News
Grizzlies Too Close For Some
POLSON- Two grizzly bears spotted in the Ronan and Pablo areas haven't been a nuisance yet, and authorities are asking residents to help keep it that way by taking steps to eliminate bear attractants.
Farther north, however, a young grizzly that has been raiding garbage cans and bird feeders in the Swan Lake region has crossed over Crane Mountain and into the Woods Bay area. Officials with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks are attempting to capture the bear, which will likely be destroyed if they are successful. That grizzly, a 2-year-old male, has already been relocated once and almost immediately returned to search for food among humans.
One of the grizzlies seen in Lake County did get into some poultry east of Ronan, but Dale Becker, wildlife program manager for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, says his employees worked with the owner of the chickens to bear-proof the property - measures that included an electric fence - and the bear hasn't been back.
Neither it nor the grizzly seen in Pablo have yet turned to garbage cans or ransacked property in search of pet food or other types of foods. And CSKT personnel want to keep it that way.
“It's far easier to prevent problems from starting than to change a bear's behavior afterward,” says tribal game warden Pablo Espinoza.
The grizzly seen in the Woods Bay area is a case in point. Along with his mother and a sibling, the bear was getting into garbage at Edwards Cedar Lodge on the shore of Swan Lake this spring.
After being “kicked off” by the sow, the two young bears continued to forage for food the way their mother had taught them. Authorities captured the other sibling first, fitted it with a radio collar and sent it off with “adverse conditioning” - firing bean-bag rounds and rubber bullets at it, and letting Karelian bear dogs chase it into the woods.
That grizzly hasn't returned to areas occupied by humans.
But its brother was captured a week later, around Memorial Day weekend, and state grizzly bear management specialist Tim Manley said officials weren't comfortable doing a similar on-site release in the Swan Lake area at the same time folks were heading out into the woods to camp and kick off the summer season.
Instead, Manley relocated the bear in the Sullivan Creek drainage on the east side of the Swan Mountain Range.
Four days later, the grizzly had made its way to the Ferndale area and was up to its old tricks.
Becker said it is not uncommon for bears to search for food in populated areas - but if they don't find any, they often won't return to look again.
“When a bear doesn't find human food, it will be less likely to search repeatedly and will eventually return to a reliance on natural food,” Becker said. “They make their rounds, but if they don't find food, they move off.”
Once fed, bears will return time after time and year after year, he added.
“It's a delicate path, because we don't want people to get overly excited over nothing,” Becker said. “These two grizzlies haven't been a problem and they're moving back and forth and in and out, and they've just gotten a little close to town on occasion.”
Black bears are another matter. The tribes receive reports of black bear activity on a daily basis, tribal game wardens say.
