- Second Grizzly Bear Captured and Moved to Cabinet Mountains-2010 Augmentation Project Completed
- First 2010 Augmentation Grizzly Moved to Cabinets
- Grizzly Bear Project Update – July 6, 2010
- Grizzly Bear Project Field Update May 29-June 12, 2010
- 2010 Grizzly Bear Project Underway
- Outfitter Partners in Conservation
- Winter 2010 Newsletter Available On-Line
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First 2010 Augmentation Grizzly Moved to Cabinets
Added by George Bettas on July 22, 2010
WHITEFISH RANGE GRIZZLY MOVED TO CABINETS TO AUGMENT POPULATION
A 249-pound, sub-adult male grizzly bear was relocated on July 20, 2010 to the Hiatt Creek drainage, above Spar Lake in the West Cabinet Mountains south of Troy, Montana. The 4-year old male grizzly was captured on July 17 near Coal Creek in the Whitefish Range on the Flathead National Forest. The bear was held overnight and fitted with a radio-collar the morning of July18, and relocated to the Kootenai National Forest at 7 p.m. that evening. The bear was relocated to augment the grizzly bear population in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem.
FWP Grizzly Bear Management Specialist Tim Manley, and Derek and Heather Reich, who are funded by the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Foundation, captured the bear as part of the ongoing effort to recover grizzly bears in the Cabinets. They fitted the bear with a special radio-collar to enable biologists to closely follow its movements.
According to Kim Annis, FWP Bear Management Specialist in the Libby area, the grizzly was a good candidate for the augmentation project. “We are very particular about getting a bear in good condition and with no history of conflict with humans,” Annis said.
Following is Heather and Derek Reich’s log for July 3, 2010 through July 21, 2010 which details their grizzly bear management activities leading up to the capture and release of our first augmentation grizzly bear for 2010.
July 3 – Saturday
Our state truck started acting like the starter engine was going. Not wanting to get stuck up in the mountains when the starter went out, I took the truck in for repairs. Which took all day long.
Meanwhile, Tim set a trap on a property where a couple lives that we have known for almost a decade, since we first trapped a grizzly named Osa on their property. They own a large amount of land on the east side of the Flathead Valley and get grizzlies and black bears through all of the time. They listen to us and do their best, but they are in some prime habitat, so we get calls on occasion. The wife called Tim to inform him that she had a black bear on the property that was showing some habituation, so Tim went out to set a trap for the bear.
July 4 – Sunday
Happy 4rth!! We went and pulled the trap from the resort where the bear was getting into garbage. Unfortunately, the resort owner had not taken any more steps to secure his large garbage dumpsters. He will have problems with black bears until he does something about that situation.
July 5 – Monday
Tim Manley got a call about a bear that broken into a garage, through a cat door, to get cat food. Guess who’s back? This is south of the property that was broken into at the end of June, so the bear has probably moved on to this property. And it turns out it IS the bear we thought it was…a bear we call “Samantha’s Male” aka “Mark”.
Tim and Derek went and set the trap while Heather went up to the Summit Preparatory school to pull out that trap. Those wonderful people immediately put up an electric wire around their garbage storage area as we requested, so there was no point in having the trap up there anymore.
After that, Derek and Heather headed up to check the augmentation traps, where there was no activity. We also put in a bait site on private property up Coal Creek. The owner has long been a supporter of wildlife research and management up there and always welcomes us onto his recreation property.
July 6 – Tuesday
Derek and Heather took the day off, our first official day off since June 17, for Derek’s birthday
While we were off, Tim dealt with Samantha’s Male. He returned to the property he was most recently at and broke back into the unattached garage to get more cat food, but didn’t go near the traps. Ugh.
July 7 – Wednesday
We check our augmentation trap line, no activity. We head further north to the North Fork Interlocal, which is an annual summer gathering of the residents of the North Fork. All agencies that are active in the area are invited to present and the usual agencies of FWP, the Forest Service, the state lands (DNRC), and Border Patrol, come and inform residents of activities they are doing. We always try to make a showing so the residents know who we are and know what we are up to and they can ask us questions if they want to.
We get out of there by about 4 PM and return to the valley, go back down to deal with “Samantha’s Male” who, AGAIN, broke into the garage. He’s running out of doors on that building to break in to!! I re-baited the trap with cat food and donuts, which we never do, but this bear is not showing interest in our road kill. Tim and I also set two snares for the bear. That’s when you know it’s getting serious…
July 8 – Thursday
Tim flew and checked our traps for us from the air. The pilot calls from the air (isn’t technology amazing?!) and informed us of a trap sprung up Coal Creek. At the time of the call we were going down to check the snares to make absolutely sure we hadn’t caught anything, then went to set a trap at a house where a black bear had been showing some interest in some chickens. He didn’t break into the coop, but he pulled at the chicken wire a bit.
