New technology, especially collars that tap into global positioning satellites, are helping researchers like Montana Grizzly Bear Recovery coordinator Chris Servheen follow some of their remarkable wanderings.
For instance, last year a young grizzly living on the west slope of the Mission Mountains decided to check out the countryside and made its way clear down into the Lubrecht Experimental Forest, just 30 miles northeast of Missoula.
“I was shocked,” said Servheen. “We had no idea bears were traveling into that area. Is it unusual? We really don't know.”
This year researchers have also seen bears exploring the Ovando area in the Paws Up Ranch area south of Highway 200
“That's new. We haven't seen that before,” he said.
Grizzly bears are also surveying the area west of the Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge. Servheen said he never saw Mission Mountain bears venturing that far when he was doing his Ph.D. work in the late '70s and early '80s.
People living along the Rocky Mountain Front are also seeing bears moving out into the plains in places old-timers had never spotted them before.
“If people wanted to see a grizzly bear there 25 years ago, they'd load up on horseback and head back into the wilderness,” Servheen said. “Now some people living on the plains see grizzly bears all the time.”
“Grizzlies are pulling out of the mountains and moving out on the prairies ... we're seeing this happening all around the NCDE (Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem).”
“The Yellowstone population of grizzly bears is expanding its range and numbers,” said Servheen. “The Northern Continental Divide population is also expanding its numbers and range. We just don't have as good of information about their movements as we have in Yellowstone.”
The Yellowstone population of grizzly bears is the most studied population of bears in the world.
Federal and state biologists are in the midst of gathering information and preparing new efforts to gain more knowledge about what's happening with bears living farther north.
New technology is helping that effort along. Whenever they can come up with the funding, researchers are using tracking technology first developed for the military, to follow wandering grizzly bears.
Collars using the global positioning system aren't cheap.
A GPS collar costs upwards of 10 times the amount of a VHF collar, but the amount of information researchers are able to glean from the real-time readings from the GPS collar can be invaluable in understanding grizzly bear movement.
“We see stuff that we would never have found in the past,” Servheen said. “There are huge advantages for research in using this technology.”
Using the older style VHF collars requires researchers to take to the air to find their quarry. That requires good weather, an available pilot and a steady budget that covers the cost of aerial surveillance.
“In the end, you still just get is a piecemeal look at what bears are doing,” he said. “It's really a matter of getting what you pay for.”
Researchers have documented bears pioneering into areas where they haven't been seen for generations. Someday, they might even track a grizzly into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness area.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed transplanting up to 25 bears in the expansive wilderness that runs along the Montana and Idaho border in 2000.
The program was later suspended by the Bush administration following a challenge by Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne.
As grizzlies continue to expand their range, the bears could make it there on their own in time, although it wouldn't be easy, said Servheen.
“They'd have to cross a settled valley and highways to get there,” he said.
If the proposal to reintroduce bears had gone through, Servheen said the 25 bears trapped and relocated into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness would have been classified as an experimental population. A task force, including local citizens, would have helped in the management of the bears.
If the bears are able to navigate their way around towns and over roadways into the expansive wilderness, they'll be fully protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, Servheen said.
Whether that'll ever happen is anyone's guess.
The nearest bears right now are probably in the southwest corner of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem in the St. Ignatius area.
Bears have ventured closer over the years.
A grizzly killed in the Nine Mile drainage in 2001 spent some time in the Selway-Bitterroot recovery area. It became habituated to humans and had to be destroyed.
“It got into people's garbage and become conditioned to that source of food,” Servheen said. “We had no choice but to capture and destroy it.”
Another bear made it into the Rock Creek drainage. Servheen thinks that bear was probably killed illegally.
“It just disappeared,” he said.
Grizzly bears in the Yellowstone area are also expanding their range northward, sometimes surprising hunters along the way.
Three years ago a bow hunter from Kentucky killed a sow near Island Park that had made a habit of traveling out of Yellowstone National Park into the Centennial Range in extreme southwest Montana.
The hunter later told investigators that he'd mistaken the grizzly sow and its cub for a black bear and had shot the older bear. He returned the next morning with another pair of hunters and found the bear dead. They destroyed the radio collar the bear was wearing and later killed the cub.
The bears had never been involved in any human encounters and their deaths were seen as a setback for the expansion of the bear population.
Male grizzlies have a range that's typically two to three times larger than a female's. Females developing new territories, especially ones with cubs, are vital to expanding the bear's range.
The hunter from Kentucky pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution for killing the bear. He also lost his hunting privileges for two years. The case against the other two Idaho hunters is still pending.
Another grizzly bear was killed by a hunter this fall just south of Anaconda, in the Mount Haggin Wildlife Management Area. Servheen said researchers have no idea where that bear came from.
The bear was discovered by another hunter, who reported the find.
Every year, black bear hunters mistakenly kill grizzly bears.
“It's really not that easy to tell a black bear from a grizzly bear in less than optimum conditions,” said Servheen. “Over the years I've seen bears plenty of times when I couldn't tell what kind of bear it was.”
“Sometimes, hunters don't get a lot of time to look at a bear when they encounter one in the woods,” he said. “It's very important that they make that positive ID before they fire.”
Servheen is sure there are other bears killed every year that aren't reported.
“It's easy to kill a bear and leave it lay in the middle of nowhere,” said Servheen. “Without a collar, those bears can go undiscovered ... sometimes we get reports from ethical hunters, others just walk away.”
Reporter Perry Backus can be reached at 523-5259 or at pbackus@missoulian.com
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