Just Another Black Bear

Brown (Cinnamon) black bear - Alaska

On a warm July evening, a little over a year ago, a colleague and I watched a young, male cinnamon-phase black bear feeding in a dandelion meadow in Banff National Park. I was involved in the bear management program at the time and was reasonably familiar with the various bears that frequented the road -corridor in that particular part of the park. This was a bear, however, that I did not recognize. Most of the bears my colleagues and I saw on a regular basis were habituated to people to one extent or another. Most of them, too, were the subjects of on-going monitoring and various research projects, and, as a result, were generally ear-tagged and/or radio-collared.

The newcomer I watched on that July evening bore no signs of human manipulation or scrutiny; he was an 'unadulterated' and hitherto unknown bear, a relatively rare phenomenon amongst the populations of bears, particularly black bears, that frequent the roadsides of national parks in North America. This particular bear was striking in his appearance, being golden-brown and having a long, shaggy coat that gave him the look of a Toklat grizzly; even an expert could be forgiven for mistaking him for a grizzly bear, at a distance. In addition, above the Roman nose and more convex face that helped distinguish him as a black bear, he had a dark ring around each eye.

As it was late in the day, there were relatively few people on the road, and so, with our patrol vehicle stopped at a discreet distance, my colleague and I had a private viewing of this unique-looking bear: He was about 120 metres from the road and, seemingly, quite oblivious to it. Ambling along parallel to us, he would stop occasionally, and sometimes even sit, all the while busily feeding on dandelions and meadow-grasses. Periodically he would look-up, with a bunch of dandelions hanging out of either side of his mouth, and cast a glance in our direction; as we were at a sufficient distance not to vex him, he continued with his primary preoccupation, which was feeding.

It struck me that there was an innocence in the wild scene that I observed that warm Summer evening; a wild and unhabituated bear, moving through an area to which he completely belonged, and where, with our best assurance, he should have been safe. And yet, there was an uneasiness, too; could he remain inconspicuous in this place that, despite the best of our intentions, was beset with hazards for unwitting bears? With these two thoughts in mind we watched him out of sight, and that was the first and last time that anyone saw this particular bear as the completely wild animal I have described. From that evening his life was to change, forever.

The next morning, a report spread like wildfire that a bear had trodden on part of a tent and had also obtained some human food from a picnic table in the same campground. No one had been hurt, and the whole incident spoke clearly of an opportunist investigation of something unfamiliar. But we need sensationalism, and there are times when objectivity seems to be an undesirable restraint, and within a few hours word of the 'incident' and even the 'attack' had traveled far. There was another 'problem bear' in Banff National Park. Within a day, the news of what had transpired an hour or two after that oblivious young bear had moved out of our sight, had reached Eastern Canada, where he swiftly became the subject of some basic debate and reportage that highlighted the most elementary and primeval of human reactions to the behavior of wildlife. A Toronto newspaper announced 'Bear on the rampage in Banff National Park', and this, of course, is what most of us believe, because we want to, and because, in a way that I think few of us address or understand, we need such a perception of wild animals, in lives that are otherwise disconnected from them. During the next couple of days, when the bear was under close observation, I had an indelible image, in my mind, of him sitting in his sunny meadow, mouth full of dandelions, content and unaware, a world away from the vicious predator he had since become, and I could make no reconciliation between reality and the perception of this animal.

The rot had set in though, as sure as if it had been a virus borne through the air; the contact that the bear had experienced, with something that he could not understand as wrong, had been learned and absorbed. And due to the high level of intelligence that bears posses, served to lure him back to look further for a source of food that had taken no struggle or effort to find. What, to him, was simply the pursuit of something now known, for us, became danger. The process of habituation had begun, and the danger it represented, no matter how it came about, was intolerable. And so the campground was closed and a culvert-trap was set and the young bear walked willingly into it.After being caught he was anaesthetized, weighed, fitted with a radio-collar and a radio ear-tag, to be sure that he could still be monitored in the event of failure of one or the other. In addition, a blood- sample and a tooth were taken, both standard procedures in the utilitarian world of wildlife immobilization. The tooth, as it happens, broke off beneath the gum-line as it was being extracted, leaving an exposed nerve that was quite likely to result in an abcess. During the attempt to extract the tooth, although under the influence of the immobilizing drug, the bear squirmed with pain, to the extent that it was feared he would come round, and more of the drug was administered. Teeth are taken, and analyzed in a laboratory, so that the exact age of the animal can be recorded. However, there are many ways that an experienced technician can 'age' an animal within a year, either way, of being exactly correct, that simply involve observation and inspection. I have often wondered why we feel we need to know the age of an animal so specifically, and how many teeth, so harshly taken, are actually analyzed at all! I looked at the bear, now named '33' as he lay trussed and anchored at my feet; he seemed so small and inoffensive, so violated, this menace who was known-about thousands of miles away. Here he was in his reality; a three-year- old black bear who weighed less than me! The grim procedure finished, '33' was hefted back into the culvert-trap where he was observed until he regained consciousness and where he was then left for the night.

It had been decided that on-site aversive-conditioning would be applied upon releasing the bear, in the morning. This is a methodology that has shown considerable success, particularly amongst black bears, in a growing number of areas in North America; it appears as one solution in a climate of thought that suggests there are few places left to move 'problem' bears to: A mock camp was set up and the Park Wardens present used fleece jackets to disguise their uniforms and to appear, as much as possible, like ordinary campers. (There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that Warden/Ranger uniforms and vehicles become recognizable to bears, who associate them with aggressive reaction, rather than ambivalence or retreat, and that they respond differently to them than they do to park visitors). Prior to releasing the bear the culvert-trap was hit with sticks to create a frightening din, a brutal-sounding procedure that, in fact, does the bear no harm and has the result of a bad association with a particular area. This part of the manipulation had gone according to rule, until this point, when a mistake was made that could have cost the bear very dearly; an entire can of capsicum pepper-spray was emptied into the culvert-trap.....just prior to the release of the bear! When the door was sprung the bear stumbled out to a salvo of firecracker rounds and rubber-bullets, the final cherry on the cake of the degradation he had already suffered. As might be expected he collapsed about 70 meters from the trap.