We then head up to our trap site and find that we had just caught a black bear, so we kick him loose and reset the trap.
We then go to Hungry Horse Reservoir to look for a grizzly bear collar that was transmitting a mortality signal. Usually this is simply a collar that has dropped off of the bear. Tim said it was only about 200 yards from where we could park, but it was up on a steep slope.
Well, turns out that the place he thought we could park was actually a mile and a half from where we could actually park (things look different from the air). We then got to the point where we had to go up the side of the hill to the location of the collar. The hill was extremely steep! On top of the fact that it was covered in dense undergrowth that was 4-5 feet high and included the evil plant referred to as Devil’s Club…which is covered in teeny tiny thorns…all over…you can’t brush up against it without getting thorns all over your clothes and in your skin. It’s awful!!
But, on the upside, there are TONS of signs of recent bear activity…lots of digging and crushed vegetation, scats..
“Heather listening for the signal from the dropped collar”
Anyway, with the puppies, we climbed through this and got close to the GPS location of the collar that Tim marked from the air…which is not the actual location of the collar…just a general area to pinpoint. It was up to me with the telemetry equipment to zero in on the collar…which I’m not very good at. So, we tied up the puppies and proceeded to scrounge around the slope for about two and a half hours, looking. We didn’t find anything…even though the signal I had kept telling me that it was right under my feet! Very frustrating.
Finally we give up because the sun’s starting to go down, we still have to hike out, and, frankly, we’re just not finding anything.
“Nothing found, not for lack of trying!”
We got into cell range around 7 PM with a few messages from Tim who was obviously getting mildly concerned that we had not surfaced yet. We called him to tell him what we had and had not found. We got home about 45 minutes later and get in the door. AT that point Orca started blowing up like a puffer fish! Her eyelids were swollen and her lips were swelling up! Seems like she had a reaction to the stinging nettle from the hike. Poor dog. Derek and Orca spent the evening on the couch where Derek gave her cold compresses to help the swelling.
“Poor swollen bear dog!”
“Cold compress…it must have felt good to her because she didn’t fight it at all, either that, or she was just exhausted and was sleeping under there.”
Sputnik, as always, was perfectly fine!
July 9 – Friday
Heather took the day off for some appointments
Derek ran the trap line then released a black bear with Tim and the dogs down the south fork of the Flathead River.
July 10 – Saturday
Derek and Heather run the trap line with Tim Manley, who was along to just get out into the field. We checked the bait on the private property in Coal Creek, then pulled one of our traps from one drainage and moved it to another. We also went into an existing trap site to re bait it and saw what looks like two very promising grizzly bears on the camera. One could be a good male for the augmentation project and one may just be a female. Only time will tell.
While doing all of this running around, we collected hair off of rub trees and signs for the USGS grizzly bear hair DNA study.
July 11 – Sunday
Derek and Heather run the trap line, then make another attempt at the collar at Hungry Horse. We spend 4 hours searching with no luck. Absolutely beyond frustrating!!!!!!! Good exercise, though! We just don’t get enough practice on dropped collars to be very good at finding them.
“Heather giving it another try”
“See that steep hillside on the right? That’s where the collar is…somewhere in there”
July 12 – Monday
Derek took the day off and Heather ran the trap line with Tim. First priority was to meet with the Flathead National Forest District Ranger to get a special key for a gated road we wanted to trap on.
Tim and Heather check the bait on the private property and see that a small brown-phase black bear has been feeding on the bait. We also stop in at the USGS office to visit with the DNA folks.
July 13 – Tuesday
Derek and Heather run the trap line, no captures. We put in a new site up top of Spruce Creek then meet Tim who has a FWP intern with him Katie who has been helping shuttle vehicles. We all go up to a past site above Upper Whitefish Lake site for the ABT, the Automated Bear Trap which needs a clear view of the southern sky for the satellite dish to get out on. Have I told you about this trap? It was donated to FWP and can be controlled online…we can check to see if anything is caught and, if it’s not something we want, Tim can release the bear via online controls. It’s pretty neat for sites that are far away and are hard to get to on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the site above Upper Whitefish Lake was not suitable.
Ryan Alter, designer and builder of the Automated Bear Trap, explains
the trap’s electronics and computer systems.
Ryan Alter programs the computer which controls the Automated Bear Trap.
July 14 – Wednesday
Heather runs errands while Tim flies and checks our traps from the air. No captures at our sites, so Derek helps black bear and mountain lion biologist Erik Wenum all day long. We thought it would be an easy day, but as it turns out, Derek didn’t get home until after 6 PM.
July 15 – Thursday
Run line, no captures, we meet Tim and take the ABT up the middle fork of the Flathead River to a drainage called Puzzle creek. Tim had looked on a map and thought that drainage might have some good southern-view spots for the ABT. We spend all afternoon scouting and finally set the trap at a spot where three roads come together and the satellite has a good view of the southern sky. We’re home by 7:30 pm.
