Bears | Leslie Patten Books: Wild Places, Sacred Spaces

The Golden Bear of California

Posted on November 14, 2009 by Leslie

View from the pass of Half Dome

Driving through Tioga Pass, I couldn’t help but think of California’s state flag…the great Golden Bear, a sub-species of our Grizzly, now extinct.

Black bears are ubiquitous in the Sierras. I’ve heard from friends that back country hikers are now required to carry their food in bear containers when backpacking, adding lots of extra weight to their packs. Last time I camped in Yosemite Valley, bears walked continually through our campground which was shared with dozens of other campsites.

So my question is…Why not introduce the great Grizzly back to California? Hey, people are getting used to living with black bears. It’s just a little jump from the Black to the Grizzly. Besides, there won’t be so many black bears with a few grizzlies around as they don’t share territory easily. A little bit of googling and it seems others are asking the same question. Not many others though, but a few.

As opposed to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem which is higher, colder, and food scarcer, California is warm with abundant food. Apparently, a hundred and fifty years ago, grizzlies were everywhere, gathering even in ‘herds’, unusual for the usually solitary beast. Salmon, acorns, abundant wildlife, washed up whales…food was easy. Seems like California harbored 20 percent of the 50,000 grizzlies that roamed the continent long ago. Its a shame to waste all the protected spaces of Californias’ Federal and State Parks and Forests.

In addition, it might give pause to the growing population of California. When I was growing up here, California had an already bulging population of about 12 million. Now its pushing 37 million, too many people for the space. Many of these newcomers are easterners and mid-westerners, looking for climate change, in denial of the natural dryness of the west. I watched California grow in the 80’s and 90’s, developers building out-of-place Cape Cod style McMansions, tearing down ancient oaks to put in home vineyards with private labels for Christmas gifts, lawns and golf courses erected where there should be Manzanitas. I suggest the only thing that might put a stop to all this madness is the great, top of the food chain predator–the California Golden Bear.

Now, in all seriousness, Californians have the room for a few bears. Biologist Carlos Carroll maintains that the Siskiyou Mountains could maintain around 300 Grizzlies. I’ve been to these remote mountains on the Oregon Border. They would make nice habitat. I’m thinking so would Yosemite, and Tahoe for that matter. Wolves in California might be just too big a jump, but Grizzlies are actually easier to live with, tend to be solitary, populate slowly and are omnivorous.

I like having Grizzlies in my valley in Wyoming. They make me aware. They make me remember that life is wild and that I too am a child of the wild. We humans tend to eliminate everything that threatens us. But really, we can never fully eliminate all threats. In trying to cheat death, we only cheat ourselves of our natural woolly wildness and loose touch with an important part of our soul.

Filed under: Grizzlies | Tagged: Bears, Grizzly bears | Leave a comment »

The woman who married a bear teaches me about pine nuts

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Leslie

After we visited the bear cave in Yellowstone, Jim Halfpenny sat us down on a nearby log and told a story.

“When we first migrated north from Africa, ancient peoples had no idea how to live with cold, what foods to eat, how to make shelters. The Bear was their teacher. Native Americans had several layers in one story. The first and simplest they might tell to the children so they would stay close and be afraid of bears. As the child grew older, the same story would be told in greater depth revealing more teaching and wisdom.”

“This story of the woman who married a bear was told in some form all over the world where there are bears.”

Jim went on to tell this ancient story in great detail about a Chief’s daughter who married a bear, lived with the bear clan, bore him two sons and then went back to her people. When she returned with her sons, half-bear half-human, she was now a changed woman–a wise woman with much to teach her people.

This is the story of why humans throughout time have respected and honored bears, and how it was Bear who taught Humans how to live.

I was wandering in the upper meadows this morning, watching the Clark’s nutcrackers poke their beaks in the pine cones and extract the seeds, stashing them in the pouch in their throats. Sometimes they’d try and clean the sap off by rubbing their long beaks against the bark. Since all the cones were way high, I looked for dropped pine nuts on the ground, possibly ones the squirrels and birds had missed. There were lots. But every one I opened was no good, the nut had never matured. I tried tree after tree with the same result and I marveled at how the animals knew to let these bad ones go. I figured that if my life depended on these seeds, I’d definitely go hungry.

When I had a big garden, I used to fight the birds for the cherries on my tree. I tried netting, decoys, shiny objects. But crows and jays are smart and they’d wait till the cherries were just perfectly ripe, then beat me out there. I’d have only the leftovers. Pine nuts seemed the same. I began to think about the Native Americans in the Basin & Range and California traveling far and wide for the Pinyon Pine nut. Or the Native Californians and their acorn harvests. There were ancient tricks to this that alluded me.

