More environmental low marks for Obama

We could absolve higher-ups in Team Obama of the original push by U.S. Fish & Wildlife to remove grizzlies in Greater Yellowstone from Endangered Species Act preservation.

But, after USFW lost that case, to bring it up on appeal, when the griz are listed as threatened again, and nothing else has changed in the plan? Where's Kenny Boy Salazar?

That's even as Obama and Washington state's Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell are ready to keep playing politics with salmon.

Polar bears would lose competition with grizz

As melting ice pushes them deeper onshore, and forces them into more of a grizzly-type diet, facial structure studies show they won't be as efficient at eating vegetable matter as grizz.

Of course, the story is missing one thing - the interbreedability of the two subspecies. (No, biologists haven't made that reclassification, but, they can interbreed, and their geographic isolation is being dimished, so, aren't they?

Yellowstone wins, rich lose

Montana’s tony Yellowstone Club development, hardly more than a stone’s throw away from the national park, has filed for bankruptcy.

Grizzlies and wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are crying a schadenfreude river as we speak.

Bear ancestry gets new insight -- help for polar bears?

Biologists have recovered mitochondrial DNA from long-extinct cave bears, from about 30,000 years ago. Cave bears are sisters to modern grizzly (brown) and polar bears, which can still interbreed.

Using the mDNA found from the cave bear bones, and comparing that with the mDNA of grizzlies (which are the brown bear of Eurasia) and polar bears, the scientists extrapolated a common ancestor about 1.6 million years ago.

This information ma prove useful in a sad way, namely, to determine more of how grizzly and polar bears are different, and why, as polar bears near critically small numbers.

Friday scatblogging — hike at your own risk

The sign above, in British Columbia, ain’t joking. (And, I’ve camped at Fort Steele, with my dad and sister, in high school, 30 years ago.)

Three years ago, when I was hiking in Banff National Park, I saw the signs which require people hiking backcountry to be in groups of six or more. It’s for their protection, as Canada has never had a documented grizzly attack on a party that size. It’s also for grizzlies’ protection, especially sows with cubs, so that single individuals strung out all along backcountry trails don’t stress them out.

And, they’re serious about it. Per Parks Canada, violations of the six-person backcountry requirement can draw a fine of up to $2,000 (Canadian.)

For the blog post that gave me the sign, read Terrierman.

And, speaking of that, I’m headed on vacation in less than two weeks. Don’t know if I’ll get up to Banff again, but I am looking at Yellowstone and maybe Glacier.

Friday scatblogging — scat you don’t want to see

I’ve camped alone in grizzly country in Montana (Glacier National Park and national forest to the south and Alberta (Banff National Park), so I know you don’t want to stumble upon fresh grizzly scat. That’s what happened to Jenne Danzl while out with boyfriend Roger Long and friend Joanie Merritt in Alaska.

“I’m always yak, yak, yakking,” Danzl says. “But this time I was concentrating on mushrooms and wasn’t talking nearly as much.”

“You have to know that the moss is like walking in really nice carpet,” Long says. “You don’t snap twigs or make a sound.”

Danzl was about 20 yards behind Long when she noticed the bear scat.

“And I said, ‘Oh Roger, this is a really fresh pile of scat.’ And Roger joked, ‘Why don’t you taste it and see how fresh it is?’”

Danzl joked back that she’d pass, and that’s when she heard the three woofing grunts. Seconds later a sow charged.

Turns out the sow had two cubs. Fortunately, the attack wasn’t too serious in its results.

But, it was pretty dramatic, as Danzl was bitten multiple times. Read the full story to see her thoughts in action, and the efforts of her caring boyfriend to try to drive the bear off.

Grizzly attacks, three days after I was there

As I mentioned in the post immediately below this, among the places I was recently on vacation was Glacier National Park.

Now I see that two people were attacked there by a grizzly just three days after I was in the same area.

The National Park Service has said it will interview the two after they have recuperated. However, I am guessing they surprised the bear, and did not take adequate precautions to guard against surprise, such as talking, whistling or making noise on the trail, wearing bear bells, or doing something similar.

The majority of grizzly attacks, such as this one, are usually by a sow, and one with cubs. They are quite likely to attack when startled like this, in defense of their cubs.

I was at Many Glacier myself Aug. 22, three days before this attack. I did not hike down the trail they did, which trailheads at Many Glacier, because it was late in the day and because I saw grizzlies at about 400 yards above the lodge on a hillside.

Both regretfully (the photographer in me) and perhaps fortunately, that was my closest encounter.

I did see mountain goats close enough to pet and wolves at 800 yards in Yellowstone. I’ll post pictures in a couple of days.

Incidentally, beestings, lightning strikes and snakebite will all kill as many or more people in the United States each year. Yet, lightning is not even a living being, and the other two don’t evoke traditional predator images.