Along Montana's Rocky Mountain Front
The Falls Creek Grizzly - April Blog
This month: it's spring, so there should
be lots of news items; and some
notes on climate change
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April
News:
Bears are coming out...
From the 4/23/08 Billings Gazette: Grizzly caught near subdivision The bear had walked down the drainage raiding garbage cans, bird and squirrel feeders and damaging cabins since emerging about two weeks ago. The article goes on to say that bears appear on the Beartooth face fairly rarely, and when they do, they are subadults, out looking for food and new territory. From the 4/12/08 Calgary Herald: Hibernating grizzlies emerge early from dens It's a trend that has been noticed on both sides of the border... I wonder if this means more conflicts? Bears denning later and out of their dens earlier need to eat, and will go after easy food. From the 4/5/08 Edmonton Journal: Biologists push for action on grizzly plan "It's taken a while to get to this point and any movement is good to see," said Robert Barclay, spokesman for the 15-member grizzly bear recovery team that drew up the action plan in 2005. "I'm sure everyone would like to see things hit the ground now, but it's a complicated process." The Winter: It's been a good winter and the snowpacks are still above average, but the bears will be out soon. The big older males are usually first out of their dens looking for food, as they need food earlier due to their size and age. Females with cubs usually emerge later in order to not be susceptible (and their cubs) to becoming prey to the bigger male bears. Younger males, three years old, can emerge early, too, and start ranging around for food; this is a typical time for them to get into conflicts with humans and food sources as they are young and finding their way around. Chaos Theory One of the metaphors of Chaos Theory is that a butterfly flapping its wings over the Amazon can result in a tornado over Texas. In other words, natural systems such as weather and climate are infinitesimally complex, and the smallest changes and motions can transform into much larger actions and effects; a small change in the initial condition of part of a system can drastically change the long term behavior of that system. There is order in chaos - but that order is ordered chaos. (Chaos Theory was first described by a meteorologist named Edward Lorenz in a 1963 paper; he coined the phrase "butterfly effect"). Much greater than a butterfly are industrialized nations and the plumes of pollution they kick out into the prevailing winds, according to some recent research. 3/6/07 Seattle Times
"The pollution transported from Asia makes storms stronger and deeper and more energetic," said lead author Renyi Zhang at Texas A&M University. "It is a direct link from large-scale storm systems to [human-produced] pollution." Satellite measurements reveal that high-altitude storm clouds over the northern Pacific have increased up to 50 percent over the past 20 years, as new factories, vehicles and power plants in China and India spew growing amounts of microscopic pollutant particles. What about us? I assumed that North America would effect Europe, but "The scientists also examined satellite data from the Atlantic region during the same periods, since pollution from North America follows the prevailing winds to Europe. But they did not find any similar pattern of cloud changes or increase in storm intensity." "The researchers emphasized that it would take much more sustained study to understand the international climate ramifications." What does this mean? More snow? Less rain? Climate systems are complex beyond our wildest imaginations; all the systems of the world are. What have we been mucking around with? More evidence that the world is a small place: according to the Vancouver Sun (no free link to article, but parts are quoted below), is that chemicals banned in the US and Canada, but not yet in Asia are turning up in bears through the salmon they eat:
"Two years ago, University of Victoria wildlife toxicologists Jennie Christensen and Peter Ross showed that grizzly bears were being contaminated with PCBs -- plasticizers used in a variety of products -- and DDT, a type of pesticide, when they fed on salmon that had returned to B.C. to spawn. Canada and the U.S. had banned these chemicals 30 years earlier, but Asia had not. So there they were, turning up again in B.C. bears that had eaten
B.C. salmon. No need to say I wonder what those concentrations of chemicals will do to bears. We already know what they do to people and other wildlife. If you like what you have read, consider a tax-deductible contribution to me
for a tire fund for my truck, as I've punched out three good radials on the back roads on the Front so far.
"A grizzly bear that got into trouble south of Red Lodge late last year and was relocated to the upper Boulder River drainage to den was captured Monday about 20 miles away near a subdivision of summer residences."
Justin Paugh, FWP biologist in Big Timber. "He didn't seem to have a lot of fear of people. He never showed any aggression, but he was never real afraid. So we made the decision it was time to catch this guy."
"He was absolutely beautiful, very majestic," said Gay Watts, whose family has a house in the Whispering Pines subdivision near where the bear was trapped. "I hope nothing bad happened to him, but I didn't feel safe with him around here."
"He can't be released into the wild," Shawn Stewart, FWP biologist in Red Lodge, said. "He really wasn't a great candidate for relocation anywhere else, and there's so much snow in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem that even if we wanted to, there's no place to release him."
"American scientists are hoping to determine if climate change is causing grizzly bears to hibernate later each fall and emerge from their winter slumber much earlier."
We've got some correlations with temperature and snowfall to suggest they're probably staying out later in the fall," said renowned U.S. grizzly bear expert Chuck Schwartz. "It appears they are also coming out a bit earlier in the spring as well. There is some timing associated with them coming out earlier, though, because it doesn't behoove a bear to come out of a den before food is available." .
North of the border around a widlife crossing project on Trans-Canada highway near Banff:
Tony Clevenger said it's not known if the shift in the hibernation patterns of grizzly bears is related to climate change. "These bears are typically out and walking around a bit, but they don't go far. The fact that bears are down along the highway and fairly low in the valley is surprising." But "it is certainly an interesting phenomenon. It may not be representative of the entire population," he said. "This may be the wanderings and activity of a few restless males."
"Biologists and conservationists say they hope the Alberta government's release of its grizzly bear recovery plan Friday will be quickly followed by action to save the species."
However:
Jim Pissot, executive director of Defenders of Wildlife Canada, said the grizzly bear is in critical condition and rather than rushing it to hospital, the government is inflicting more wounds. A government-appointed committee recommended in 2002 that the grizzly be placed on the threatened-species list because the Alberta population appeared to be less than 1,000. The recommendation was ignored. New counts suggest the population may be less than half that size.
And the existence of any plan doesn't mean that it can be implemented well, referring to south of the border:
"It took a lot of political will," Chris Servheen (the grizzly recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) said. "The depth of political will is critical to any recovery operation." The United States has a vested interest in keeping Alberta's bear population healthy because many of those bears have dual citizenship, roaming across the U.S.-Canada border at will. "I am promoting the idea of sharing our efforts and co-operating together," he said. "We offer our help in that regard to Alberta. We all share these bears."
"Now Christensen and Ross have taken that research a step further. By examining the hair and fat of grizzlies that were shot by sport hunters or conservation officers, they set out to determine what happens to these chemicals in bears when they hibernate.
"And what they've found is that because grizzlies don't urinate or defecate during hibernation -- instead they feed on their fat reserves until they emerge the following spring -- everything they consume before entering their dens stays in them. And in the case of some chemical pollutants, that means they get more concentrated.
"Two to three times more concentrated, it turns out, when it comes to PCBs, Christensen said. In fact, dioxin-like PCBs, the most toxic form of PCB, ended up being 3.3 times more concentrated in grizzlies that were finished hibernating compared to grizzlies that hadn't begun.