July 16 – Friday
Derek and Heather run line, re-bait sites and visit the bait on the private property. There’s still a small black bear feeding on the bait. Another site, where we are having a lot of grizzly bear activity, is aggravating because we also have a wolverine and skunk at the trap and they are chewing through the twine that holds the bait to the trigger…so, when the grizzly goes in there, it walks out with the bait and doesn’t get caught. That is okay because it’s just training the grizzly to be comfortable going into the trap, but it’s also delaying the capture! So, we re-bait the trap.
After that, we met Tim who had a road-killed elk in the back of his truck. We take it up to the site above Upper Whitefish Lake and tie it between two trees. Derek put up three cameras in order to see what comes in on it. If a female comes in, we can put a trap up there to catch her.
We get home at 7 PM.
July 17 – Saturday
We run the line and have a capture at Dead Horse, where the grizzlies had been coming in but stealing the bait and not getting caught. We went in and could see that it was a male. He seemed pretty young simply from his size and the fact that he didn’t have any scarring or injuries to his face. Usually adult males have some kind of mark from fighting over females. Finally, he yawned and we could tell from his teeth, that he was a subadult. Derek was driving Tim’s truck and took the bear down to Tim’s house while I ran the rest of our line with a biologist friend of mine with the forest service that happened to be visiting. We had no other captures and returned to the valley. By that time all of the appropriate calls had been made and the biologists from Libby would be out Sunday morning to collar the bear and take him back to the Cabinets with them.
“Male grizzly bear augmentation candidate upon capture. Note his posture, this is a submissive posture from a bear…he was a very mellow grizzly.”
Yay us!!!!! The first male augmentation bear ever to be taken from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem to the Cabinets to add some new genetics into that struggling population. In the trap, the bear was very depressed, he was never aggressive toward us and was pretty constantly in a submissive posture, trying to tell us he didn’t want to be a problem.
July 18 – Sunday
Derek, Heather and our friend Susan were at Tim’s by 7:30 am. Wayne Kasworm, the US Fish and Wildlife Service bear biologist from Libby arrived as did Kim Annis, the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Bear Manager for Libby.
We chemically immobilized the bear at 9 AM. He turned out to be a 249 pound male, and we estimated his age at 3-4 years old. We removed a tooth from him to be analyzed for his exact age. Surprisingly, we discovered that he had an existing microchip which allowed us to identify him as a grizzly we had captured last year during augmentation trapping. At that time we thought he was a female and chemically immobilized him only to discover the bear was a male. At that point in time no males were being taken to the Cabinets…so we released him back where we caught him. We had actually hoped to recapture him this year for the augmentation project, so it was perfect he was the one captured!
“Male augmentation bear after chemical immobilization”
”Augmentation bear with his new collar.”
“Wayne Kasworm (USFWS) and Kim Annis (MFWP) with male augmentation grizzly bear”
“Heather and Derek Reich, our bear management specialists with the first 2010 agumentation grizzly bear, a male, whom we hope will soon be followed by a female augmentation grizzly.”
He was a perfect candidate bear, so Kim and Wayne took him back to Libby after putting a collar on him. He was released to great fanfare that evening and is settling in to his new home.
No rest for the weary, we still had an active trap line, so we headed up to reset the trap at Dead Horse, where the male came from, and check the other sites. We had a trap that was tripped, so headed up to check it. Turns out to be what looks like a large male grizzly bear. He fussed with the outside of the trap, dropping the door part way and then took all of the bait from the trap. These bears can be sneaky! We reset the trap and returned for home at about 6 PM.
July 19 – Monday
Derek and Heather run the trap line and, while up there, release a black bear release for Erik Wenum. The black bears are always good training for the puppies along with a great aversive conditioning exercise for the bear.
After checking our sites and releasing the black bear, we join Tim Manley and go up to the elk at the site above Upper Whitefish Lake. The video shows a promising looking grizzly on camera. However, thanks to the HD cameras we are able to confirm the bear’s gender and see that it’s a male, which we no longer need. Derek resets the cameras and we head out, planning to return again in a couple of days to see if anyone new comes in to the elk.
July 20 – Tuesday
Derek and Heather run the trap line and release another black bear for Erik Wenum.
All sites are quiet and we actually get home early for a change! We really need groceries, so this is a great time to get them!
July 21 – Wednesday
All trap sites are quiet. Derek and Heather run up to the site above Upper Whitefish Lake to check the cameras on the elk…the same young male griz is still eating on the carcass but has been joined by a great big black bear. It’s always impressive to see how quickly a bear can eat down a carcass…the elk is almost all gone…one more day and it will be completely consumed. Derek resets the tapes and we get home early again!
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