in to the site.

On the way back to town, Derek and Heather remove the two traps that had been set in Whitefish, as the bear had not been back. One landowner said she shot at the bear and, after that, it had not been seen. We suspect that the bear may have succumbed to an injury associated with that, but not completely sure. We had received so many calls about the bear, to have it suddenly go quiet seemed strange.

June 24 – Derek accompanied Tim to Trego to put a generator on the ABT. All of the rain and clouds had kept the solar panels from getting enough sun to power the system.

Upon their return, we joined grizzly bear manager, Dan Carney, to assist him with releasing a 5 year old grizzly bear that had killed goats. We were going to release the bear at a site that we also wanted to set a trap for the grizzly bear augmentation project. We set the augmentation trap, first, so that we could leave the area immediately after releasing the bear. The release went smoothly and the grizzly ran into the trees.

June 25 – Tim Manley left today for a personal trip and Erik Wenum was already out of town, which left Derek and Heather with all conflict calls. After checking both biologists’ phones, we went back up to set another trap for the augmentation project. We found a great location along Dead Horse Creek to set up at.

Upon returning to the Flathead Valley that evening, we received a call about a bear in garbage at a resort. Upon offering solutions to secure the garbage, the owner was reluctant to try any of our suggestions and insisted that we set a trap for the bear. We went ahead and set a trap for the bear and spoke to the manager of the facility, who was far more receptive to ideas of how best to secure the garbage.

June 26 – No captures of conflict bears, so Derek and Heather headed up to the augmentation traps to check for captures…nothing caught in those traps, either.

Back down in the Flathead valley, we proceeded to begin pulling traps that had been set for conflict situations that had not caught anything. Our first trap to be pulled was at a location where a grizzly had killed a landowner’s chickens. On our way there a game warden radioed for us that there was a black bear sighted at Whitefish State Park and at a residence nearby. We figured this was probably the black bear we had set for before but thought may have been shot. We pulled the trap we were on the way to take care of, then picked up a smaller trap to take back to Whitefish.

Upon arriving at the residence, we met with the game warden and he asked that we walk the Karelians through a nearby patch of trees where they thought the bear had gone after they chased it away. Unfortunately, the only thing we found was a deer. We spoke with the residents who also have chickens behind a high chain-linked fence. The bear approached the fence but could not get in with the chickens. The dogs on the property then began to bark at the bear and it advanced on the dogs, rather than run away.

We set the trap at the property and went on to the state park to talk to employees there. On our way out, we stopped at the residence where we had first set the trap (remember the 80 year old spitfire of woman?), to let her know that the bear was still in the area.

After all of that, we proceeded down the east side of Flathead Lake to pick up another trap from a cherry orchard where a black bear had visited. Tim Manley had set the trap a week earlier and nothing was captured…time to pull the trap.

We got home in time for a late dinner and showers then kicked back to enjoy some down time together. But, then the phone rang at 10:00 pm. It was another game warden calling to inform us of call to the sheriff’s office that a house had been broken into by a grizzly bear. The resident was out of town and a friend was going to her house each evening to take care of the cats. Upon arriving this evening, she found the garage vehicle door had trim pulled off of it and the door to enter the garage had been pulled apart, as had the door that led from the garage into the house. Obviously, the woman was frightened as she didn’t know if the bear was still inside the home.

Derek and Heather got a large grizzly bear trap and bait and headed down to the residence. We arrived around 11:30 to find a group of people waiting for us, one being the resident’s boyfriend, two others were friends that had come to provide moral support for the woman who takes care of the cats. The sight was indeed shocking at first glance. The two doors that had been broken into were steel fire doors that had cat doors put into them. The bear had simply reached through the cat doors and peeled back the steel like a sardine can. There was a lot of grizzly bear hair and blood that we could take as samples. We also found 6” grizzly bear tracks nearby in the mud.

