Making human use predictable and preventing bears from getting human food – including fish from anglers – should be top priorities along the Chilkoot River corridor, a National Park Service biologist told a crowd at last week’s second annual Celebration of Bears festival.
Tania Lewis, a wildlife biologist at Glacier Bay National Park, said to address bear conflicts at the park’s Bartlett River area, the agency required fishermen to keep food, including caught fish, within six feet of reach. It also prohibited cleaning fish and leaving carcasses at the river.
At a bear-viewing area in Katmai National Park, anglers are permitted to catch one fish and must immediately take it to a freezer whole, she said.
At viewing areas where wild bears become habituated to the presence of people, monitoring or enforcement are essential for keeping human behavior consistent and preventing bears from becoming food-conditioned, Lewis said.
Lewis’ talk focused mainly on bears in Glacier Bay, where they’re relatively recent arrivals. The bay was glaciated to Icy Strait 250 years ago. Brown bears in the park live on soapberries, rye grass, willow leaves and nesting bird eggs. Protein sources include mussels and small fish scavenged from under rocks, she said.
There are three genetically distinct populations of brown bears in the park: a population descended from a small, original colonizing group, and others descended from Yakutat-area bears and ones from the Chilkat area, she said.
Brown bears have been displacing black bears in the park. Black bears reside in the park’s wooded areas, whereas brown bears can be found in all areas of the park, she said.
The effects of climate change on bears aren’t certain, but appear mixed, Lewis said. Warmer ocean temperatures could decrease salmon populations and warmer temperatures might reduce some alpine habitat, but food in the form of berries and flowers would increase and receding glaciers could increase habitat and genetic mixing.
Bigger threats to bears in Alaska include hunting, illegal kills and kills in defense of life and property, she said.
Strategic habitat loss also could affect localized populations, she said, showing a slide of the Haines townsite that shows the town is a “pinch point” in the Chilkat peninsula. If the area became dense with houses, that could largely cut off access to the peninsula for bears.
Sponsored by the Haines-based Alaska Chilkoot Bear Foundation, the weekend’s event included talks, children’s activities, films and demonstrations. About 100 people attended Friday’s activities, which included Lewis’ talk.
Foundation officials this week expressed satisfaction with the event but said they might look to hold some festival programs near the Chilkoot River. “A good portion of our audience is out there. We’ve discussed having part of our programs there, but we have to clear that with parks,” said Pam Randles, the group’s executive director.
Board member Dan Egolf said the group will meet in coming weeks to discuss next year’s event.
Problems persist at Chilkoot, he said. He picked up three discarded diapers there last week and spoke to a fisherman holding a fish who said he’d pitch it to a bear if approached by one.
The angler just didn’t know the proper thing to do, Egolf said. Most visitors want to do the right thing, but don’t know what that is, he said. “The most important thing of all is getting that bear monitor.”
Egolf expressed little hope the State of Alaska would come up with a good solution to issues there and said funding might have to come locally. “Obviously (the state park) budget has been cut and it will be cut again. I think it’s time we just try to figure it out on this end.”