The Bears of McNeil River
It’s dawn on the McNeil River and a chilly wind is blowing the tall grasses along the river corridor. There is light mist in the air and fog begins to swirl its way along the strand of beach that sits below our camp. Far in the distance, I can see a lone wolf trotting along the shore in the early morning low tide of nearby Kamishak Bay. From the vantage point of our base camp on a bluff overlooking the river, I can also see a half dozen Brown Bear fishing for salmon. It’s a typical Alaskan day as dark storm clouds gather on the horizon and the wind begins to whip up whitecaps in the bay. A few raindrops are falling. The wolf pauses on the beach, probably looking for fish scraps left by the many bear who come to the river to gorge on salmon, and quickly disappears into the alder leaving only his tracks.
I head to the cook cabin for our safety talk. Polly Hessing, a staff wildlife biologist at the McNeil River Brown Bear Sanctuary is leading our group of four up the river to view and photograph brown bears. It’s the first day of our 5 day trip, and everyone is excited and a little nervous. She gives us a few tips on bear safety. Always move slowly, stay in a group, and avoid making quick movements. Never directly approach a bear, especially a sow with cubs, and remain where you are if a bear is approaching close. Bears at McNeil are habituated to humans and have learned to accept humans into their personal space without reacting. By respecting individual distance, bears who are comfortable will come quite close. The bears that are uncomfortable, will just keep their distance. Individual distance, Polly says, is the amount of space around an animal that, if violated, will cause that animal to fight or flee. I notice she is packing a 12 gauge loaded with slugs (just for emergency) and I feel a little better about being 15 feet from one of the largest and most powerful animals on the planet. I gather up my cameras and raingear and jam everything into a daypack. We begin to walk in a small group, close together, across the slippery mud of the river corridor at low tide. The fog is lifting a little. I pull my hip boots up to avoid a dunking in the cold water as we link arms for more stability in the flowing tidewaters. Even at low tide, the water in places is almost up to the tops of our boots and runs very swift. We make it across the mudflats and continue up to the river corridor, pausing briefly to observe a juvenile bald eagle perched on a piece of driftwood eating a salmon.
The McNeil Brown Bear Sanctuary lies just east of Katmai National Park on the Alaskan Peninsula and is about an hour by floatplane from Homer. No roads come through here and it feels truly wild and remote. The Sanctuary uses a lottery permit system for visitors to come and see bears, established by Alaska Fish and Game in the early 1980’s. Each year, several thousand people apply for a viewing permit in hopes of seeing lots of Brown Bear up close and personal. At McNeil, you can be very close to dozens of Brown Bear who come to the river to fish in one of the richest Salmon runs in Alaska. Prior to the lottery system, the bear population at McNeil had come under pressure from far too many human intrusions and had begun to seriously decline. The lottery system, by limiting the number of visitors at one time and requiring a staff biologist to lead the groups, has helped the numbers of brown bear increase steadily and has increased safety for both humans and bears. There has never been a single instance of a bear attack since the permit system was begun. And now there are definitely bears, almost everywhere. Bears were on rocks, in the river, on the trails, in alder thickets, and on the bluffs. While bears are everywhere else in the sanctuary, they are strongly discouraged from coming into base camp by a variety of subtle methods, one of which is never ever letting a bear have human food or garbage. Occasionally, one does wander through camp, as a few gigantic paw prints gave testimony to. It made sleeping in a tent truly a challenge, always keeping one eye open and ready to yell “Hey Bear” while blasting an obnoxious air horn. Some fears of bears in camp were hard to overcome. Going to the outhouse, situated at the end of a twisting, winding trail through an alder thicket was like being cast in the bad horror movie, The Blair Witch Project. It was something to be avoided if at all possible, especially at night.
About 100 yards away from where we stop on our hike is a bear with an injured leg. He is resting on the beach and because of his injuries we don’t approach too close so we don’t cause any stress in the animal. He gives us a nervous glance, but plops his head back down in the sand and continues his nap. As I pull out my camera, a large sow and cub amble by about 35 yards away. They also show no interest in us. She wanders down the gravel bar and stops to fish farther down the river.
Eventually, our group ascends the alder covered bluff and follows a trail that parallels the river. The trail skirts through several alder thickets. Each time, Polly yells, “hello bears!” It sort of like knocking on their front door, she explains. We want to let them know we are here. We hike through the alder and make our way to McNeil Falls. At first, there are no bears to be seen, but soon a young sub adult about three or four years old splashes across the falls chasing after a salmon. He begins a fishing technique of sticking his head underwater, “snorkeling”, as one biologist put it, and then pouncing after a specific fish. The bear catches a huge chum salmon and devours it about 15 feet from us completely unconcerned about a group of humans with cameras. It was amazing to see such a large, intelligent, and powerful animal going about his business so close to us. According to Larry Aumiller, the former head biologist at McNeil, most of the information people get about bears is not very accurate. “Bears are not out to kill humans. They are not even particularly aggressive. Generally, a bear will move away from a human or another bear to avoid interaction. A dangerous bear is one that is experiencing stress. Stress can be caused by intrusion into its personal space or from other bears. However, a bear can learn to accept another bear, or a human into its personal space without reacting.”