I knew that when I lived in California, I used to collect Redwood cones unopened, then let them ripen by a window and all the 100’s of tiny seeds would fall out. Perhaps…

I wandered a bit farther up the denser parts of the hillside and noticed an old middens I was familiar with. In one of the cavities beneath the trees there was stashed 3 douglas fir pine cones, fresh this year. And that gave me an idea. I went back and started hunting for a middens of Limber Pine cones. Sure enough, I found a really large one with tons and tons of fresh cones, unopened and untouched.

Limber pine middens. There's lots more than shown and much is buried

Some even had the pitch gone. There were cones on top and cones underneath. I tried a few nuts. These were the good ones! These were the ones for squirrel for the long winter ahead.

The cone collector's home looking down on us raiding his middens

Then I remembered the bear story. Bears are smart. They do sometimes climb the trees for their beloved nuts. But its a whole lot easier to let squirrel do the work and just raid his larder, and that’s what they do. Bear must have taught that to the People. That was my lesson for today.

Look close, I took this bear scat apart & there's pine nut shells inside

Filed under: Bears | Tagged: Bears, Limber pine, Native American Culture, Scat, Whitebark pines, Yellowstone National Park | 2 Comments »

A surprise walk

Posted on July 3, 2009 by Leslie

Its starting to feel like the Canadian Rockies here, raining every day, even if just a little bit. Last fall I had driven up an old fire road that’s usually closed. I wasn’t sure if they only opened it in the fall for hunters, so I took a drive over there, and sure enough, the road was closed and the gate locked. I parked and walked up the dirt fire road that leads to high meadows. This area was home to the ’88 fires and the lush undergrowth shows it.

There’s been so much rain that the forest is lush. Lush forest

More and new wildflowers appear every day. Paintbrushes

Calypso bulbosa - Fairy Slipper Orchid-endangered

Saxifraga odontoloma

A loud almost bell-like sound announced the presence of a marmot hanging in the rock pile below us. Koda went crazy. He knew he couldn’t get to the marmot, and that fat marmot just kept teasing him.

As we ascended higher, the reef cliffs came into view. A Golden Eagle sat in a tree near the old road cut. Our presence caused him to take to flight. Looking up at the limestone reef

There was a lot of fairly fresh grizzly scat along the road, but the only recent prints were elk. Occasionally there were faint bear tracks, and it seemed like there might be two bears, indicating a sow and cub.

Pretty fresh bear scat. Can you see the penny at the right for size?

Along the road, there were lots of berry bushes–thimbleberries and raspberries. A perfect place for bears in the fall as well.

Thimbleberry

Way up near the top of the ridge, I suddenly heard a loud high-pitched consistent chirp or call. I thought it was coming from a large bird and looked towards where I heard the sound, down the hillside. Meanwhile, the smart animal with me, Koda, was looking up the hillside into the wooded bank. I turned around and there was an elk in the timber. Confused about the sound, it seemed to have been coming from the elk, although not at all like the bugling I’ve heard in the fall. It was a contact call I found out later, between that elk and her calf.

As we headed towards the top of the ridge, an old fire cut from the ’88 fires, now overgrown, was covered with Geraniums. Apparently these plants like disturbed areas.

Geraniums in disturbed area-old road cut

The ridgeline meadows were magnificent. Plenty of water and waterfalls along the way. So much water so high up. The old fires had provided great forage areas. High meadow and old burn

Koda smells out the grizzlies

On the way down, Koda stopped at the cliff edge. I thought he was looking at the view. My old dog used to relish the views from high ridges. But Koda is different. He’s still young and not prone to being pensive nor reflective yet.

I stepped to the edge and noticed two grizzlies below in the tarns. I don’t know if Koda saw them, but he certainly smelled them. I bet they smelled us too. At first I just saw a smallish black bear, and, from afar, tried to make out whether he was a grizzly or not. It was hard to see the hump or his face clearly enough. But then, following about 20′ behind, I saw a large brown grizzly. I assumed the black bear was her two year old cub. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my new camera with me so the shot is far away. But, that’s about the distance I like to see bears from.

Look close there's the mama grizzly. Black cub is in the upper left corner.

I glassed the bears for as long as the mosquitos would let me. They moved down the mountain, through the scree and downed timber, foraging as they went. What a privilege to see these magnificent animals. As always, I carry bear spray, but what I use the most is my mosquito spray!

