The Grizzly Dilemma
Six years after the last grizzly sighting, experts are discussing how to bring the species back to the North Cascades
STORY BY SIERRA TRYON | PHOTOS BY NICK DANIELSON
(Above) Ross Lake and a portion of the North Cascades pictured from the summit of Sourdough Mountain.
It has been six years since anyone documented a grizzly bear sighting in the North Cascades. Six years since someone stopped in their tracks, drew in their breath sharply and sank into a tranquility that could be described as a mix of fear, awe and littleness. Six years since this vital member of the North Cascades ecosystem showed any sign of existence.
Before the western United States was settled, as many as 100,000 grizzlies roamed the territory. By the turn of the 20th century, grizzly bears faced a 98 percent loss in habitat. Since 2005, only two grizzly bears have been verified in the entire Cascade Range and park rangers estimate that at most 20 grizzlies live there.
“In the early 1800s, it was recorded that over 300 grizzly bear pelts were removed from the North Cascades region in one hunting season,” says Emily Noyd, Western graduate and wilderness ranger in the North Cascades National Park.
A MISUNDERSTOOD ANIMAL
“He seemed more scared of us than we were of him.”
Garrett Shively, a junior at Western, felt no fear as a large brown bear crossed 100 feet in front of his car last summer.
A quick Google search would tell you that grizzlies are big, powerful and ready to attack. Fear mongering videos and personal accounts litter search results. They’ll tell you that grizzlies are angry, hungry and ready to charge.
Jenni Minier, Grizzly Bear Outreach Coordinator for Conservation Northwest, would tell you differently.
“People are very fearful and bears are very stigmatized,” Minier says. “But once people understand ecology of bears and why they act the way they do, people become more relaxed and comfortable around the idea of grizzly bears.”
Bears eat a lot of plants and berries; the idea that bears eat mostly meat is unfounded. Even when eating meat, most grizzlies are decidedly lazy, preferring to eat prey killed by a more efficient, driven predator.
Ecologically, they do far more good than damage. They’re prolific diggers who use their giant claws for digging, which aerates alpine soil and distributes seeds, according to Anne Braaten, Bear Management Biologist for the North Cascades National Park.
IN THE WILD
Black bears account for the majority of bear sightings in the North Cascades. Most grizzly sightings are usually a large black bear with brown-colored hair.
Grizzly bears are significantly larger, weighing up to 600 pounds, and sport a signature “hump” above their shoulder. In the absence of grizzlies, black bears have grown bigger and can be easily mistaken for a grizzly.
Noyd believes bear sightings are more common in areas such as Yellowstone National Park or Yosemite National Park, where bears have learned to associate humans with the food they carry in their backpacks.
Encountering a bear doesn’t have to be a negative experience. Noyd gives hikers some tried and true dos and don’ts for encountering a bear.
Do: hike with friends, make noise as you go and store your food in a bear bag far from your campsite.
Do: raise your arms when you see a bear, appear big and say hello in a loud but calm voice.
Don’t: run, approach the bear or make yourself small.
“Last summer, I had three distinct black bear encounters in North Cascades National Park,” Noyd says. “I reacted calmly because of my training, simply remembering never to run or yell in a way that would startle them.”
Brian Willson, a 23-year-old member of the Western Hiking Club, believes he encountered a grizzly bear with cubs near the Monogram Lake Trail in the North Cascades while hiking with friends in August 2012.
“We turned the corner to where we could see the lake and realized we could see six bears uphill from where we were, varying in distance from a cub roughly 100 feet away to around a half mile away,” Willson says. “One of them appeared to be a grizzly.”
Willson described the bear as larger than the black bears he normally saw, brown and marked by the large hump on the back of the shoulder.
Willson credits the successful encounter to his noisy hiking group, proper food storage and preparing meals a quarter-mile from their campsite. The bears, he says, never descended the hillside.
WHY NOT NORTH CASCADES?
After grizzly bears were declared endangered in 1975, populations in Yellowstone and the Bitterroots were successfully able to begin recovering their populations.
