What was once commonly called the “bear monitoring” program is being revived along the Chilkoot Corridor in Haines. The new Alaska Department of Fish and Game hire is meant to keep bears, and people, safer. 

Fish and Game has hired a technician to monitor the behavior of bears and people where they collide the most in Haines: the Chilkoot River Fish Weir, which attracts bears and the tourists that watch them.

The position is called the Chilkoot River Corridor Human Bear Education position. Approximately 300 brown bears live in Game Management Unit 1D, which includes Haines and Skagway.

Hannah Manninen is a state biologist based out of Juneau. She said the new position has been filled and is in the process of starting.

“It is a position that has a variety of duties,” she said. “So they will be doing things like discussing bear awareness with visitors that come into the Chilkoot River Corridor. They also will be talking with anglers. They’ll be talking with people about camping in bear country, how to store human food and secure angler trash.”

Manninen said the technician will be conducting walk-throughs and collecting data. What they won’t do is enforcement. 

“They are not able to actively enforce things,” she said. “They can inform people, they can help educate people. But they don’t actually have that enforcement authority. But they are going to have a strong working relationship with the state trooper that’s on the ground up there, the wildlife trooper that’s up there, and then also the park ranger that is up there.”

Manninen has been a part of the Chilkoot Corridor Working Group, which pressed for the new hire. The original Chilkoot Corridor Group started 26 years ago. But that group fell apart during the pandemic.

While the working group had hoped for two technicians, there was funding for only one. The position is just for this season and is being described as a pilot program. 

The new hire comes with a reframe.

“We are trying to get away from calling it a bear monitor, because they’re not only out there monitoring the bears,” Manninen said. “Right? This is the bears’ natural habitat … Really it’s about educating people, and what we’re doing, and what people need to actively be doing to safely recreate around bears.”

Researchers estimate that about 20% of the brown bear population in Haines and Skagway was killed through legal hunting, shot in defense of life or property or hit by cars in 2020.