Pepper- spray is intended to function as a debilitator, significantly, but temporarily irritating the olfactory and visual senses, and creating a distraction that can allow a person to escape an attacking bear. In a situation such as I have described, the whole procedure is based on the bear being able to recognize its surroundings through sight, sound and smell. Through this, the bear can learn to avoid the area that it remembers as having been the location of the bad experience. How ridiculous does it seem, then, to render ineffective the senses that would achieve this by incapacitating them with pepper-spray? The great danger in this, for Bear 33, was that he may never have had the opportunity to learn that the area he was in was somewhere to be avoided in future, and that his likely and imminent return could have resulted in his death!

During the ensuing weeks Bear 33 was continually monitored for a possible return to the area of his first infraction. In a way he was almost adopted by the different wildlife groups in the park; Wardens, black bear researchers, grizzly bear researchers and the conflict management teams all gathered regular telemetry readings on 33. While at times there was doubt that he would not return, and, despite the problems associated with his 'reconditioning' procedure, 33 did not return. As the Summer extended, so too did our belief that he would stay in his own wild world, away from the hazards of ours.

At the height of the berry season, in 1997, there were a number of potential conflict situations with bears that were averted partly due to management practice and partly due to good fortune. During the same season, 11 black bears were lost, due, almost exclusively, to motor vehicles, in the three mountain parks of Banff, Yoho and Kootenay. Bear 33 was not one of these, nor was he involved in any other incidents, though he was initially suspected of being so on several occasions. Ironically, at such times it was his constant monitoring, through devices so intrusively fitted, that kept him his freedom. In September, 33 was seen once in the national park housing area, but other than that, although he was known to be in the general vicinity, he kept away.

He was not seen again until 10 August, 1998, when he was observed near the Cave and Basin area of Banff National Park. The following day, he fed on garbage that he obtained in the grounds of the parks administration building, in Banff. He was driven away from the area by a method referred to as 'hazing' which, as a first stage of aversive-conditioning, generally involves a combination of pepper-spray and noisemakers. He was observed, later, near the Cadet Camp, to the North of Banff townsite, and then, during the night of 11 August, after being seen at the Transfer Station, behind the park Warden Office, he was again captured in a culvert-trap. After much debate as to what to do with him, and much pressure from media, and environmental groups, he was relocated to the Settler's Road in Kootenay National Park.

During the ensuing days he was seen in the vicinity of the town of Radium, British Columbia, but he did not stay there long, as he was back in Banff, again near the Cave and Basin area, around 25 August. The following day he was seen at the golf course, where he was 'hazed' for a second time. By now Bear 33 had become part of what is an all-too- familiar cycle of habituation, and he had swiftly reached the limits of human tolerance; he was now a 'nuisance' bear and a public liability. He was shot by Park Wardens, in Banff, on August 28, 1998. He was 4 years old and he should have lived to be 30.

The brief, sad story of the part of Bear 33's life that we know about is not much different to the story of many other bears, grizzly and black, and, indeed, to the story of many other wild animals who, in innocence, breach the walls of tolerance we build around ourselves and our society. He, who, like thousands of other bears each year, has become a statistic, is simply an epitome of a huge and unsustainable problem. Nor is this article, particularly, an indictment of the Canadian National Park Service; it is an indictment of ourselves, of where we are going and of what we do not know that we are responsible for. How many visitors to Western national parks, in North America, either really know, or would accept what they (we) are responsible for in the most basic of the activities we pursue there? The answer is; not many. And yet, I think that if we made it important that people should learn and understand such things, in schools, in daily life and work, in places like national parks, those people would be appalled at what happens as a result of our actions - and they would want it to stop; would want, perhaps, to be part of stopping it.

The great irony is that Bear 33, and the thousand like him that were killed in British Columbia this year, is so much a symbol of Western wilderness; the subject of a million post-cards and business logos, the name on the gate of countless homes. We think we can be part of them in our high-tech. urban lives, but we cannot, because there is more to sharing the land with bears than a four-wheel-drive and a particular brand of jacket and boots. Bear 33 was a victim of our modern society, a bureaucratic and economic problem in the dominion we see ourselves as having over the natural world. While we want to marvel at him, in every way, we do not know when to try and stop getting any closer, and we seem numb to the idea that it might be our responsibility to educate and moderate ourselves in such a way that accommodates other forms of life.

Bear 33's brief life and untimely death serve to illustrate how easy it is for a bear to go from wild and independent, to habituated and dependent on human beings. An intelligent, resourceful omnivore easily becomes a scavenger, sustaining itself on the detritus of our activities, if we allow it to. That is adaptability; the reason for the success of a species, while, at the same time, part of the reason for its undoing. One action, as he browsed through the woods on a warm Summer evening, one source of food, instead of another, scraps, overlooked by a family hurrying to get the children organized to go to town for the evening, was the forbidden fruit for 33. And, as with a stone, thrown-up by the wheels of a speeding car, that shatters the windshield of the one behind, causing an accident that one may never know they are responsible for, too many of us are not aware of the consequences of our actions. Until we become so, and until we take complete responsibility for what we do in wild land, and are willing to moderate, and even compromise, our actions, Bear 33's story will be repeated until he is gone forever.

Rupert Pilkington (M.Sc)
Resource Management Specialist, Castle-Crown Wilderness Coalition, Alberta, Canada.