The Historic Grizzly

[brotherbear]

Continued...
If we thought a situation might be dangerous, we'd carry a sawed-off shotgun loaded with buckshot. We probably had a couple thousand grizzly encounters in the twelve years we were in Yellowstone, and we never came close to using that shotgun on a bear. I think twice we climbed trees to avoid a confrontation with an aggressive bear, but we were good at it ( climbing trees ), so it never got out of hand. A couple times I walked around a tree and surprised a sleeping grizzly. They huffed and popped their teeth, but they prefer to avoid a man and they moved off. 
I just feel that if you know grizzly behavior, and you make some noise to let them know you're coming, they'll move off. Many times during our studies we moved in on radio-collared bears in their day beds. We knew exactly where they were located, but when we got there, the bear had heard or smelled us and was gone. I don't think people who travel in grizzly country have any idea how many bears they make contact without ever knowing it. Even sows with cubs, and they're the most aggressive. The big boars get testy during mating season, but we found the females day in and day out to be a lot more aggressive than the males. Reply

[brotherbear]

Continued...
Bowhunter Eric Burge hiked up the trail toward the top of the mountain, spurred on by the musical bugling of rutting bull elk up ahead. As he approached a saddle, he spotted the top of a tan-colored animal coming over the crest. Elk! A jolt of adrenalin scorched his veins, but the excitement turned to shock when, instead of a bull elk, an enormous tan-colored sow grizzly with two large cubs ambled into view and started down the trail toward him. Burge stepped off the path and pulled the can of bear spray from its belt holster. The sow's head jerked up, eyes wide with surprise. The next instant she was in full charge with head down and ears laid back. 
"This stuff better work," Burge thought as he raised the can of bear spray, "because she's not going to stop." 
The onrushing sow was almost upon him when Burge shot an orange burst of bear spray into the bear's face. The sow skidded to a halt, flailed at the air and spun around twice before galloping down the trail with her two confused cubs trailing behind.
When I interviewed Burge six months later, he punctuated his story with the epithet, "That bear spray saved my life." 
"Actually," I corrected him, "Dr. Chuck Jonkel and Bill Pounds saved your life." Reply

[brotherbear]

Continued...
As the director of the Great Bear Foundation, Chuck mentors a core of young men and women seeking guidance, purpose, and professional procedure to match their enthusiasm for saving the great bear and its habitat. Carrie Hunt, who also helped develope bear spray, spoke of Chuck with gratitude.
I owe so much to that man. He took me under his wing when I was an undergraduate student with no qualifications. He gave me a chance to accomplish bear research projects in a world that was off-limits to women. He's produced a solid core of men and women like myself who are willing to take up the standard for bear conservation. 
Carrie added with a laugh, "I guess you could say we're the next generation of grizzled old men - and women!" Reply

[brotherbear]

Grizzlies and Grizzled Old Men continued....
As inspiring as it is to read about the courage and tenacity of the grizzled old men featured in the previous chapters, there is also a sense of loss and discouragement. Some of these extraordinary patriarchs who stood in the gap to staunch the flow of grizzly bear blood have passed on, and others await their final sunset.
The good news is that the cupboard is not bare. Far from it, in fact, for a new breed of men and women have arisen to take up the cause of grizzly conservation. Most have been either directly mentored by these grizzled old men or indirectly by their writings and actions. Thanks to the groundwork laid by their predecessors, today's conservationists are fortunate to work for federal state, or private agencies, which furnish a comfortable salary. Reply

[brotherbear]

Continued....
One of the most prominent is Chris Servheen, grizzly bear coordinator of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, who was mentored by Chuck Jonkel while he was a graduate student at the University of Montana during the historic Border Grizzly Study. Servheen now holds sway over all grizzly bear programs on federal lands. 
Then there is Tom Smith, research wildlife biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center, who has become one of the most outspoken proponents of the use of bear spray. Tom's carefully crafted press releases sometimes cause a stir within the bear community, such as the study he released that exposed the dangers of the incorrect use of bear spray as a bear repellent. ( Smith had noticed that people in bear country had begun spraying pepper spray around or on their boats and equipment in the mistaken belief that the red pepper would repel a bear. The opposite was true, for inert red pepper is an attractant to a curious bear. ) In addition, Smith has compiled an exhaustive computer database of bear attacks, which proves that bear spray has stopped 90 percent of bear charges, while firearms have stopped onrushing bears only about half the time. Reply

