Troublesome griz killed
Glacier National Park Ranger Gary Moses puts a divider back into place after watering down a grizzly bear cub inside a bear trap Tuesday afternoon. The cub was captured near Oldman Lake after rangers shot the cub's mother. Nate Chute photos/Daily Inter Lake
The grizzly cub pushes at the bars of a bear trap Tuesday.
One cub dies, another destined for Bronx Zoo
After a rigorous, logistically challenging hunt that lasted more than a week, Glacier National Park rangers shot and killed the "Oldman Lake" grizzly bear on Monday.
One of her yearling cubs died after being tranquilized with a free-range dart.
A second cub was successfully captured and was being held at the park's West Glacier headquarters Tuesday, with plans to transport her to the Bronx Zoo this week.
The tracking effort required a hefty load of equipment, with a team of three rangers based out of Morning Star Lake.
"Right at the time they started looking for her, the weather changed. It got really bad with lots of rain," said Jack Potter, Glacier's chief of science and natural resources.
The bear and its cubs kept moving into rough, heavily forested areas. The team ended up tracking the family group over an area that covers roughly a dozen square miles in the Atlantic Creek and Cut Bank Creek drainages. At one point, the bears moved up the slopes of Razoredge Mountain.
But Monday, the female and the cubs returned to her namesake lake.
They were spotted at the head of Oldman Lake by the three rangers. After positioning themselves, two of the rangers fired high-caliber rifles simultaneously, hitting the bear and killing her instantly as she was approaching within 300 yards of the Oldman Lake backcountry campground, which was occupied by backpackers at the time.
The two cubs remained in the area and were shot with tranquilizer darts. One died soon after being tranquilized, despite an effort to revive the yearling with mouth-to-nose breathing and CPR.
Other rangers tried similar efforts after the bear was airlifted by helicopter to the Cut Bank Campground.
Potter said the 17-year-old female grizzly's behavior went well beyond the behaviors of nuisance bears that are often moved to new areas.
The grizzly, often with her cubs nearby, repeatedly approached hikers on trails, entered campgrounds occupied by people and sniffed at occupied tents at night.
Encounters documented this July alone led the park's bear management team to conclude that she was "highly conditioned to humans." Glacier's Bear Management Plan and Guidelines specify that such bears must be removed from the wild population.
The park in 2005 and 2006 had taken an unprecedented approach in attempting to condition the bear and a previous pair of cubs to avoid people and campgrounds.
A superintendent's order cleared the way for the use of Karelian bear dogs in the park's backcountry, and for the park to contract with the Wind River Bear Institute to carry out "aversive conditioning" work.
"We worked her with two 10-day sessions, in '05 and '06, and she was as good as gold in 2007 and 2008," said Carrie Hunt, Wind River director and bear conflict specialist.
The female grizzly did indeed disappear for two years, causing no trouble until this summer. Hunt believes that the hazing work was successful, and that "booster" aversive conditioning would have been effective, but the money was not available to continue with the work.
"I fully support what they had to do with her if they could not do the booster work," Hunt said. "The park just doesn't have the manpower to assume that kind of monitoring responsibility … you could not risk a bear in the backcountry that was entering campsites that you couldn't stay on regularly to make sure that wouldn't happen."
But Hunt would like to see the Oldman Lake grizzly's death serve a purpose by launching an effort to develop a Glacier centennial bear management program aimed at actively working with bears that are in places they shouldn't be.
"We've pulled off some precedent-setting work over the past few years," Hunt said, noting that previous aversive conditioning work has been highly successful in shooing bears away from Logan Pass and Camas Road.
Combined with work in Canada, the Wind River Bear Institute makes 300 to 800 grizzly bear "pushes' every year, with successful results and never with an injury to a person, bear or Karelian bear dog, Hunt said.
But in the case of the Oldman Lake grizzly, Potter said, it had become an unsustainable effort with unacceptable risks to park visitors.
He said the park has a responsibility to manage the grizzly bear population as a whole rather than expending limited resources on a single bear that has a long track record of "purposefully approaching humans."
"It reaches a point where we can't keep doing this year after year," Potter said.
The surviving female cub is slated to be driven to Missoula by Tim Manley, a state bear conflict specialist. From there, the cub will be flown to New York.
"We deeply regret the loss of the one cub, but are thankful that the other yearling will soon be transported to the Bronx Zoo," Glacier Superintendent Chas Cartwright said in a press release.
A review will be carried out to determine the precise cause of the cub's death. The carcass will be transported to the state wildlife laboratory in Bozeman for a necropsy.
Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com