Follow along with Russ and his dog Gypsy, as they install and monitor three of the 104 sites dedicated to surveying for Grizzly Bears in the southwest Montana ecosystem in 2023. Learn more:
https://defenders.org/wildlife/grizzly-bear
Video Transcript:
(May)
I’m Russ Talmo at Defenders of Wildlife and our Rockies and Plains region out of Missoula, Montana. This is Gypsy dog. She’s joining me today. We are out in the field embarking on the third year of the southwest Montana Grizzly Bear DNA project. This is a project where we are partnered directly with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service and Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, as well as our friends at the Vital Ground Foundation.
This is the first site I’m about to go install for the project. We have two field crews out there putting in sites as well that Defenders helps fund. And the idea here is we’re trying to identify Grizzly Bears in the Bitterroot ecosystem. Fingers crossed that we detect some Grizzly Bears this year. We’ll keep you up to date as we go along.
(June)
We are wrapping up site check number one and the install of our third site up here. It is the third week of June. We were able to check the first two sites. It had Black Bears, big Black Bears at one and no visitors at the other.
I just got back to my truck only to find… (flat tire) the hazards of fieldwork and rough backcountry roads. But other than that a successful day, got three sites out. We’re back here in 3 to 4 weeks. Check them again.
(July)
We’re out here again. It’s July, middle of July in Montana. It’s hot. I’ve already been to two of our locations today. We’re on the third and final stop. No Grizzly Bears so far. The huckleberries are really coming on in the high country and Grizzly Bears are moving up into those areas to make use of that food resource.
Yeah. This is like one of the highest huckleberry densities I’ve seen almost anywhere. So we know there’s bears using this site.
We are walking in on our site and I can see the lure pile has been disturbed. And I can also see both of our cameras have been
“adjusted”. Quote unquote, by bears rubbing against them. So that should be interesting.
(August)
So it is now late August and we are driving in to our sites and our season is coming to a close. This will be our final check and site removal day of our three sites up here.
There’s been some documented Grizzly Bear activity in the Bitterroot Valley over the past several weeks, which leads me to very high hopes that one of those Grizzly Bears passed through this area and visited one of our sites.
Picking our way down to site number two on this game trail. Bit of a technical scramble in here.
Oh. Back at the truck. After checking site number two. And we had several very brown, light brown, sizable Grizzly-Bear-looking Black Bears visit our site.
But I’m fairly certain they were not grizzly bears based on what I could tell in the photos. Looking forward to taking a closer look though to see. But we got some good hair samples, including off of standing trees to use as a rub tree. So that’s it for now, off to site number three.
Well, A little anti-climatic. We got into our site. Saw that bears had been there. Lots of hair samples. The cameras had been messed with by bears. So, again, we know bears have been there. And in fact, this is a very, bear-y spot. There were bears there on six different trap nights.
And it looks like from the photos, from what I could see, is at least three or four different bears and they look a lot like Grizzly Bears, but just in their color scheme and size. But they appear to all be Black Bears, at least until we look closer.
BUT successful season in the sense that we got bears at pretty much every one of the sites and you know bears have been traveling through here.
One of the sites run by field crews, just a few drainages over did in fact detect a Grizzly Bear a couple of weeks ago just east of here a little ways so… But again, I’m calling this season overall a success, and I’m happy to have been part of it.
That’s it for now. Russ Talmo and Gypsy signing off.
