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• Jack Hanna’s “Into the Wild” to feature MFWPF Grizzly Bear Project
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• Wolverine Filmed as Part of Grizzly Bear Augmentation Project
• SUCCESS! 2009 Augmentation Female Grizzly Moved to Cabinet Mountains!

   

Jack Hanna’s “Into the Wild” to feature MFWPF Grizzly Bear Project

Added by George Bettas on January 23, 2010

by George Bettas

With a great deal of anticipation over much of the past year we worked with Jack Hanna and his staff to arrange for Jack and his film crew to come to Montana and accompany us into the field to see and videotape our grizzly bear work in Northwestern Montana.  Jack and his wife, Suzi, have been wonderful supporters of our Foundation and our grizzly bear augmentation project over the past three years.  Previously, we have taken Jack and Suzi out in the field as part of our Donor Stewardship program so Jack was already familiar with some of our grizzly bear work.  Our mutual goal was to enable Jack to feature our project  on his televison series entitled Jack Hanna’s Into the Wild .  This series takes viewers on excursions around the world through the eyes of Jack who is considered to be America’s most beloved animal adventurer and his family. More than just a collection of animal escapades, Into the Wild provides insight into the protection and conservation of some of our planet’s most precious and endangered species. Into the Wild is unscripted and action packed – it takes you on a raucous ride, leaving you with a renewed appreciation for all creatures, great and small. 

And an unscripted, action-packed and raucus ride it was.   After many emails and telephone conversations Jack, Suzi and the film crew arrived in Montana this past August for a week of filming.  When I saw the itinerary I knew it would be nothing short of a miracle for us to catch a grizzly bear on the day when Jack planned to be in Kalispell.   Each day was packed from daylight to after dark with stops for Jack to film all sorts of animal adventures all over Northwestern Montana.  We had, at best, two days to capture a grizzly bear and make our part of the series work.

As early as June, Rick Preberg, the production coordinator for Into The Wild began calling me and asking if I would “have a grizzly bear for them to film” on the date he had scheduled during the first week of August.  I assured him that we would do our best to have a bear for them to see.  Meanwhile, the hot July weather had brought a stand-still to our trapping success.  We had not handled a bear since the first week in July and we had caught only one grizzly since then and it was not immobilized because we could determine gender when it was in the trap. Since then we had not had a capture for over two weeks.   As the hot weather continued, we shut our trap line down on Friday, July 17th due to the 90 degree temperatures that were predicted.  When it is this hot it is too life threatening to a bear to be caught in a culvert trap.  Also,  chemically immobilizing a bear in such high temperatures can also be life threatenting for the bear.  Thus, we locked the traps open, baited them heavily to pull bears in and reward them planning to reopen the line after things cooled off a bit.  We also baited our bait sites without culvert traps during the hot weather to keep the bears interested and coming to the sites, all the time hoping we would have enough activity at the bait sites to be able to catch a grizzly bear for Jack and his crew to film.

As the first week of August approached, Heather and Derek Reich and Tim Manley put on a full court press to locate and capture a grizzly bear for Jack.  Although we had a cougar visiting one trap site regularly, the bear activity at all of our sites was minimal.  It did not look good for finding a bear for Jack.

Jack arrived in Montana as planned early during the first week of August and he and his crew began their rigorous filming schedule.  On Thursday I got a call from Rick Preberg asking me to meet them at Larry Wilson’s Sun River Ranch where they planned to film on Saturday and Sunday prior to going to Kalispell on Monday morning to film “our bear.”  Rick again asked me if we would have a bear for them.  I tried to be as optimistic as I could and said,  “We will have a bear for you!

 

Larry Wilson, our Host at Sun River Ranch, Augusta, MT

 

Jack and his crew arrived at Sun River Ranch courtesy of Larry Wilson’s helicopter.

 On Saturday, August 8th I drove from Missoula to Augusta and the Sun River Ranch were I was met by Larry Wilson, our host for the weekend.  Larry is a close friend of Jack and Suzi and has been a strong supporterr of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks grizzly bear work in the Kalispell area.  Larry and his ranch manager had everything in order for Jack’s arrival that afternoon.  Larry even provided his helicopter for moving Jack and his crew back and forth from Kalispell to the ranch in order to make everything in Jack’s schedule work.  Later, while visiting with Larry’s pilot I learned that Larry had donated the use of this helicopter to a Kalispell hospital for six months after their Life Flight helicopter crashed……a simple testimonial to Larry’s generosity and involvement in his community.

Although Jack described his TV series as being “unscripted” I had no idea that it was indeed “unscripted.”  From the time Jack arrived at the ranch to when I left for Kalispell on Sunday evening it was a literal whirlwind of activity with Jack at the epicenter.  He was going so many different ways at once that I finally gave up on trying to keep track of him at the ranch.  Meanwhile, I anxiously awaited a call from Tim Manley with news about our bear trapping efforts.

Jack, hamming it up with a frozen trout while Larry Wilson and Suzi Hanna play along with his fun.

