 A Grizzly Bear
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June 2, 2003 — Tired of seeing grizzly bears die due to needless confrontations with humans, biologist Carrie Hunt has taken to training them.
Armed only with a gun that shoots rubber bullets, and accompanied by her Karelian bear dogs, a rare breed native to Finland and Russia, Hunt's goal is to make encounters with humans so unpleasant that the bears will avoid them.
"I have seen bear after bear die for the same thing in the same places and they never got a chance to learn what they were doing wrong," she said.
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Hunt and her nonprofit Wind River Bear Institute is teaching her unique "bear shepherding" methods to Canadian and U.S. wildlife professionals gathered at Washington State's North Cascades National Park, a vast wilderness park which butts up against the wild provincial lands of British Columbia.
Bears are an increasing problem in the western United States.
Millions of campers flood state and national parks, putting them in direct contact with these ferocious carnivores. Ursine and human habitats are colliding more and more with suburban sprawl creeping into mountain foothills.
The outcome of such encounters nearly always results in death for the bear.
"The only choices we had (were) to relocate them and destroy them or just destroy them outright," said Anne Braaten, a North Cascades bear management biologist.
Bear management is of particular concern in her area because the grizzly population has dwindled to dangerous levels.
"I decided 15 years ago that it wasn't fair, and I was going to change that," Hunt said.
Hunt is a strict disciplinarian with the giant beasts. A combination of human voices, dog barks, pepper spray and "spankings" with rubber bullets and beanbag rounds are applied when a bear appears at a human site. The bears learn to associate these unpleasantries with human boundaries and then avoid them.
This training teaches them to stay away from trails and roadways and not to look for lunch in campsites and ranch sites with their tempting garbage cans, orchards or brimming birdfeeders.
"We teach bears on-site. They learn: 'this is what you're doing wrong. You're here and you shouldn't be here,'" Hunt said.
If wildlife managers intervene quickly and consistently, she said, they may never have to kill a bear again.
Hunt is trying to adapt her method of training grizzlies to other problem animals, such as cougars, or even elephants or tigers.
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Name: Brown Bear, aka Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos)
Primary Classification: Ursidae (Bears) Location: North America, Europe and Asia. Habitat: Large areas of open wilderness, including tundra, mountain forest and alpine meadow. Diet: A variety of seasonal vegetation, including grasses, roots and berries. Also fungi, insects, fish and other mammals. Size: Up to 9.2 ft in length and 1,720 lbs in weight. Description: Thick coat of fur; usually dark brown but can vary from blonde to black. Large, muscular shoulder hump. Concave profile. Powerful limbs. Long claws, non-retractable front claws. Cool Facts: They have the widest distribution of all bear species and vary greatly in size and appearance across their range. Vies with the polar bear for being the world's largest predator. Conservation Status: Not listed by the IUCN. |
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