: Limestone reef

: Thimbleberry

: Geraniums in disturbed area-old road cut

Filed under: Grizzlies, wildflowers | Tagged: Bears, Elk, Fire, Grizzly bears, Scat, wildflowers | 2 Comments »

More Grizzly news around town

Posted on May 14, 2009 by Leslie

The Wyoming Game and Fish is finally starting their bear trapping and collaring in my valley. They were supposed to start weeks ago, but the weather was too incremental, with several wet snowstorms, making it impossible to get far enough in to place the traps. I know this only because one of the students who worked on the elk project this winter was supposed to help with the trapping. Instead, because the work was delayed, he’s already off to Canada to work with bears there.

Our main dirt road travels directly west, ending about 7 miles from the Yellowstone boundary. But those seven miles are straight up, through the shale and scree of the Absaroka Mountains. If you can make it over the pass, you’ll end up in the Hoodoos, one of the most remote areas of Yellowstone.

Past the bear gate, the Absarokas are the eastern border of Yellowstone's wilds

The dirt road is maintained for about 25 miles from the Chief Joseph Highway. After that its strictly four-wheel condition, and mostly only ATV’s can cross some of the creeks at the upper ends.

Past the bear gate its rugged and wild country.

About 20 miles from the main highway, the road is closed till July 15. That’s the ‘Bear Gate’. People ask “Is that so the bears don’t get into the populated part of the valley?” But the gate is so cars don’t go up there and disturb the bears. The idea is that the Grizzlies can have their own space, undisturbed by cars, atv’s, people, when they emerge from their dens. Its a great idea, but of course the grizzlies do what they want and roam free, which means they are up the valley this direction if they please. But it does help to discourage weekenders and reduce human-bear conflicts.

Where do they go after July 15th?

Just 10 or 15 years ago, no one knew where Grizzlies went when they suddenly disappeared from the Park in early July. One day a private plane was flying over the Absarokas and saw bears, lots of them, congregating on slopes of scree above timberline. They were turning over rocks and boulders. Usually solitary, this was a strange site to see groups of bears together. It turned out they were looking for cut-worm moths and eating them at the rate of up to 40,000 a day. I once saw these moths in the Wind River Mountains. Thousands of them hanging under a rock crevice. It was a sight I won’t forget.

The moths provide the bears with much needed fat for the winter. At the end of my valley there is a glacier. Its not uncommon to find the bears in the talus slopes in August.

Moths at high altitudes attract bears in my valley in late summer

Today I drove up the valley for a short hike across the river to a Sulphur Lakebed.

Sulphur deposits around the lake. Lots of grizzly sign here

On the way, I stopped and chatted with some new young forest rangers. I asked about the collaring and if it had begun.

“They’re trapping at the bear gate. Just a bit beyond it.” They informed me.

I said I wished they’d let us residents know so we don’t hike there. They put carcasses out as bait and I don’t want to be nearby. “I wish they’d tell us”, the young rangers replied.

I suppose its good science to have them counted and collared. But I can’t help but feel “let the bears be bears.”

My hike today on the south side of the creek, quite a ways down from the bear gate, was full of fresh bear tracks and scat.

Front and back grizzly tracks. Notice the penny for size. See the straight line of the grass under the toes

On the way back home, I met a neighbor who told me there were fresh tracks behind his ranch and he’d led the G&F fellows up to where they could place their traps. There was a huge pile of scat on the road as well. Last week I ran into fresh tracks in two drainages on the north side of the road.

Bear scat with trash collected on my hike today.

My valley is where ‘problem bears’ are dropped off. They take them to the bear gate, or beyond, and let them go, with the hopes they’ll go into Yellowstone. A problem bear was dropped off just last week. I think we average about 4 or 5 problem bears a summer.

Several years ago, I had the privilege of riding around with Mark Bruscino for an afternoon of bear education up the North Fork. We didn’t see any bears, but I learned a lot talking with Mark. Mark is the bear specialist for Wyoming Game and Fish. He’s been working to restore the Grizzly population for over fifteen years. I asked about the problem bears.

“Tell people that the bears they really don’t have to worry about are the problem ones we drop off. Within days they ‘home’ back to where they came from.”

I think the relocation is an exercise in public relations, with a hope and a prayer that the bear learns something once he gets ‘home’.

The cool thing about hiking in grizzly country is the need to stay alert and aware. In California, I could hike, think, talk, and space out all at the same time. But hiking here, in the Greater Yellowstone area, I have to stay aware of my environment all the time. I listen, I slow down, I look around; and so I notice so much more. That doesn’t mean being tense. It means being conscious. I think that’s how we’re all meant to be living all the time. Taking the predators away, well, we’ve just forgotten.

