Lakeside grizzly moved

After getting a report of a bear eating chickens south of Lakeside, Heather and Derek Reich thought they were going to try to capture a troublesome black bear.

Instead, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks field assistants ended up with a young female grizzly in a trap near Lutheran Camp on Flathead Lake.

The bear was more than 33 air miles from the South Fork Flathead River drainage where it had been moved last year.

It was the first grizzly to be captured in the Blacktail Mountain area southwest of Kalispell and one of five grizzly bears caught and relocated during the last week in Northwest Montana.

“We don’t often have reports of grizzly bears over there, so we just kind of assumed that we were going in to trap a black bear,” Reich said Wednesday.

Tim Manley, the state’s regional grizzly bear management specialist, said that past grizzly bear reports near Lakeside all have turned out to be black bears.

In this case, the bear initially ate some young chickens that were being kept on top of a dog kennel near a home. The homeowner did not report that incident, but about a week later a bear broke into his chicken coop and ate some more chickens.

A culvert trap was set up and the 2-year-old, 185-pound grizzly bear was captured on Tuesday.

The bear was fitted with a GPS collar and moved to the Blacktail Mountain Divide, also an unusual step. Captured grizzly bears typically are moved to far more remote areas, such as the Spotted Bear area in the South Fork.

Last year, the young bear, her mother and a sibling were transplanted there.

“She moved over [to Lakeside] on her own and we thought we’ll see what happens rather than moving her back” to the South Fork, Manley said. “We’ll be monitoring her.”

Manley said he has been getting a lot of reports of bears being near low-elevation areas populated by people, and he suspects it has something to do with a delayed melt-out of mountain snowpack.

“The snow we got in the mountains has really stayed. I think that’s one reason why people are seeing bears down low,” Manley said. He noted that Red Meadow Lake in the North Fork Flathead River drainage still is frozen over, and Red Meadow Road still is buried in snow when it typically is passable by early June.

Responding to a report of a bear that had been getting on house porches and looking for bird feeders in the North Fork’s Trail Creek area, Manley captured a 4-year-old, 206-pound female grizzly bear on Tuesday.

Residents observed the bear entering the culvert trap and later saw another grizzly bear approach the trap, so Manley is uncertain if he caught the right porch-hopper. The bear was radio-collared and released in the upper Whale Creek area in the North Fork.

A few days earlier, Manley got a report of three grizzly bears grazing on grass on residential lawns in a subdivision south of Martin City. Manley said one resident recently returned from a vacation to find 25 piles of bear scat in his yard.

On May 29, an adult female grizzly and two 2-year-olds were captured near Martin City and later were released together in the Emery Creek area east of Hungry Horse Reservoir. Manley said the bears had no management history.

Manley urges people to properly store garbage, pet food and bird feeders at this time of year to avoid attracting bears.

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