Grizzly bear is released in Cabinets

Bear Biologist Wayne Kasworm of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and his crews have released another young male grizzly bear in the Cabinet Mountains just west of Spar Lake.

The bear, which was released July 31, is a 3-year-old male weighing 200 pounds and had no history of human conflicts.

The bear was captured by FWP personnel in the North Fork of the Flathead River approximately 25 miles north of Columbia Falls. He has moved about eight miles northwest of the release site and will be monitored by weekly flights, Kasworm wrote in his Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem report.

Kasworm said trapping will continue for a young female grizzly bear to be released in the Cabinet Mountains later this summer.

“We are currently monitoring two other augmentation bears,” Kasworm wrote. “One is a 3-year-old male released in 2012. His most recent location was in the East Fork of the Bull River.”

The other bear is a female that was originally captured south of Marias Pass on the Continental Divide and released near Spar Lake in 2011. This 2-year-old female left the Cabinet Mountains several weeks after release and moved north into the Yaak area and eventually moved east across Koocanusa Reservoir, across the Whitefish Range, and denned in Glacier Park during the winter of 2011-12.

After emerging from her den in 2012, she moved northwest into Waterton Park in Alberta and then began a trek back west to the West Cabinet Mountains following the same path she took in 2011. She denned on Spar Peak in the West Cabinet Mountains during the winter of 2012-13 within three miles of her release site.

She emerged from her den this spring to repeat this feat and has traveled to the eastern edge of Waterton Park in Alberta again this year and appears to be on a return leg with her most recent radio location on the west side of Koocanusa Reservoir a few miles north of Ziegler Mountain.

Monitoring will attempt to keep up with her travels until October when her radio collar is programmed to release. Airline miles on this trip total about 125 from southwest to northeast extreme points, but her route was certainly a bit longer.

Fourteen bears have been previously added to the Cabinet Mountains population since 1990 (11 females and 3 males) through the augmentation effort.

Three female bears and one male have left the target area and four bears are known to be dead. Captures, mortality, and genetically analyzed hair snags have identified 35 individual grizzly bears during 1997-2012 in the Cabinet Mountains. Twenty of these bears are offspring or fathers of offspring produced by the 1993 augmentation bear 286. Ten were augmentation bears released in the Cabinet Mountains other than bear 286. The remaining five include a family group in which the mother was killed leaving three orphaned yearlings. One of the yearlings is known to be dead. The last bear was a male captured after a livestock conflict. Nine of the 35 are known to be dead.

Few captures or hair snags of native bears in the Cabinet Mountains since the beginning of the augmentation program in 1990 suggest that the population was probably smaller than originally estimated (much fewer than 15 bears). The information also indicates that the Cabinet Mountains grizzly population would probably have disappeared without augmentation. Plans for augmentation during 2013 include the placement of one female and one male, if possible. Males are being emphasized because of observed inbreeding in this population. While this is not expected to be a population detriment at this point in time, the agencies are being proactive on this issue given the small size of the population.

We have capture efforts ongoing in the Yaak portion of the recovery area and in the Selkirk Mountains in Idaho. Efforts in the Yaak have resulted in the captures of a 4 to 5 year-old male and a 20 year-old female both in the East fork of Pipe Creek. Both bears weighed approximately 300 pounds. The male was unmarked, but the female (303) was originally captured in 1994 as a yearling. She was the daughter of bear 106 who many of you may know by the name of DJ. She was recaptured in 1996 and 1998 and lost her radio collar in 2001. She had a litter of cubs in 2010 and one of her yearlings was captured and collared in 2011. The family group was monitored until spring of this year when the young separated from their mother. We are also monitoring two other bears in the Yaak area. One is another adult female and the other is an adult male. The adult female is 13 years old and is the daughter of bear 303.

We are working with Idaho Fish and Game to support research and monitoring efforts in the Selkirk Mountains of north Idaho. We have supplied a trapping team to capture and collar several bears. This effort began in 2012 with the capture of three female grizzly bears just north of Priest Lake. The program is continuing this year with the capture of three additional female bears in the same area during July.

There has been no known mortality of grizzly bears in or within 10 miles of the Cabinet-Yaak during 2013.