Grizzly photo taken in Lamar Valley last sunday, mother's day

Filed under: Bears, Tracking | Tagged: Bears, Grizzly bears, Scat, Tracking | 2 Comments »

Grizzlies and the Edge of Eden

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Leslie

The last two days I hiked into several drainages where the hottest spots of the Yellowstone 1988 fires burned. After 20 years those soils are still so sterile that no new trees are growing. Hottest area of the '88 fires. Sterile ground, good forage This is an area of excellent forage though, with young sweet grass and sagebrush. Pulsatilla flowers just emerging now The snows are just beginning to melt and seasonal streams are running. With a forest of dead timber, standing and downed, the run off will be fast and furious. But its early still and the streams are gentle. A huge log jam up river, crazy every which way, testifies to last years’ fury.

In summer, without the advantage of shade, this place is too hot to hike in. In the fall, it is full of hunters hoping to kill bull elk migrating from the Park. There is a strangeness here, the dead trees stand as sentinels against the hoodoo-like rock carvings from ancient lava flows. Dead trees and lava hoo doos

This is grizzly country. They inhabit these draws, drainages that rise abruptly into high meadows; forests thick with Lodgepoles and Limber Pines. Spring is the best season here. The dead timber provides homes for insects that attract an abundance of birds. A woodpecker fights a flicker for territory, running him around and up a dead tree. Finally the flicker retreats. I find it curious this jockeying for dominance in an area of abundant food. There is a strangeness here

We saw grizzly tracks both days. On the second day we followed a grizzly trail, although we were backtracking him. The trail, not on the map, was a highly used game trail that went up the wide mouth of the drainage. At times the downed trees were so thick the trail disappeared. When the trail faded, we watched where the grizzly had chosen to go, figuring he’d have taken the path of least resistance. It led up the creek bed, the stream disappearing and reappearing in odd places. At one point, we crossed under a large downed tree trunk,. The tracks passed directly underneath so we looked for fur stuck to the nubby remains of the branches. There were a few hairs there. Claw marks on trees noted where a grizzly stopped to mark his territory. They were so high I couldn’t reach them. That’s a big bear. Grizzly scratches on pine tree
Another tree with grizzly marks
A coyote, running in our direction on the far side of the draw, suddenly smelled or heard us, and decided to turn back. A bloody leg dangled from his mouth. Koda noted the spot near the trail where the kill might be, but I called him back, fearing we’d find that grizzly there. On the way back down, we walked over to the site Koda found. A kill a few days old, the only remains was a small rib cage of a young elk or deer.

Its grizzly time right now. They won’t be going high to find their moth sites until sometime in July. Tonight I watched a powerful video about Charlie Russell called The Edge of Eden: Living with Grizzlies. Charlie grew up in Canada on an outfitter’s ranch. He was a cattle rancher for years and had to deal with grizzlies. He found that if he left out some winter kill cattle for the hungry grizzlies in the spring, they’d leave his cattle alone the rest of the year. He wanted to understand grizzlies better and went to Kamchatka, Russia where the local zoos kill orphan cubs. He began bringing these cubs back to the wilds, acting as their mother and protecting them for a year, sometimes two, then allowing them to roam free. It’s a marvelous video (that won several film festivals) and story about a man trying to help restore respect for the grizzly as well as pioneer new strategies for those living in grizzly country. To order the video, contact skyfilms@xplornet.com.

Filed under: Grizzlies | Tagged: Bears, Fire, Grizzly bears | 2 Comments »

Dancing Bear

Posted on March 29, 2009 by Leslie

I just had to post this. Too funny. I always love the warnings at the end.

Several years ago they were collaring wolves in the valley and I ran into a signage on the trail that read “”Caution. Live Traps. Gray wolves are being trapped in this area for radio collars. The traps are leg traps. If you see a wolf in a trap do not attempt to release it.”

Duh! Would I really go up to a live wolf in a trap and try to set it free?

Anyways, enjoy the video and kids “Don’t attempt to be a dance partner with a bear if you see one in the wild.”