“Montana has brought in 18 bears in 25 years,” Braaten says. “They find bears that come from a similar ecological profile to transplant.”
These parks, funded by their fame and tourism, had the resources to conduct studies and augmentation programs, while the population in the North Cascades continued to drop.
Their recoveries were slow; finding the bears to transplant is a lengthy part of the process, Braaten says. The bear has to have a similar diet in both areas, and since no national park has what could be considered an excess of grizzlies, the opportunities to make transplants are few and far between.
Stark losses in habitat, low rates of reproduction and hunting from eras past have all contributed to the fall of the North Cascades grizzly bear. A single female grizzly may spend 10 years, close to her entire reproductive life, attempting to replace herself in a population. When food is scarce and cubs lack nutrition, both mother and cub are endangered. And that’s if a female is even lucky enough to encounter a male she likes during mating season. These factors and more make the grizzly bear the second slowest reproducing mammal in North America.
“We’ve been trying to let them come back for the past 30–40 years, but it wasn’t working,” Minier says. “Populations in Canada are very isolated by roads and other structures.”
A “good goal” for the North Cascades could aim at bringing in 20 bears in five years. Braaten believes the North Cascades could hold anywhere from 200–400 bears in the future.
PUBLIC OPINION AND PROCESS
The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC) conducted a five-year study in 1991 that found the North Cascades to be a habitat where grizzlies could be entirely self-sufficient, estimating that the land could sustain between 200 and 400 grizzly bears.
The National Park Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service launched a Grizzly Bear Recovery Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in late 2014 to gather analysis and public opinion on bear reintroduction.
The EIS doesn’t ask if we should recover the grizzly bear population; we are obligated under law to do so. The EIS asks how we should recover the grizzly population, examining time frames of 75–150 years, according to Anne Braaten, and deciding where to bring bears in from and when. Each alternative will present time frames and specific plans for when to bring in X number of bears in an efficient manner that will allow each bear to settle, establish a territory and hopefully begin mating.
In 2005, the Western Wildlife Outreach Project surveyed 508 rural residents in the northwest corner of the proposed recovery zone in Skagit and Whatcom counties.
86 percent agreed that grizzly bears should be preserved for future generations.
92 percent agreed that precautions can keep visitors and residents safe from grizzly bears in the majority of occasions.
However, 44 percent thought grizzlies could pose a serious danger to humans, and nearly a third of respondents agree that grizzlies would kill many pets and livestock.
“The NPS must consider the perspective of many stakeholders, experts, and public opinion before making a decision, and it’s still in the early stages of the process,” Noyd says. “I’d guess that it would be a similarly arduous and thorough process as the re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone.”
RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY TO RANCHERS
One major source of concerns comes from farmers worried about livestock, especially throughout the more open east side of the North Cascades, says Minier.
“It’s very emotional to have your livestock preyed on,” Minier says. “You’re out there raising them, making it an emotional topic for some, but there are things we can do to reduce livestock deprivation.”
Keeping calves out of open areas, locking feed and garbage cans and quick disposal of carcasses are key to protecting livestock from any predator. Herd dogs are also a great preventative method, she says.
Montana, Idaho and Wyoming all have programs to compensate ranchers for their losses. DNA tests on carcass can be conclusive within 24 hours, and if the predator is determined to be a grizzly, the farmer will be paid for his or her loss.
However, if a bear is pervasive, it will be moved or put down.
“There must be accountability to ranchers,” Minier says.
MOVING FORWARD
The bureaucracy of process can feels like it’s halting progress. This summer, the EIS team will complete a draft proposing various, heavily researched methods for reintroducing the grizzly bear. That draft will be reviewed and revised following another public scoping meeting and comment period.
“We have such an amazing opportunity here in the North Cascades, an amazing, largely roadless habitat that can support a grizzly bear population,” Minier says. “We should own up to that, cheer for that, be proud of that.”
With any luck, a plan may be selected in the coming years, giving way to a repopulation process that will span hundreds of years.