[brotherbear]

http://www.bearbiology.com/fileadmin/tpl..._74-83.pdf 
 
The Brown Bear (Ursus arctos) in Europe:
decline, present distribution, biology and
ecology
KAI CURRY-LINDAHL
UNESCO Field Science Office for Africn P.O. Box 30592,Nairobi, Kenya.
INTRODUCTION
Due to commitments in Africa I was unable to accept the invitation to attend
the Symposium in November 1970 and to contribute a paper on the brown bear
(Ursus arctos) in Europe. Later, I was again asked to write such a paper for
the Symposium Proceedings. In doing so, I have had the privilege of previously
reading and commenting on Ian McTaggart Cowan's paper, published in this
volume, on the status and conservation of the Ursidae of the World, before preparing
my own contribution, but even so it has been impossible to avoid some
slight overlapping of subject matter.
PAST DISTRIBUTION
In the past the range of the brown bear covered almost the entire coniferous,
mixed and deciduous forest zones of Europe. Probably the subalpine birch
forests of Scandinavia, Finland and the Urals were included in its past range
as nowadays. Although the brown bear seasonally visits the tundras and arctic
heaths above the timberline for feeding purposes, it has never in Europe been
a true inhabitant of treeless habitats. This feature seems to distinguish it
ecologically from the conspecific North American grizzly (cf. Cowan in this
volume).
HTSTORY OF DECLINE  
 
The history of local extinctions of the brown bear in Europe is geographically

and chronologically as follows:

Denmark: Extinct probably already about 5000 years ago.

Great Britain: Became probably extinct in the 10th century and had certainly

vanished by the beginning of the 11th century. It is uncertain whether it has

ever existed in Ireland.

Eastern Germany (Silesia): Extinct in 1770.

Western Germany (Bavaria): Extinct in 1836.

Switzerland: Extinct in 1904. Occasional visitor, observed in 1914.
French Alps: Extinct in 1937. 
 
PRESENT DISTRIBUTION

Although the brown bear has thus disappeared from the greater part of its

range west of the USSR, it still occurs in most European countries. The destruction

of forests and heavy hunting pressure have obliged it to retreat to

forest-clad mountains in various parts of Europe, where the populations are

isolated. There are at least 13 and probably as many as 19 or 20 insular

brown bear populations in Europe. Several of these pockets hold very small

populations, the future of which is far from being bright. The main populations

live in the USSR, Romania and Yugoslavia.

Information about the size of the European populations varies in accuracy.

Therefore, the following data are only indicative.

In Spain the brown bear is to be found as two isolated populations, one in the

Cantabrian Mountains, west of the Pyrenees, and the second in the Pyrenees.

According to Couturier (1954) there were about 40 animals in the Cantabrians

and about 60 in the Spanish Pyrenees. However, the latter population is connected

to the French one in the same mountains. There are about 70 brown

bears in the French Pyrenees and that is all that remains of the species in

France.

In Italy the brown bear still exists in two areas, the Abruzzo National Park

in the Apennines and between Adamello and Brenta in the Dolomites. In 1922

there were only 30 or so brown bears in the Abruzzo National Park, which

was established the following year. In 1935 more than 200 animals were reported

from the area, a figure repeated by Couturier in 1954 for the whole of

Italy. This estimate was probably much too high, for in 1964 the population

in the Abruzzo National Park was found to be only about 60 bears (CurryLindahl

1964).l In 1971, Mr Franco Zunino and Dr. Stephen Herrero worked

in this National Park and estimated the population there at 70-100 brown bears
(Herrero iz lift.). 
Of the large European carnivores-the bear, the wolf and the lynx--only the

bear has survived in the Alps with about 8-10 animals in the Italian Dolomites.

(However, the lynx has recently been reintroduced in Switzerland.)

In Yugoslavia, brown bears live in isolated mountains of both the northern

and southern parts of the country. Couturier (1954) estimated the population

at more than 700, a number that 16 years later seems to have increased considerably:

about 2000 (Isakovic 1970). Also in Albania there are 'numerous'

brown bears (Hainard 1961), but no figures are available. 



In Greece the population was estimated at about 115 individuals in the 1950's

(Couturier 1954), but this seems to be too low, because in Macedonia alone

there were about 400 bears in 1959 (Hainard 1961) and, in addition, there is

also a population in the Pindus Range of northern Greece (Curry-Lindahl 1964).

From Bulgaria about 1,300 brown bears were reported by Couturier (1954).

Romania has a fairly sizable population. According to Professor Valeriu Puscariu

(verbal comm. 1971) there are more than 3,000 bears, chiefly living in

the Carpathians.

In Hungary there were three to six brown bears in the 1950's (Couturier 1954),

1 The IUCN Mission to the Park in the same year accepted a figure of about
100 for Reply

[brotherbear]

About the size of the grizzly... From the book: THE BEAR - History of a Fallen King - by Michel Pastoureau... I know that the European brown bear was much larger and far more ferocious than those "honey-eaters" living there today. There was a war all over ancient Europe against the bear that lasted for roughly 1,000 years! They were nearly exterminated. This war ended between 1000 AD and 1200 AD.
The grizzlies of North America had a similar experience much more recently in history. Before the California gold rush which coincided with the invention of the breech-load rifle, the grizzlies of the American West were larger and more ferocious than their inland grizzly descendents living today. The collecting of trophy skulls by the "Boone and Crockett Club" did not begin until long after those old historic grizzlies were slaughtered. The largest grizzly bear skull on record is from one of those old bears that was found ( not killed ) by a hunter.
It is a shame that we cannot, from a discreet distance, study these animals in their natural environment with the exclusion of humans. How awesome they must have been - the great California grizzly, the old bison hunters of the American prairie, and the champion of the ancient Roman arena, the European brown bear. Reply