 As Jack and his crew left the ranch headquarters for an impromptu cattle drive late Sunday afternoon, I headed for Kalispell in hopes that Tim Manley would have good news when I arrived.   The trip from Augusta to Kalispell is a beautiful drive and I soon became engrossed in the scenery while keeping a watchful eye for the whitetail deer which were all along the route as the evening gave way to night.

When I arrived in Kalispell Tim advised me that we did not have any luck over the weekend trapping a grizzly.  However, he thought there was a chance that we might catch a bear that had been killing chickens at a rural residence north of Kalispell.  The trap had been set for two days, but the bear had not been back to the site.  I called Jack at the Sun River Ranch to tell him the “news” and turned in for the evening after promising him I would call him first thing on Monday morning to let him know if he needed to come to Kalispell or not.

On Monday morning Tim got the news from the lady at the residence where the culvert trap was set for the “chicken eater”.  The lady said, “The door is down, but I’m not going out there to check it!”  With that news I called Jack and asked him and his crew to stand by and wait for an update as soon as Tim and I could get out to the trap site.  After a short drive from Kalispell to Lake Five where the trap was located we pulled off the highway and drove to the trap site.  “We have our bear,” Tim exclaimed as he aproached the trap.  Sure enough, inside the trap was “Grease I” a grizzly bear which had been trapped a year earlier in the Swan Valley where it and another grizzly, Grease II, had been frequenting a dump site where someone had been dumping grease from a restaurant.  Both bears were trapped a year ago, radio collared and released away from the Swan Valley. 

“Grease I” came back for more chickens.

 With our bear in the culvert trap, I called Jack at the Sun River Ranch and arranged for him to meet us at the north of Kalispell near the trap site.  Jack was elated with the good news.  We indeed had a bear!  Meanwhile, Tim Manley was doing what he does best, talking with the local people about the bear and what we were going to do with it.  Several of the local residents had seen the bear on different occasions previous to when we trapped it.  Tim assured them that we would not harm the bear, but take him away from the area so he would hopefully stay out of further conflict with humans and their food, livestock, or garbage.  After Tim obtained permission from the landowner at the trap site for Jack’s crew to film on the premises he called Chris Servheen of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for instructions on where we should relocate Grease I.   This bear had spent the fall, winter, and spring high in the mountains in Glacier Park away from the temptations which were in the valleys below.  He was traveling on a well-used grizzly bear corridor between the Whitefish Range and the Swan Range when he encountered the chicken coop and the inherent temptation to have a chicken dinner or two.

Soon Jack and his crew arrived at the meeting place on the highway.  Rick was the first one out of the suburban….with a huge grin on his face.  The first thing he said was, “This is perfect!  The only way for you to have improved on finding us a bear would have been to have the bear at the airport!”  The energy elicited by having caught the bear and ultimately seeing the bear in the culvert trap was simply “electric.”  Jack and his crew immediately got down to business interviewing the family where the bear had killed the chickens, talking with Tim about our bear “conflict” work involving trapping bears that get into trouble and moving them in an effort to keep the bears alive and in natural habitats and preparing for the release of the bear back into the wild later in the day.

  

 Jack, interviewing the family whose chickens were killed by Grease I

The chickens in the coop on the right were “easy pickings” for Grease I.

After the bear’s first visit the chicken pen and another coop were

protected with an electric fence to discourage the bear from breaking

into the coop again.

 Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks grizzly bear management specialist,

Tim Manley briefs Jack Hanna on aspects of this grizzly bear capture

and our conflict management efforts.

 In line with Jack’s spontaneous approach to his television series, from the time he arrived at the trap site he was immersed in the “moment” ……. engaging everyone on the site learning about everything from the bear to the chickens to the family who lived there.  This was a young, rural Montana family with a number of children.  Jack was immediately focused on the children, asking them questions and engaging them in conversation.  The youngest girl in the family had drawn a picture in crayon for Jack while she and her brothers and sisters were awaiting his arrival.  When she presented it to him, Jack got down on one knee to be at her level and carried on a conversation with her as if she were the most important person on the site.  It was apparent that Jack has a gift for connecting with children…… which is what makes his television shows so popular.

  After all of the video was completed and it was time to leave with the bear, everyone had to pose for one group shot……a perfect ending to this part of our adventure with Jack and his crew.

 We needed to keep the bear cool and in the shade while we waited for directions from USFWS on where we should release Grease I.  We took the bear to a quiet spot on Tim Manley’s property and cooled the bear down with water and let him rest during the afternoon.  Later in the afternoon we learned that we were to release Grease I in a remote part of the Swan Range which was part of his former home range.  We notified Heather and Derek who had been checking our Grizzly Augmentation project traps and arrange for them to meet us enroute to the Swan Range early that evening so Derek could assist Jack’s crew with getting video of the release.  In the case of this bear we did not have to immobilize the bear as he already had a radio collar.  It was simply a matter of hauling him up the mountain to a remote site and opening the door on the trap…while everyone was out of harm’s way inside our trucks with the windows rolled up!

 

Grease I gets a cool drink while waiting for his release.

 When it was time for Grease I to be released, he performed perfectly.  When Tim raised the door on the culvert trap Grease I ran directly toward the video cameras…..Jack, Rick and everyone else was elated.  We got it done!

 

 

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