The Yellowstone bear has been trapped eight times since 1990, yielding important clues on the species and shedding light on its savviness and will to survive.
By Jeff Obrecht
Special to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Wildlife agencies focus on populations — the sum of the members. But in managing a species, sometimes an individual animal stands out in making a significant contribution to the program.
Grizzly Bear 179 is one such story.
To look at her, she's a rather typical grizzly sow — deep brown fur, about 300 pounds and 24 years old. Biologists have had plenty of opportunities to get to know her physical characteristics — they've trapped her eight times in 22 years.
And, as a result, she's provided an important journal of information for managing and recovering the species, including habitat and highway insights from thousands of locations transmitted by her radio collars, and diet and genetic information from her blood and hair samples.
Dan Bjornlie, large carnivore biologist for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, and Dan Thompson, large carnivore section supervisor, handled her last trapping: June 2012 in the Blackrock area east of Grand Teton National Park.
She wasn't in trouble; it was a research trapping operation, as all her captures have been since 1990.
"It is always good to have 179 in a research trap and see she's still in the population," Bjornlie said. "She's contributed so much data to grizzly bear recovery, not to mention raising at least 11 cubs to independence, too."
Grizzly Bear 179's story started in August 1990.
The Yellowstone National Park grizzly bear biologist and Montana wildlife officials responded to a grizzly sow and a pair of yearling cubs raiding an apple orchard and chicken coop near Gardiner, Mont. The sow was Grizzly Bear 79, well known to the park community and residents of the upper Yellowstone River valley for leaving Yellowstone every fall to forage on apples in the valley. She was trapped first and taken by helicopter to the remote Thorofare area in the southeast corner of the park.
Her two female yearling cubs were tagged 182 and 179 and driven to the Glade Creek area off the northwest corner of Grand Teton National Park. It was hoped separating the yearlings from their troublesome mother would help keep the youngsters from going down the same path. That decision was validated: In just a few weeks, Grizzly Bear 79 was back in the Gardiner area.
Grizzly Bear 182 roamed a fair distance northwest and was trapped on the western shore of Yellowstone Lake in July 1994. She dropped her collar near Heart Lake in Yellowstone in July 1996 and has not been heard from since.
On the other hand, Grizzly Bear 179 has kept in regular touch with bear researchers. She wandered a little southeast and for her first winter denned alone on the west side of Jackson Lake. In 1991, northern Grand Teton National Park was her home, and the next year she moved east to the Buffalo Fork area, which has basically been her home territory since.
She's worn a radio collar over the course of 13 of her 24 years. Her last collar fell off late last September near Terrace Mountain. That was no accident: A firecracker-like charge is programmed to explode and unhinge the collar. When that doesn't work, a fabric hinge deteriorates in time and allows the collar to drop.
All collars emit a radio signal for tracking. Spring, summer and fall flights check on the whereabouts of collared grizzly bears about every two weeks. Many collars these days have global positioning system units, and the bear's movements are read after the collar is retrieved. A few recently trapped bears have newer GPS collars that Bjornlie and associates can monitor right from their office computers.
Grizzly Bear 179 is obviously savvy to survive 24 years, but she's not too trap-savvy. She was enticed with road-killed big game into a culvert trap five times and a leg-hold snare thrice. Inconvenient for her, but very beneficial for the body of work to recover the species.
When first trapped, all bears swap a small, vestigial pre-molar, located right behind the canine tooth, for plastic ear tags. A laboratory reads the tooth, as one would the rings of a tree, and bear team members then have a pretty accurate take on the animal's age. Hair, blood or a little piece of ear tissue dislodged from the tagging procedure starts a DNA database.
In that and all subsequent trappings — which for Grizzly Bear 179 were two captures in 1995 and one each year in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2007 and 2012 — the bear is tranquilized by a dart from a special pistol or rifle aiming at a lean-muscle area, such as the front shoulder, as fatty areas can disrupt the transmission of the drug.
Whether it's the first or eighth trapping, all bears donate blood and hair samples, get weighed, and have their height and body fat measured. The samples provide a wealth of insights into DNA, parentage, diet and disease.
After her chicken transgression as a yearling, Grizzly Bear 179 has had only one minor discipline problem.
In August 2002, a Buffalo Fork dude ranch had alfalfa pellets stacked high in a horse trailer. Grizzly Bear 179 figured out how to pull bags through the upper slots for herself and three yearling cubs. As Bjornlie and Brian DeBolt, bear management officer, erected an electric fence around the trailer, they were amused to spy 179 spying at them from nearby timber. No one witnessed the bears testing the hot fence, but it must have worked because the foursome moved on and resumed more natural foraging.
Grizzly Bear 179 was part of the species' expansion east towards Togwotee Pass in the early '90s. That put her in an area of more frequent research trapping as the program studied how bears were using the habitat.
Additional developments arose requiring more data on how the bears responded to these. Cattle grazing allotments were removed from the area, for example, and there was the Togwotee Pass highway construction as well as the decline of whitebark pine. Grizzly Bear 179 helped researchers better understand all these points.
Grizzly Bear 179 emerged from the den in mid-April 1996 with three cubs, her first documented offspring.
That Nov. 8, her mother, Grizzly Bear 79, was killed by an elk-hunting guide fewer than three miles north of where she and Grizzly Bear 179 were trapped in 1990. In her history of foraging in the valley, Grizzly Bear 79 had not displayed aggression towards people. The guide's hunter must have accidently got between her and her cubs — the sow inflicted bites down to the bone on the hunter's face and body. The incident was investigated and judged to be self-defense. Grizzly Bear 79 lived to be 22 years old and had produced at least 10 cubs.
Bears are added, and bears are subtracted. That's all part of the precise accounting required in the recovery effort.
The bear count began in 1975 when the grizzly was listed as threatened and Grizzly Bear 1 was tagged in the Crandall Creek area northwest of Cody.
Grizzly Bear 79 was numbered in 1981, Grizzly Bear 179 in 1990, Grizzly Bear 300 in 1997 and the latest collar, 771, was tagged on an adult male just north of Cody in October 2013.
Many of these numbers may be heard when grizzly bear biologists and managers toast the recovery of the Greater Yellowstone grizzly population. Grizzly Bear 179 won't be there, but she will certainly be mentioned and should be deservedly toasted.
"We worked hard to carefully research and monitor the population, provide adequate habitat protections, and reduce conflicts and mortalities; bears like 179 did the rest," Bjornlie said.
JEFF OBRECHT is contributing editor to Wyoming Wildlife magazine. This article first appeared in Wyoming Wildlife magazine's January 2014 issue.
