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• 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

   

Second Grizzly Bear Captured and Moved to Cabinet Mountains-2010 Augmentation Project Completed

Added by George Bettas on July 30, 2010

“On Sunday, July 25th we released another augmentation grizzly bear in the Cabinet Mountains. This bear was a 4 year-old female that weighed 230 pounds. She was released at the top of Silverbutte Creek near the south end of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness. She was captured the previous day near Red Meadow Creek in the Whitefish Range about 25 miles north of Whitefish. She was fitted with a GPS radio collar for monitoring. The male augmentation bear that we released near Spar lake on July 18 has been getting to know his new home and was located today about 10 miles north of the release site in Callahan Creek.” 

Wayne Kasworm, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

FWP Grizzly Bear Management Specialist Tim Manley, and Derek and Heather Reich, captured the bear.   The capture and release of this female grizzly meets the USFWS/FWP goals of relocating a male and a female grizzly bear to the Cabinet-Yaak during the summer of 2010 as part of the ongoing effort to recover grizzly bears in the Cabinet Mountains.  The project is funded by the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Foundation and a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. 

Following is Heather Reich’s log of the augmentation and bear conflict activities that led up to the capture and release of this bear.

July 22 – Thursday

Tim Manley ran the trap line today with Derek and Heather…since the augmentation male has been captured, we decided to move some traps around, putting them in areas where we have had observed females before.  One of the new sites we established we call Werner, below the Werner Lookout, and another site was put in along Spruce Creek…we already had one site up high in this drainage, but put this new one in down lower.

Everything else was quiet on the line.

July 23 – Friday

Tim again ran the line with us today, he was helping shuttle vehicles for a USGS crew. Heather and Derek had an electrician coming to the rental that afternoon, so Tim continued on the trap line with Derek so Heather could go down to deal with the rental.

That morning Heather and Derek brought up the big “family trap” to the site where the elk carcass was located, hoping to capture one of the grizzlies coming into that site. 

From there, Tim and Derek ran the rest of the trap line, re-baiting as needed.  The new trap at Werner was transmitting a capture signal so Tim and Derek went to check the Werner trap.  Upon arrival, they found that nothing had been caught in the trap, but a grizzly was “caught” on camera at the trap.  It had tripped the door from the outside and trashed the camera at the site.  They re-baited the site and reset the camera.  Derek pulled the tape from the camera so he could identify the gender of the bear on his computer at home.

That evening, upon reviewing the tape, Derek saw no sign of obvious male gender, then, as the bear walked over a log near the site, it urinated …which allowed us to confirm that it was, in fact, a female!  Very exciting!!

July 24 – Saturday

Heather took the day off to join some friends in Kalispell for a day of horse shows. 

Tim ran the trap line with Derek and, sure enough, the Werner trap site was transmitting a capture signal.  Once they got up there, they confirmed that they had captured the female and went to a site where they could get cell coverage and called Heather at the horse show.  They still had to run the rest of the trap line, so the plan was to convene at Tim’s house with Wayne Kasworm at 4 pm, which gave Heather another couple of hours with her friends.  The temperature was in the 90s, so the afternoon/evening chemical immobilization of the bear would be safer, then the bear could be released the following morning, while it was still cool outside…to hold her in a trap during the day would be quite hard on her in the heat.

Tim and Derek had to also set a trap for a “conflict” bear up the North Fork of the Flathead for a grizzly that was killing chickens, but as they were going to that conflict site they discovered that another trap was transmitting a capture!  After they finished at the conflict site, Tim called Heather from the Polebridge Mercantile (it was 4:30 pm by this time) to ask her if she could pick up the female from the Werner site, where the trap was parked in the shade at the Glacier Institute’s Big Creek field camp, while they checked on the other capture.

After Heather picked up the bear, she  radioed Derek and Tim to make sure they were okay. They said they were, then informed me that the capture at the other site looked like it, too, was a female!  Simply amazing!  It’s hard enough to get a single female grizzly into a trap, but to have TWO in the same day is almost unheard of for us!!  Very exciting!

