Biologist talks the evolution of bear management

Tim Manley, retired Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist and bear specialist, pulled up a National Geographic video of the Craighead brothers from their 1950s-70s Yellowstone grizzly project.

“We learned a lot about what to do and what not to do based on what they did,” Manley explained during his Wilderness Speaker Series presentation hosted by Wild Montana March 20.

The Craigheads had tranquilized an adult male grizzly, and as they worked to take his measurements and complete a mold of his paw, he was twitching on the ground. 

“Concerned as much for the bear’s safety as his own,  John [Craighead] decides against a second dose,” the narrator says. “The team will have to complete the work as quickly as possible. No one can predict what will happen when the powerful 500-pound male regains use of his limbs.”

Working until the last second, the team barely completes the mold when the bear starts to move around, not very happy with his captors. One man holds down the bear’s head and another pops an ear tag in, the bear thrashes his head and growls. They run back to an old four-door sedan-style car as the bear comes to and takes out his anger on their left behind equipment, then takes aim at their vehicle, hopping on the hood and chasing them off.

 “Wowee,” one of the car’s occupants exclaims. 

“That’s what we try to avoid,” Manley concluded the video, to his audience’s laughter. 

Manley estimated he captured 600 grizzlies in his 37-year career. Capture has become has become safer for bears and people over the years, whether for research or management.

Traditionally, leg-hold snares were used early on. Once the bear’s leg was caught with quarter-inch airline cable, workers still had to figure out exactly how far it could reach as they attempted to tranquilize it, either with a dart gun or jabstick. The practice was found to be hard on the bears, and has been moved away from more and more. 

The culvert trap was developed, an eight-foot metal tube with a trap door baited with roadkill deer. Over the years, they have been made safer for bears by reducing features they could injure themselves on if they fight the trap and by laying a bed of straw to cushion the bottom. Family traps, larger, with a door at either end, allow biologists to capture a mother in one side and her cubs in the other to make sure they stay together. The traps can be moved by trailer or helicopter. 

Release has also become safer. In 1987, game warden Lou Kis was releasing an adult male grizzly near the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, standing on top of the culvert trap to let it open from the back of his truck. On release, the grizzly turned and snagged Kis, tipping the trap, which was not secured to the truck bed. Kis was injured and the bear shot. 

Since then, Ryan Alter developed the first automatic culvert trap for Fish Wildlife and Parks in partnership with Glacier National Park. It was hooked up to a satellite dish, so that when the trap was triggered, it sent an email to an operator. From their home or office, the operator could then turn on a camera in the cage and view its contents, opening the door if a black bear or stray dog had accidentally been caught. 

“It really came in handy the night it caught a skunk,” Manley said. 

Hard releases, with loud noises such as barking Karelian bear dogs, yelling, horns, cracker shells, and rubber bullets and beanbag rounds help ensure bears take off when biologists have to remain nearby for release. Soft releases, where the gate is simply opened and bears allowed to leave on their own, are also used. 

“All bears are individuals, they get all different kinds of releases,” Manley said. 

The drugs used in sedation are more predictable now as well, and the bear’s health more thoroughly monitored. Supplemental oxygen, a pulse oximeter, ointment to moisten the corneas and body temperature monitoring keep the bears healthy during sedation. Biologists calculate body mass index for fat level, draw blood for DNA, check teeth for age – pulling the premolar allows them to count its rings like a tree, check females for lactation, and pull hair for DNA to ID individuals. Montana FWP began using microchips in 1996 rather than ear tags to avoid tearing or infection. A cotton spacer on the bears’ collars ensures it will fall off eventually, even if the release mechanism fails. 

Old tracking collars used VHF radio, which required a receiver antennae and only allowed one-way communication. GPS collars were developed and allow data to be stored on the collar with lots of precise information throughout the day. Operators can control how frequently location is recorded.

In 2010, a young female grizzly was captured near Lakeside and released near Blacktail. In 2011, her collar was found dropped on the other side of Flathead Lake. GPS data showed she swam across Flathead Lake – to Wild Horse Island, south to King’s Point, to Bird Island, then to the  east side of lake in a total of  five days.

 “Without the GPS collar, we wouldn’t have had any idea how she had got from the west side of Flathead Lake over to the east side,” Manley said. 

Current collars can download data to an off-site computer, can be triggered to drop off, and have geofence capacity. This means that in high-conflict areas, more data can be recorded on bears’ movement through that location. GPS also allows biologists to locate illegally killed bears.

With the South Fork Grizzly Project in the early ‘80s, Manley’s team worked to map 9 million acres of Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem bear habitat. Ground and aerial tracking with radio collars was becoming more available, and after figuring out where the bears were hanging out, the team was able to work with satellite imagery to determine habitat based on brightness, greenness, and wetness comparing what they found the bears to prefer. 

Manley flew over in a fixed-wing plane twice a week to locate bears, but due to plane’s inability to hover close to the ground, only about 30% of bears were successfully identified from the air. Now, with the help of Two Bear Air’s helicopters, equipped with a high-resolution camera system and infrared capabilities, aerial location has become much more effective. 

Trail cameras are also proving their worth.

Manley invented one of the first trail cams made of an Olympus 35 mm film camera with a 36-exposure roll, hooked up to a burglar alarm he got from RadioShack inside a 50 caliber ammo can.

Today, digital cameras triggered by infrared beams allow organizations and individuals to monitor bear activity. DNA, originally collected in the late ‘90s through U.S. Geological Survey scientist Kate Kendall’s FWP project for population estimates, is now being used to build family trees and identify bears in conflict sites. 

To top it all off, human-bear conflict prevention has become a much larger priority over the years. Bear resistant containers –Whisper, a bear caught by Manley near Whitefish about 20 years ago and now residing at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center outside of Yellowstone is one of their best testers --  as well as bear smart programs and city waste disposal projects all help to keep bears wild and people safe. 

The last of the Wilderness Speaker series will feature artists from the Artist Wilderness Connection program, hosted by the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation. It takes place Wednesday, April 17 at 7 p.m. at Flathead Valley Community College, Art and Technology Building room 139.