Pepper spray is more effective during encounters with bears than guns, in part because most people aren’t ready to use a gun when a bear approaches, Shannon Donahue of the Great Bear Foundation said during the first Celebration of Bears Friday at Harriett Hall.
Donahue, who previously worked as a bear monitor along the Chilkoot River, and Anthony Crupi, a Department of Fish and Game bear biologist who has studied Chilkoot bears for more than a decade, were among presenters at the two-day event.
Donahue said pepper spray is 90 percent effective against approaching bears, and that people using guns are more than twice as likely to get injured as people using spray.
Visitors along the Chilkoot River should understand cues, including that yawning can be a sign of stress for bears as well as an indication of fatigue. Visitors to the Chilkoot falsely feel secure on the Lutak bridge and often block access to bears, she said.
A “bear-crossing zone” at Chilkoot weir – intended to clear an area for bear passage between the forest and the river – has become a tunnel of photographers, who line up there to get their shots, she said. “It should be renamed a bear safety zone.”
Donahue’s presentation included slides of bear-viewing areas elsewhere in Alaska. She said construction of bear-viewing platforms along the Chilkoot won’t necessarily reduce run-ins between bears and people at Chilkoot. Keeping bears and people in their respective spaces will require enforcement and vigilance by bear monitors or others, she said.
Experience from other bear-viewing areas in the state shows that areas with tight controls – and consistent human behavior – afford the best viewing because bears that feel secure draw closer, she said.
Donahue said anglers at the Kenai Peninsula’s Russian River – “a crowded version of the Chilkoot” – are required to keep personal belongings within three feet of themselves. “Bears can co-exist with people at Chilkoot, but we need to come up with a plan and follow it. People need to be educated about what the rules are and for those rules to be enforced.”
Crupi reported on collared Chilkoot bears he’s tracked since 2008.
He said the bears travel four miles a day in August, when 97 percent of their activity is within 500 feet of Chilkoot River, feeding on pink salmon. Later in the fall, they’ll also eat spawned-out chum carcasses in the shallows of the river. They don’t eat coho salmon, which typically run too fast and deep to be preyed upon, Crupi said.
In October and November, bears will eat spawned-out fish, including from the river flowing into Chilkoot Lake. On average, the bears enter dens Nov. 29 at an elevation of 2,800 feet. While the bears can catch 15 pinks an hour along Chilkoot River in August, grasses make up a big part of their diet for much of the year. In springtime, plant shoots and sedges contain protein, Crupi said. They also eat devil’s club berries, strawberries, blueberries, ground cone, and currants, he said.