Brooks Camp Field Report, July 2021: Lean Times in Valhalla (along with micro-report: Bear 747: When the Man Comes Around)

A triptych of photos from the falls platform one evening this July:

In my years at Brooks I have never seen this many bears at one time.

Friends,

With another record-breaking sockeye salmon run for Bristol Bay (from which the Brooks River run comes) and with another record-breaking year for bear numbers on the river, anyone would be justified in thinking that it was fat times for bears and bear viewers alike this July.  However, things are not always so simple, and that was the case this month.  I’m going to dwell on this theme for a while since I think it says some important things about the lives of bears, the ecology of the river, and life at Brooks Camp.

The first point I want to touch on will be familiar to some of you, but since it comes as a major surprise to many visitors and yet is relatively easy to explain, I want to tackle it first.  For many viewers who flew in just for the day, this July was a disappointing time to see bears even after the salmon showed up.  It was not uncommon for people to arrive for their day visit (this was not such an issue for people who stayed for multiple days at the lodge or campground), wait one to three hours to get on the falls platform and yet see only one or two—or no—bears at the falls.  Once the day-visitors' time on the falls platform was up they often didn’t have enough left on their schedule to wait for a second round.  Unfortunately there were relatively few bears down by the bridge for most of July (more on that later) so some visitors left Brooks having seen only a handful of bears in a record year.  Why?  The answer is straightforward.  When the run is thick at the falls the fishing is easy.  It takes relatively little time for bears to fill their bellies.  None of the bears like being at the falls for its own sake, in fact it is safe to say that when other bears are nearby they mostly dislike it, so as soon as they are full they leave to nap or goof off.

Also, the salmon run was late this season, at least for Brooks River.  When the run has not arrived yet, many bears will just visit the river to check on its status, and if they are convinced that there are few or no salmon they will go elsewhere.  Visitors who came during the first week of July--a reasonable time to expect to see a significant (though not peak) number of bears on the river--instead saw few.  

The late run also made for some tense times for the bear management team.  While many bears would just pass by and take a look at the river and move on, some thought it best to stay and save energy.  This was especially true of sows with cubs, and subadults.  It’s important to remember that with all of these bears, unless they win the protein lottery and find a moose carcass or manage to find and kill a moose calf, they are in a state of semi-starvation from when they leave their dens until they begin catching salmon in earnest.  In general, their primary sources of calories are sedges and grasses. I can tell you from experience that they much prefer the cut grass inside camp to the uncut grass mere yards away from it.  The lodge could stop cutting the grass and solve that problem, except that (among other concerns) bears can disappear extremely well in uncut grass.  So, the grass is cut, and even in normal years the bears want at it.  This year, with a late run, the bears really wanted the grass.  Consequently, they really were not in a mood to be told that they could not have it, and they were exceptionally inclined to let us know about their displeasure.

It’s one thing to have to deal with the standard heel-dragging, passive resistance from bears trespassing in camp, combined with the occasional adrenaline hit of the random bear having a bad fur day and taking it out on you.  It is another matter when just about every bear you deal with is edgy--one after another.  It quickly turned bear management an ever so un-fun combination of scary and tedious.  Some of you will not be surprised to learn that the unchallenged champion in dispensing un-fun-ness was 284 (already known to the bear team as “The Queen of Mean”) and her two yearlings cubs.  I was hop-lunged by her—in her signature dramatic style--from a few yards away on two occasions.  The second one took place near the lodge, and I ended up spraying her when she appeared to be turning her lunge into a full-on charge.  At other times I had to deal with some aggressive approaches from her cubs that, while somewhat less dramatic than their mom’s actions, were also more frequent. They were also a genuine threat given that they were at least a lean 150 lbs. In fact, one of the very few sit-down meeting of the bear team I have experienced at Brooks happened this July, and the central item on the agenda was “What are we going to do about 284 and her cubs?”.

I also ended up spraying a subadult who was desperate for grass on the hill by Overlook and became particularly aggressive when I tried to get him out of camp.  I don’t like spraying bears under any circumstances, but I like it even less when they are being aggressive because they are just plain hungry.  We all felt for the bears and their situation, even for 284 when she wasn’t being an immediate problem.  We knew they were up against a hard wall, and none of us liked having to kick them out of camp under these conditions.  On the other hand, I felt less compassion for two human couples on the porch in front of their lodge room who condescendingly dismissed my warnings about the bear spray in the air (“Yeah, we know.”).  After their dismissal of my warning I said “Alright, but the spray’s going to hit you about two seconds”. A couple of seconds later the two couples started wheezing and coughing, and retreated quickly back into their room.

