Sue Lani Madsen: Nobody asked the grizzly bears

When the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made their final decision on translocating grizzly bears to the North Cascades, important voices weren’t meaningfully consulted. Not just human voices, but the grizzly bears.

Feeling ignored wasn’t surprising to the people living in and around the North Cascades. Rural residents are used to policies developed in Olympia and Washington, D.C., being imposed over their objections.

Last November, 600 people showed up to a public meeting in Okanogan County, mostly in opposition. As one resident said, “I don’t know what good these meetings do because we keep on going to meetings and meetings, and nothing ever goes our way,” according to a KUOW/Northwest News Network report.

But why not look at this from the bears’ point of view, as the Capital Press wrote in a May 2 editorial? Happy Canadian grizzly bears are settled into their own territories in British Columbia. They know where and when is the best time to harvest the huckleberries, dig up roots, or whack a few rabbits. Bet they have favorite spots to nap on a summer afternoon and den up in the winter, eh.

Then helpful government folks come along in a helicopter shooting tranquilizer darts, and the grizzlies wake up hundreds of miles away with hangovers.

Now they are confused grizzly bears transplanted into strange territory, inevitably bumping into disgruntled people. Both species can blame the federal government. Or at least the humans will; the bears are just pawns trying to figure out where and what to eat.

Grizzly bears are opportunistic omnivores. It’s their survival strength and their social weakness. They adapt to what’s readily available, whether that’s a coop full of chickens, a calf bawling for its mother, or salmon in a stream,

Human food sources are always a problem in bear country, but in the North Cascades so are the salmon. Former Spokane resident Steve Busch, who recently transplanted to Idaho, said he has read the 416-page environmental impact statement. One of the things he could not find was any mention of salmon poisoning disease. “WSU researchers did not find ANY population of bears that might be able to tolerate the unique strain of parasitic bacteria that is contained in salmon south of the Canadian border.”

Busch said the hope is “that translocated bears will not eat salmon, which is why only interior B.C. bears and Idaho/Montana bears will be translocated as they are used to eating grubs, other wildlife, berries and carrion. Researchers also hope the bears will not follow rivers into populated Western Washington neighborhoods as they learn to associate the west slope rivers with food, just like they do along the B.C. and Alaska coasts.”

According to an article in the Journal of Wildlife Management referenced by the WSU research, “Wildlife restoration programs depend on having animals that have evolved to handle the constraints, including disease, posed by the new environment.”

Canadian grizzly bears have started moving farther south into the North Cascades of Washington. But they’re a self-selected bunch of migrants, and that may mean they’re adapting to the change in diet gradually.

Hikers and backpackers already know they need to be bear aware. Or at least the experienced humans do. As a young college student, Spokane landscape architect Ken VanVoorhis had a grizzly bear encounter in Glacier National Park while day hiking that left him with 40 stitches and a good story. “It was like those jokes where you don’t have to outrun the bear, you have to outrun the other guy,” VanVoorhis joked when telling the story.

Fortunately, the “other guy” turned back and helped drive the bear off. VanVoorhis said in hindsight there were more precautions they could have taken. “I still feel strongly as a hiker that we were in their territory and we needed to be conscientious. Rangers determined this wasn’t a problem bear, it was an accidental encounter. The bears need a place to be. Private land is different, but if it’s public land they have to be there.”

It’s the private land that concerns people like Rachel McClure with the Okanogan County Cattlemen’s Association. Bears don’t read government maps. She spoke for her neighbors when she said, “We’ll take the ones that come. Don’t damn bring them in a trailer,” according to Northwest News Network reports on the Okanogan County meeting.

Fortunately, the final decision lists grizzly bears as an experimental population instead of an endangered species, giving federal agencies more options for dealing with troublesome bears that develop bad habits. And local residents will have to develop new habits. Perhaps the advice of Meriwether Lewis recorded in the journals of the Journey of Discovery on June 28, 1805, will be useful. Lewis reported the grizzly bears “have become so troublesome to us that I do not think it prudent to send one man alone on an errand of any kind, particularly where he has to pass through the brush … they come close around our camp every night but have never yet ventured to attack us and our dog gives us timely notice of their visits, he keeps constantly patrolling all night. I have made the men sleep with their arms by them as usual for fear of accidents.”

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com.