Snared hair the key to 8-year bear study

A bear-hair roundup in the Salish Mountains west of Kalispell this summer was the final field work in an eight-year study aimed at sizing up Montana black bear populations and how they're holding up against hunting pressure.

"The major goal is to get a population size and harvest rate," said Rick Mace, research biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Kalispell.

Since 2001, the project has involved collecting bear hair for genetic analysis from more than 9,000 square miles in a series of research areas: the Swan Valley, the Yaak, the Cabinet Mountains, the Garnett Mountains, the Gallatin mountain range, the Rocky Mountain Front, the Big and Little Snowies and the Judith mountain range.

The rolling and relatively low-lying Salish Mountains were the final piece in the study. Barbed-wire hair-snares, baited with a foul scent, were set up at 211 sites from Eureka south to the Tally Lake area west of U.S. 93 in mid-July.

After two weeks, 17 crews of two or three people returned to the sites to collect bear hair. Logistically, it was not as difficult as other areas because the Salish Mountains are heavily roaded. Crews included Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks staffers, volunteers and contract help from the Swan Valley organization Northwest Connections.

The work was done in cooperation with Plum Creek Timber Co. and the U.S. Forest Service.

"Right now, we think that 50 to 60 percent of the sites had hair, which is pretty typical," Mace said.

A DNA analysis of the samples will identify individual bears, and then black bear hunters will play a finishing role in the study. The idea is to collect a random sample from the overall population, like red balls being placed in a jar filled with white balls.

Hunters are required to bring in black bear kills for sampling information, and when they bring in bears identified in the study, it's like plucking red balls from the population. It's a "mark-recapture" method of statistical analysis that gives researchers an idea of the population size and the hunting harvest rate.

So far, Mace said, the research has revealed a "resoundingly low harvest rate" in the study areas where a few hunting seasons have passed. The annual rate is as low as 1 percent for female bears in some areas and 5 to 10 percent for males.

The harvest rates that have been examined so far are considered "entirely sustainable," Mace said.

But state wildlife officials did not know that before the project started. Black bear hunters have been required to bring in their kills for examination since 1985, providing useful information on age, gender and health. But it wasn't enough to determine whether bears were being overhunted.

"What we found was that harvest data wasn't telling us the whole picture about bears," Mace said. "We needed to know whether we were overharvesting."

Hunters take an average of 1,200 black bears statewide every year, and more than half of them come from Northwest Montana, said Jim Williams, Region One wildlife manager in Kalispell.

"We offer a really spectacular black-bear hunting opportunity in Northwest Montana," Williams said. "It's a wonderful, nationally and internationally known hunting opportunity. We have people come from all over the world."

The harvest from the hunting districts in the Salish Mountain research averages about 30 to 40 bears a year.

"On inspection, it doesn't appear to be as good habitat as there is elsewhere," Mace said, adding that the Salish Mountains are drier with fewer food sources. "But bears are in there."

And not just black bears.

Grizzly bear managers have been dealing with grizzly bears more often in recent years west of U.S. 93 - an area outside conventional grizzly bear recovery areas.

Last summer, a grizzly bear was captured west of Marion, raising questions about whether it came from the small Cabinet-Yaak population to the west or the much larger Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem to the east.

The hair sampling in the Salish Mountains is expected to reveal the presence of grizzly bears. The big question is, how many?

"This is a little side benefit to this work," Mace said. "There's been a bit of contention about how many bears are in there and how connected the NCDE is with the Cabinet-Yaak populations."

Mace said some hair samples collected appear to be from grizzly bears. "We feel like we detected some," he said. "But the jury is out until we get results."

Next year, Mace expects to write a report on the results of the eight-year study that should have a practical use for wildlife managers in charge of monitoring bear hunting and setting regulations.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com