Another event that arose, in all likelihood, from the early salmon draught was a visit made to camp one evening by 747 , the largest and (last time I had a chance to check) most dominant bear on the river.  Big, dominant males rarely visit camp except early in the season before operations begin in earnest, or while pursuing females in hopes of mating.  On that evening, 747 came into camp we were well into the season and he was not in pursuit of any sow.  He began investigating various buildings and even stared through lodge  windows at people having dinner.  As one ranger put it “It might have been cute if he didn’t weigh 900 lbs.”  For some of us bear techs, it seemed like a premonition of a concern we almost never discuss in public: the quietly prophesied year when the bear populations are very high but the salmon run is a bust.  What will happen?  747’s visit seemed to be a validation of some of our fears.  

Once the salmon arrived in great numbers, the bears returned to the river and, for the most part, those that came into camp paid less attention to the grass.  Having said that, the salmon bonanza did not go equally well for all bears.  Specifically it did not go well for the moms with cubs born in January (and of course the cubs themselves), a few particularly cautious sows with yearlings, and the subadults, especially those who had been kicked out by mom just this spring.  These are the bears most vulnerable in any year, but the high water level in the lake made what could have made an easier year (given all the salmon) into a potentially much harder one, for reasons I will describe below.

These bears prefer to fish the river away from the falls.  The little cubs are vulnerable at the falls not only because of the presence of adult male bears, but also because of the relative crowding of bears in general.  The subadults, esp. those newly kicked out, have neither the status nor the skills to do well at the falls with anything other than grabbing scraps, at least when many adult bears competing nearby.  In a normal year some of these bears can still do fairly well fishing the deeper waters of the lower river, but since this was a year of unusually high water levels in the lake we also had exceptionally high water levels in the lower river.  And higher water levels make for harder fishing because, to simplify a little, the salmon have more room to move in order to escape bears.

This puts these more vulnerable bears in a tough position.  Either they stay downriver where the already somewhat marginal fishing is now substantially more marginal, or they take on the various risks of getting closer to the falls.  In my observation, the normal response (which I think we can all relate to) is that they vacillate somewhat between those options, depending on mood or conditions, but with different  bears having differing centers of gravity in their oscillations depending on their personalities, dependents, and abilities.  Sometimes it seems that even the most dominant bears waver, since this is the only explanation I have of the fact that sometimes the big boars show up in the lower river to fish even when there's no indication that they're injured.  I also believe that there were so many bears so close to the falls this July was not just the record number of bears on the river, but also the relative desperation among normally falls-averse bears, caused by the exceptionally difficult fishing further downriver.

As usual, my choice of a theme for these reports gives some structure to what might otherwise be a mere torrent of accounts, but leaves so much with only a brief mention:  a sad but biologically interesting forensic examination of a dead spring cub that Michael Saxton, Nick Deuel, and I carried out; a close encounter with a calm and exceptionally tall wolf while walking to camp early in the morning on my first day of work; watching a river otter go under the cabin across the road from mine, some 400+ yards from the river; watching two subadults play-fight on top of a gravel pile as I crossed the bridge on my last day at camp; watching Holly’s yearling cub and one of 284’s pair playing together on the beach, moms close by, only to come ripping into camp a couple of times in a fast chase; a surreal extraction/rescue with Julie Hower of a seemingly indifferent family of visitors (including an 8-10 year old boy) while 284’s family play-fought mere feet away from them on the beach by the Katmai National Park sign; an escort with only the gentlest of hazing of a first-time mother bear and her little spring cub, punctuated by a selfishly determined photographer trying to get as close as possible by various avenues, in spite of multiple warnings from Naomi Boak and Mike Paulsen and me, which eventually ended well enough for sow and cub,  but only after I got the photographer to stop by means of a heated verbal exchange (I wanted to punch the guy); watching 30 bears feeding along the river as far as I could see in the misty rain of late evening; seeing a porcupine waddle up the ramp to the auditorium, only to eventually realize that it was a dead end and waddle back down the way she came…

See you downriver,

Carl

Below is a mini-report I sent out after the one above (with thanks and apologies to Johnny Cash).

Bear 747:  When the Man Comes Around

Friends,

I had planned to wait a while to see how many interesting videos from the July season at Brooks surfaced on the web.  I am aware of some intense situations around camp that may have recorded. Nonetheless, my friend Paola Perin sent me a video I want to go ahead and send, for one just because it’s such a great scene, and also because it will likely be more meaningful while the description in my field report of 747’s highly unusual visit to camp during the salmon drought is still in fresh in your minds.

The video is 21 seconds in length (look for the triangle)and can be found here, along with some great photos of 747’s visit:

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPGm4B3f015A_rOWNZFTFgmt5CwzYFcRD-UUEtC2uvkcZXqxspycQD1bEysIkdnOQ?key=WGpGQlY1bjJkZHM1YXJIUjZVTERybXVVYzk0UjN3

Hope you enjoy.  

Carl