Many sanctuary bears display a remarkable tolerance towards humans who are nearby. Years ago, most bears at the sanctuary were wary of humans. Cubs learn to be tolerant or ignore humans through their mothers. Since the early years at McNeil, human behavior is now “very predictable.” Patterns of predictable behavior are established by moving slowly together in small groups, staying in the same places, doing the same things. Predictable patterns that allow the bears who feel comfortable to come closer. Those that are not keep their distance, but over time more and more bears have become tolerant.
If a bear comes close, chances are that it feels unstressed and it’s a safe situation. The bear makes the decision. That’s why humans are not allowed to approach a bear.
McNeil is about the only place in the world where bears can come so close to people with so little risk to either. Although the staff biologists all carry a weapon, negative bear human interactions are very rare in the sanctuary. The McNeil experience seems to wipe away all illogical fears about bears. This is not to say that encountering a bear in the wild outside the sanctuary does not have its risks, but the actual chances of being attacked by a bear is quite low. Usually, people who are attacked are just in the wrong place. Surprising a bear feeding on a carcass, or coming too close to a mother and cub, all have lead to unfortunate human bear encounters. If given the opportunity however, most bears will do the right thing and avoid humans.
Alaska has an estimated 30,000-40,000 brown bears and supports 99 percent of the total species left in the US, and 75 percent left in North America. Brown Bears are the same species as Grizzlies but live along the coasts and are larger due to a richer diet. Males can top 1000 -1500 lbs. and females up to 800. Prior to the early 1800’s over 100,000 Brown Bears once roamed the western US. Grizzlies were feared and considered a threat to livestock. People with guns, poison, traps, as well as habitat encroachment quickly wiped out the Brown Bear over most of its range. The few remaining in the lower 48 are in Yellowstone and pockets of Glacier National Park. McNeil is truly an amazing place to see so many Brown Bear thriving so well. As more bear venture closer, I become more relaxed. To be 15 feet from a huge 1000 lb. bear tearing into a Salmon is an incredible experience.
On the second day, Spike, the bear with the injured leg decided to fish very close to a gravel beach where our group was sitting. A handsome blonde male named Charlie began ambling up the beach towards Spike. I held my breath. I hoped Charlie was not going to challenge Spike and kick him out of his fishing hole. It can get quite ugly in grizzly-land sometimes, as larger males frequently assert their dominance over smaller and younger bears for territory. As he walked up, the two bears seemed to recognize each other. They began a game of play fighting in the water with gentle nips and paw cuffs. Charlie clearly took it easy on Spike, letting him dominate the water wrestling match. Larry says in general it’s not a good idea to anthropomorphize animals by associating them with human characteristics, but the McNeil bears are a little different. Names are something that humans can quickly grasp. A bear named 1623A is not as easily identified as “Rena” or “Charlie”. The bears are also named in order to keep track of them as individuals. The naming helps identify and remember individual bears and aides in research.
The two bears, Spike and Charlie, seemed to enjoy each others company as the following day the two playfully tussled along the grasses of the riverbank. Spike would strike a soft blow and Charlie would fall over belly up with legs in the air. We laughed at the way Charlie would let Spike pretend to knock him to the ground, rolling over, then popping up for another round. It was hilarious. The two bears would play, then waddle off in search of an afternoon snack of fresh salmon and a nap. Later that day, as we headed back to camp, we saw Charlie sleeping high on bluff overlooking the river looking very content. The McNeil experience seems to contradict the view that a close bear is a dangerous bear. On our last day, Rena, a chocolate colored female caught a huge chum Salmon and devoured it right in front us while an entire family of a mother and three cubs strolled by. Behind us, Charlie made a day bed 10 feet from where our group was sitting. He napped carelessly for over an hour, yawning as he got up, walked past us and began fishing in the river as we sat dumbfounded. There were bears everywhere. As Charlie was finishing up his second salmon, another mother with two young cubs wandered by, slowly ambling up the river on the other side of the bank. They seemed uninterested in humans with cameras in funny looking raingear. Tolerant mothers it seems, have tolerant cubs, leading to the growing population of habituated bears at McNeil.
On the final day of our visit, we began packing up our wet gear in the cook cabin as the fog descended lower along the beach. Rain began to fall in sheets hammering the tin roof in a hypnotic rhythm. The floatplane scheduled to pick us up had radioed earlier that the fog was lifting in Homer and the pilot would be attempting the run to McNeil if the weather held. As I walked out to the bluff that overlooks the river for one last time, I hoped that the bears would be getting full after a summer of feasting on Salmon and heading for their dens soon. Safe in their dens, the bears would sleep through the cold Alaskan winter. Cubs would be born, and some would make it and others would not. The wind and rain, howling only moments ago had stopped suddenly. Looking out from the vantage point I saw only one bear far in the distance. It was late August and the chill of fall was already pressing in. The bears had begun to leave the river. I wondered if the bear in the distance was Charlie or perhaps another bear. I hoped Charlie was heading for his den, safe at least for the winter, and perhaps with a little luck, he would return again for another season at McNeil River.
0 comments:
Post a Comment