Filed under: Black Bears | Tagged: Bears | Leave a comment »

When a good fire is a bad fire. Grizzlies and pine nuts

Posted on March 22, 2009 by Leslie

I’ve been working with a small chain saw on the trees around my upper cabin. Most of my 6 acres is on a plateau above the main cabin. That arcreage butts up to Shoshone National Forest. The original owner of my cabin, Doc Firor, deeded that area to Nature Conservancy who gave it to the forest service. That entire plateau extends for several miles and is prime elk habitat. Riddle Flat from across the river. Prime elk habitat

Almost all of the trees up there are Pinus flexilis or Limber Pine. Limber Pine is a white bark pine, which basically means it has bunches of 5 needles. The pine whose common name is Whitebark pine is Pinus albicaulis. That’s the one that everybody is talking about when they say Grizzlies are dependent on the whitebark pine crop. But Limber Pine seeds are just as tasty, and squirrels cache them just the same. Whitebark Limber on left; doug fir on right

Pinus albicaulis and Pinus flexilis are both considered keystone species–that is, without them, an ecosystem can just cascade apart. And both of them are being infected with an imported fungus that is the cause of white pine blister rust. This fungus can kill a tree, and its killing massive amounts of Whitebark Pines in the Pacific Northwest. The Rockies have not been quite as vulnerable because its so much drier here. But with global warming, and the pine beetles, trees that are weakened by the fungus succumb quickly. My one room upper cabin. No water. No plumbing. Yes heat!

I was trying to find out if grizzs will eat Limber Pine nuts as well. That was important to me, because many of my trees have the rust. And I’m trying to find out how to identify correctly the rust, as well as how to treat the trees. Avalanche Peak, Yellowstone. Dead whitebark pines

I went to the National Forest administrative offices last week in Cody. They are all so helpful and nice there. One of the supervisors lent me a new phamphlet and told me there’s a pheromone for the beetles, but nothing for the rust. She said its awfully hard to determine the difference on the tree.

What I really want is a source of blister rust-free seedlings to underplant. The bad news is that whitebarks take 40-50 years to begin to cone. But I can wait. The worse news is that if you can even find a source of seedlings, expect 50% mortality in the first few years. In fact, the booklet has a really complicated formula to determine how many seedlings you need, based on existing site infections and super-overplanting for death. The thing I think would be smart would be to do successive planting over a period of 5-7 years. And since I have a test plot that could be a model for the rest of the nearby forest, I’d love it if the Forest Service used me for testing. Robin at the Ag department told me they do test plots on private land often.

Meanwhile, I’m going on what’s said on the internet and in this phamphlet. I’ve been limbing up by hand and by machine up to 6-8′ from the ground all of my trees (this is a several year project!), starting with around my upper cabin. Since the trees are older, most of the bottom limbs are dead anyways. But limbing up will provide air circulation and light, both will help the trees health. Before pruning; cabin is in the background

Another interesting thing about blister rust is the Ribes (Gooseberry) connection. When the rust first came to this continent, in the 1930’s, they found that Ribes was a host. So the government in their wisdom, decided to eliminate all the Ribes in the West. But there are so many species of Gooseberry native to the West, over 150 in North America. And Ribes is an important food for wildlife. You could never eradicate all the Ribes, and that’s just what they found.

As I was doing all my pruning, sure enough, many many trees have Ribes growing right on top of the trunk. Besides being a host for a nasty disease, I did have to wonder about other types of symbiotic relations between the two, for example nutrient exchange. I haven’t learned about that yet.

Whitebark pines, including my Limber Pine, are an amazing tree. Unlike most pines, they are not wind pollinated, but dependent upon the Clark’s Nutcracker for dispersal. Squirrels too cache the seeds but not as far. They grow on thin soils, at high altitudes, and usually are the first to colonize in disturbed sites, such as fires and landslides. Grizzlies depend on their nutritious content to fatten them up for winter, or satisfy them in the early spring. Grizzlies can’t climb the trees to get the seed. Instead, they are experts at finding squirrel caches and robbing them. When I asked about my Limber Pines, a forester said that grizzlies eat their seeds, but they are rougher so they aren’t number one on the menu. Obviously my plot as well as the forest next to me is just as important for the grizzly recovery.

The benefits of fire in this care are so mixed. Whitebarks are fire-dependent. Where fires have been suppressed, more shade tolerant conifers replace them and there is little opportunity for regeneration. So they like that clear open ground. But their cones don’t open with heat. The seeds are animal dispersed, so there needs to be stands for their new growth, which means they like low- and moderate-intensity fires. That’s hard to have in areas with so much beetle kill and fire suppression like my valley. To add fuel to the fire so to speak, scorch or fire damage on trees that would otherwise live, increases their susceptibility to beetle-kill. After pruning. Cabin is now visible. Deer will love this!

Regardless, I’m thinning away, hoping for more air circulation, light, and in addition all that thinning imitates a ground fire. Many of the natives I would plant in California requires a good chopping back to the ground every so often to mimic fire. That’s what I’m doing for now.