If you’ve lived in Haines for some time, you’ve probably heard of glacier bears — the rare black bear with gray or blue fur that has long been Haines School’s mascot.
But you probably don’t know much about them — because few, if any, people do.
Tania Lewis, a wildlife biologist at Glacier Bay National Park who gave a presentation last month as part of an online U.S. Forest Service lecture series, is trying to change that.
“When I started doing bear research in Glacier Bay, I learned that we have this very rare color morph of black bear known as glacier bears. We didn’t know anything about them. Nothing. There was no idea of how many, where they were, what kind of genetics they had,” Lewis told the CVN.
But in recent years, Lewis’ research has revealed insights about the almost-mythic animals, which live only in northern Southeast Alaska and just across the border in British Columbia.
Why are glacier bears gray (or blue or even white)? Where exactly do they live? And just how many are out there? Those questions have been top-of-mind for Lewis.
In 2020, Lewis co-authored the first ever peer-reviewed paper about glacier bears. The study focused on geographic separation of black (and glacier) bear populations in Southeast Alaska and a small sliver of the Yukon.
Of 10 distinct black bear populations from Yakutat to Kupreanof Island, Lewis and fellow researchers found that only four contained glacier bears—Haines and Skagway, Juneau, Yakutat and west Glacier Bay.
Lewis said on average one glacier bear is harvested every other year between Juneau and Haines, and one to four are harvested annually near Yakutat. Glacier bears accounted for just 0.4% of the Southeast black bear harvest between 1990 and 2018, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game data.
Given the bears’ rarity, they historically have been considered by some to be a prized hunt. In 1952, the New York Times ran an article with the headline “Glacier Bear, Bruin of the Far North, Is a Most Unusual Trophy.” A New York hunter, according to the report, had shot “what is, unquestionably, the most unusual trophy of the past fifty years, a glacier bear.”
That bear was taken near Yakutat. Since 1952, according to data shared by Lewis and reports taken by the CVN, far fewer have been harvested in Haines than west of Glacier Bay.
There’s a mounted glacier bear in the Haines School lobby but it’s small and easy to miss. There’s another one at the American Bald Eagle Foundation, harvested by longtime local hunter John Katzeek more than a decade ago. Katzeek said he’s seen multiple black bears with light fur over the years. (In keeping with his policy not to publicize where he hunts, Katzeek declined to say where he harvested the bear that’s now at the Eagle Foundation.)
It’s unclear when Haines School’s mascot became the glacier bear and whether it was ever something else. Bill Thomas, who started at the school in 1953 and graduated in 1965, said the mascot has been the glacier bear for as long as he can remember, although school colors used to be blue and gold.
While Lewis said more research needs to be done to determine exactly what causes the glacier bear color variation, one theory is that gray fur helps the bears camouflage with ice and rocks. It could be a “selective advantage,” meaning any given black bear with gray fur living in glacier country would have a better chance of survival than any given black bear with dark fur.
All four black bear populations with glacier bears identified by the scientists were found in areas with icefields. One odd and conspicuous gap in the range was the less-glaciated peninsula between Glacier Bay and Lynn Canal.
“It sure does seem like (glacier bears) are associated with ice and rocky areas at this point,” Lewis said, although the study didn’t definitively prove an association between the bears’ habitat and the prevalence of glaciers.
For a long time, scientists held a similar theory about a different variation of black bears—the white-colored Kermode or “spirit” bears, found on islands in British Columbia. The theory was that those bears developed their whiteness during the last Ice Age as a form of camouflage with ice, Lewis said.
Then a study came out that showed the light fur helped bears blend in with the sky, evading the sight of salmon: Lighter bears caught more fish than their darker counterparts. No equivalent study has been done on glacier bears and camouflage, so the question remains about why glacier bears are gray.
If ice provides a selective advantage for glacier bears, Lewis said a concern is that climate change could threaten their survival. As glaciers recede, they would have less of an advantage.
Receding glaciers also, though, could expand bear habitat. That would be good for the general black bear population but potentially bad for glacier bears.
Lewis’ study found that icefields and fjords created barriers between bear populations. Absence of glaciers could link populations, and that could lead to a genetic “swamping” effect—meaning the gene (or set of genes) that causes the gray coloration could be diluted by the broader black bear gene pool.
At this point, that’s just educated speculation. Researchers haven’t identified a genetic basis for the glacier-bear trait, but the thought is that it could be recessive, as is the case with the Kermode bear. In other words, even dark-colored bears could carry the gene, or genes, that causes the gray coloration and passes it down to offspring. Photographic evidence shows that a dark-colored mama bear can have glacier cubs.
Lewis said researchers are doing further analysis of the hundreds of samples that she studied in an attempt to locate a genetic basis for the gray or blue color. But the explanation could prove to be quite complicated, Lewis said. It’s not always as simple as gene X causes trait Y.
Still, if scientists can identify a genetic basis, they could figure out what proportion of black bears have the glacier-bear gene and would gain a sense of just how rare the animals are.
“That would really help target conservation,” Lewis said. “The lack of knowledge about these animals has made it really difficult to manage or predict the future survival of glacier bears.”
Glacier bears are known to some Tlingit as S’éek Noon — “the bear that disappears.”
Rod Hinson, who’s hunted bears near Haines for 17 years, said he’s never seen a glacier bear. “They’re really elusive,” he said.
Hinson said he’s not sure what he would do if he saw one on a hunt. “Some things you ought not shoot for whatever reason (like rarity),” he said. A glacier bear might be one of those animals, Hinson said. “It leaves you in a quandary.”