“Door leading from the outside into the garage”

“Door leading from garage into house”

The reason for the break in? Cat food. The resident kept bowls of cat food in the garage for her outdoor cats, and inside the door that led into the house from the garage was a large cat feeder full of cat food. That’s all the bear wanted, it didn’t go any further into the house, it just wanted the cat food.

When the actual break in occurred, we are not sure. The friend said she had been there at 8 pm the night before and the house was fine, upon arriving at 8 pm this evening she found the break in. So it could have happened at any time over that 24 hour period.

The group that greeted us informed us that, not 20 minutes before we arrived, a grizzly had walked right into the garage while they were standing there! They had opened the garage door (the big one for the cars) and it walked in despite the house being lit up and human voices being present. They scared the bear off and shot a gun in the air to further chase it away.

The group also informed us that, not a week earlier the resident was home and had put her birds out on the porch overnight and a bear had gotten all 6 of them. We were surprised to hear this and slightly frustrated that she hadn’t called FWP to inform us of this incident.

“Remnants of one of the bird cages”

We made sure the house was clear and set the trap and put up critter gitters by the door the bear had broken into as well as another door that had nose prints on it. It was 1:30 AM by the time we left the site. Home by 2 AM.

June 27 – No captures in any of our conflict traps. Derek and Heather go up to check augmentation traps, no captures there, either. Back in the valley, we get a call from a conservation officer that “our” black bear was back at Whitefish State Park. We head over and talk to the employees at the park, turns out to be a miscommunication as the last sighting was yesterday.

On our way out, we stop at another house in the area, above the house where the trap was set. The residents had a trailer full of garbage that the bear had gotten into. Nice group of people lived at the house and told us how they saw the bear in the middle of the day sitting on top of the pile of garbage and they went out and took pictures of it. We asked that they dump the garbage, which the assured us they would do that afternoon.

We then headed back down to the site of the break in so that Derek could put up one of his camera systems. Everyone was there, again, cleaning things up, so we visited some more with them.

After taking care of that, we headed back north toward home and received a call from a game warden that they just received a report of a black bear eating on a deer carcass up near Whitefish State Park. We’re getting annoyed by this black bear and his brazenness. We head up that way, find the road killed deer and pick it up. No bear to be found and no sign that the carcass had been fed on. Scratching our heads on that one.

Finally, we head home.

June 28 – No bears caught in conflict traps, up North Fork to check augmentation traps, nothing caught there, either. We head home we go through Glacier National Park and run into a bear ranger we know, who is managing a “bear jam”on the side of the road. We pull over to offer any assistance if he needs it. Eventually the bear and her two cubs disappear into the woods and the jam disperses.

We decide to pull another conflict trap that had been set a week ago and the bear never returned. On our way out, we stop by Whitefish to check the bait in the trap and note that the residents with the trailer full of garbage did not take it to the dump as they promised. We inform the game warden who agrees to go by and issue them a warning, as they are now in violation of a state law that forbids feeding wildlife, as they know there is a bear in the area.

We pick up the trap and deliver it to Tim Manley’s house. Tim had just returned from his weekend trip, so we caught up with him and headed home.

June 29 - Tim flew a monitoring flight and was able to check our augmentation traps from the air…which saved us a couple of hours of driving. No bears caught there and no bears caught in conflict traps either.

Upon landing, Tim receives a call about a black bear and a grizzly bear traveling together just south of Columbia Falls. He asks our assistance in setting two traps and putting up cameras to see if we can confirm this odd report.

After doing that, we all return to the site of the break in to meet the resident, who was returning from vacation today. We also wanted Tim to see the site and offer any advice he may have for us. The resident was very nice and understanding. We asked her why she didn’t call in when her birds were killed and she said, “Well, I figured it was just my stupid mistake.” We informed her that we would have brought a trap out at that point and could have caught the bear before it went as far as to break into her house. Ah, well. Too late now.

We moved the trap away from her house, now that she was home.