Down at Tim’s we were joined by Wayne Kasworm (USFWS) along with Tom Radant (USFWS), who was in the area enjoying some days off. Tom usually works directly for Wayne trapping bears in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem. Tom’s wife, Tonya Chilton-Radant, is one of the leaders of the Grizzly Bear Trend Monitoring Project out of Kalispell for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.  This worked out just perfectly because, if the second bear was confirmed to be a female, Wayne would get the pick of the two for the augmentation project and the second female would get a collar for the Trend Monitoring Project.

Finally, at about 6:30 pm both bears were at Tim Manley’s house and we chemically immobilized the second bear we caught and confirmed it as a female of about 4-5 years of age.  That was all Wayne needed. He decided she would be the one we would move to the Cabinet Mountains for the augmentation project.. 

After getting her initial weight and such done, Tom Radant and Wayne Kasworm went to work collaring her.  Heather chemically immobilized the second bear, the one captured at Werner, with Tonya Chilton-Radant.  She seemed maybe a year younger than the other bear, but only 10 pounds lighter, so she easily could also be a 4 or 5 year old bear.  Tim assisted us with her collaring and collecting information with a hand from my friend, Susan Chin, who works for the Forest Service out of Eureka…she was down again for the weekend.

“Tim Manley, Heather Reich, Tom Radant, and Wayne Kasworm weigh the augmentation female”

“Close up of grizzly bear augmentation female”

 “Side profile of female grizzly bear to be collared for Grizzly Bear Trend Monitoring Project”

 Biologists hard at work on both female grizzly bears. 

L-R:  Tonya Chilton-Radant, Susan Chin, Tim Manley, Tom Radant, Wayne Kasworm

 “Both female grizzly bears getting radio collars fitted.  From left to right:  Tonya Chilton-Radant, Susan Chin, Heather Reich, Tim Manley, Wayne Kasworm, Tom Radant”

By 8:30 pm we were finished with working up the bears and the bears were recovering from their immobilization in separate culvert traps.  The new augmentation female went back to Libby with Wayne Kasworm to be released at 7 AM the following morning. 

“Wayne Kasworm situates the augmentation grizzly bear  female’s head and body in preparation for her recovery in a culvert trap”

The new Trend Monitoring bear would go back up to where she was caught the following morning and be released back into the Whitefish Range, where she came from.

July 25 – Sunday

While the new augmentation female was being released into her home in the Cabinet Mountain range, Tim, Derek and Heather returned to the trap line to pull out the traps.  Tim started with some other traps while we took the Trend Monitoring female back to the Werner site, where she came from.  We released her about twenty feet from where we caught her and she ran right for the patch of woods she had been coming out from to visit our trap…she was home and happy!

The remainder of the day was spent pulling out the rest of our trap line and commenting on how wonderful Saturday was. 

With the last trap being pulled, we are officially done with the augmentation trapping part of our contract!  It sure felt nice to have that pressure off and know that from here on out, we will simply be attending to bear conflict calls in the area which is always a lot of fun for us.  We enjoy the education we are able to provide people and also enjoy feeling like we’re helping some of these bears stay alive, rather than progress in their habituated behavior.   

July 26 – Monday

We all took the day off!!!  Derek and Heather took the two hard working puppies, Orca and Sputnik, to Hungry Horse Reservoir for an afternoon of fun in the sun and some swimming! 

 “Sputnik strikes a pose at Hungry Horse Reservoir”

 “Heather and Orca swim together in Hungry Horse Reservoir”

July 27 – Tuesday

Tim Manley was going up the Middle Fork of the Flathead to get a collar from a biologist out of Choteau and Heather and Derek were going to release a black bear for Erik Wenum in the same area.  Tim had an intern with the Forest Service with him and he asked if they could tie in with us for the release which is always exciting for an intern!  We agreed and around noon, we released the black bear above Challenge Creek, near the Bob Marshall Wilderness. 

July 28 –Wednesday

Heather stayed home for the electrician…again…Derek went back up the North Fork to pull out the trap that was put in for the chicken killing grizzly.  The homeowner put up electric fence around the chicken coop and the bear had not been back, so, before we pull in other bears to the site, it’s time to pull the trap. 

With the capture and release of the second augmentation bear, we were pleased to have completed the project so soon this summer.  Capturing the “right” bears and moving them is a difficult and arduous process.  Dedication and hard work of our total team of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks professionals and our USFWS colleagues paid off! We are all pleased with this accomplishment!

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