Some brown bears in Southeast won’t ever go near a salmon stream, but prefer instead to live at higher altitudes, subsisting on ground squirrels and plants, Fish and Game information officer Riley Woodford told a crowd Friday at the American Bald Eagle Festival.
“They just don’t want the hassle,” Woodford said, reflecting a variability in the personalities of bears that doesn’t always match our notions about them.
Also, large, male brown bears don’t particularly like people, which creates feeding opportunities for other bears during the day and makes it less likely wildlife watchers will get a view of them, Woodford said.
They’re also not particularly territorial about their feeding grounds, he said. “They have personal space issues, but not toward their feeding territory.”
Southeast Alaska has some of the highest densities of brown and black bears in the world, making the region something of a laboratory for studying their behavior, Woodford said.
Woodford was one of several presenters at the festival, which drew 262 registered visitors, including 43 students from University of Alaska-Southeast.
Cheryl McRoberts, director of operations at the American Bald Eagle Foundation, said the event was a “huge success,” punctuated well by snows that came during the night and clearing afternoons that made for good eagle viewing.
Evening events were well-attended with about 100 on hand for a Friday night concert and 146 participants at Saturday’s banquet-auction, which raised $11,842 for the foundation.
Mandy Maggs of Teslin, Y.T., came to Haines six weeks ago on vacation and stumbled on an open house at the foundation. She came back for the festival, in part, because she’s hoping to start an avian hospital in the territory and was looking forward to volunteering on some medical treatment for birds.
She was able to sit in on a partial amputation of an owl’s wing by veterinarian and festival presenter Dr. Scott Ford, as well as take in talks by presenters. “I’ve learned a lot. It’s a lot of information to take in,” she said. “The academic side of it was bang-on.”
Besides receiving a high level of training, Maggs said she enjoyed the range of presentations, mentioning a wild-animal presentation by wildlife park operator Steve Kroschel as a favorite. Kroschel brought a lynx, mink, marten and porcupine to a festival presentation.
Veterinary student Paula Reinersman of Baton Rouge, La., made the trip to Haines as part of her training under Dr. Ford. She helped with raptor physical exams, including filing down the beaks of eagles, replacing damaged feathers and implanting birds with microchips, a requirement for transport into Canada.
She also assisted with eagle counts in the bald eagle preserve during her two-week stay. “I love it here. I don’t want to go back to school. If I could find a way to get my dogs and cats here and pay off my student loans, I wouldn’t go back.”
Operations director McRoberts said attendance was down about 10 people from last year, probably due to a scheduling conflict with a whale festival in Sitka, that was recently moved to the eagle festival weekend. “A lot of people wanted to go to both (festivals).”
McRoberts said she would speak to Sitka festival organizers and perhaps push the local festival back one week, which would better coincide with cold weather that tends to concentrate the birds. “We’ll talk to them next year about coordinating so people can go from one to the other.”