Got a call from the game warden that he had, indeed, issued a warning to the residents in Whitefish with the garbage and they had, as of today, removed the garbage. Excellent!

June 30 – We are woken up with a call from Whitefish that we had successfully caught the black bear. Amazing how easy it becomes when the garbage was removed! Upon arriving multiple residents stopped by to see the bear and confirmed that it was, indeed, the same bear. We took it by the 80 year old woman’s house and she, as well as her neighbor, too, confirmed it was the bear they had seen. They were thrilled that we had caught it.

We drop the bear off at Tim Manley’s house to deal with it later. We then headed to the office to get bait and head up to our augmentation traps to rebait them. However, one of the traps is transmitting a capture. When we arrive at the trap we find a large male grizzly inside the trap. He was very beat up from fighting over females and had a large gash on his neck and across his eye. If we had needed to chemically immobilize him, we would have possibly compromised his life as his body may not have been able to handle the stress. Luckily, we use culvert traps, so we were able to simply open the door from a safe distance with our truck, and let him go peacefully. But not before pulling some hair off of him for DNA analysis.

As we were trying to get him to come close enough to the end of the trap to grab hairs off of him, he yawned, giving us a good look at his teeth to get an idea of age. What we saw were canine teeth that had been worn down to nothing but nubs. At this point, we simply say that the bear is over 20 years old. It’s very hard to pin down an exact age when they get that old. We were so happy to be able to let this old guy go and not be a bother to him any more.

At the other site we found that no bears had been caught, but the video informed us that a wolverine had been crawling into the culvert trap for the last few days and eating the bait inside. It never pulled on the bait, just sat inside and ate. Fascinating.

We locked that trap open due to the amount of conflict we were still dealing with and in anticipation of the coming holiday weekend. The other trap we left closed in order to get the old male grizzly to leave the area.

When we returned to the valley we received a call about a black bear sitting on top of garbage cans at a preparatory school up in the mountains. They had been seeing the bear for two weeks and we agreed to set a trap for it. When we arrived, we offered the staff suggestions of how best to secure the garbage, which they gratefully agreed to. It’s so nice when people do the right thing!

We got home a little past 7 PM…starting to get exhausted!! At home Heather worked on the log book for the state truck we use…for the month of June we logged 3407 miles on our truck…and it’s only the beginning of the season! That’s close to 1,000 miles a week…

July 1 – No conflict captures and our augmentation traps were not set to trap anything, so we didn’t have to worry about them. Derek assisted Tim Manley in euthanizing the Whitefish black bear. Given his history and his youth, (he was about 3 or 4 years old) it was determined that he should be destroyed. A bear with that level of habituation and food conditioning would be nothing but a management problem for the rest of his life. It’s a shame a bear had to be killed because people weren’t prepared to live in bear country.

“Whitefish black bear in trap”

“Whitefish black bear after euthanasia”

July 2 – No conflict captures and Erik Wenum has returned! He will take over black bear calls. Derek and Heather check the cameras at the trap set for the black bear and grizzly bear traveling together reports. What we find on camera at one trap are two black bears traveling together. One is a black colored black bear, the other is a large brown colored black bear. That answers the mystery. Many people assume, if a bear is brown, it must be a grizzly bear. They do not realize that black bears come in all sorts of colors!

Coincidentally, we had been told by a game warden of a grizzly bear with three cubs that had been in the Ferndale area. Last night Tim Manley got a call about a black bear that had been hit by a car. He picked the bear up this morning and it is a brown colored black bear that was lactating. It was near the area where the report of the grizzly with the three cubs came from. We are figuring the black bear is the culprit of the calls and we’ll see if any residents call in with a visual of the now orphaned cubs.

We then went to the break in site and changed out bait and checked the camera. Nothing on tape but ravens and turkeys.

After that, we headed up to the North Fork to check bait and lock open the trap that had captured the old male grizzly. Nothing else had been by the trap. We checked the other trap and it, too, had no visitors since we were last out there.

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