Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/170490
Radius images / allcanadaphotos British Columbia has approximately 15,000 grizzly bears—a quarter of the entire North American population. Hyperphagia Marsha thrusts out her snout, woofs, and swats her paw. Her cubs race away, bumping into each other as they head for the trees as two black bear cubs scatter in the other direction, leaping up the first tree they see. Marsha charges the mother black bear, stops short, turns and trots away, then circles, rushes forward, rises on her hind legs, and swats again at the other bear. The cubs yowl. The black bear mother backs up, veers toward another tree, her short, curved claws perfect climbing tools. The three black bears stare down at Marsha. Both mothers, so intent on fattening up for winter, seem surprised they crossed paths. By late August, a foraging frenzy begins. Hyperphagia, literally "excessive eating," for 12 to 16 hours daily, is a time of high conflict. Black bears nap by day and feed by night to avoid a clash with grizzlies. Feeding frenzies are all well and good until someone loses a life—a grizzly will eat a black bear. On the coast, a grizzly can tear through 23 salmon in 90 minutes during a good salmon run, sucking back 110,000 calories (that's 203 Big Macs) daily by noshing the fattiest bits: brains, cheeks, roe, and skin. An Interior bear's carnivorous instincts take over, too. The mostly vegetarian diet of mountain grizzlies means they're smaller and lighter than their plateau cousins, but where possible they'll use powerful shoulder muscles and long claws to rip into the burrows of ground squirrels and marmots for morsels of protein. Plateau bears ramp up their meat diet; black bears prey on fawns, and Ciarniello's research has shown that in the fall grizzlies seem to follow the trail of moose hunters, munching on the gut piles left behind or feasting on a carcass meant to be picked up later by the hunter. When hunters and bears accidentally cross paths it is usually bad news for the bear. "This is when bear mortality skyrockets," Ciarniello says. "We don't know exactly what happens. A lot of times this is unreported and the only reason we find [the dead bear] is because of the radio collar." A rise in bear-human conflicts usually coincides with berry crop failures. Hamilton pulls out a sheaf of papers and points to a column of numbers. "If we tracked berry crops in 1998, I'd bet you we'd find a major failure, because that's when 1,619 bears were destroyed provincially," he says. "That's the peak as far as my records go back." That year 36 grizzlies were killed, reflecting their much smaller population. On average, conservation officers kill 40 to 50 grizzlies and 600 or so black bears annually due to conflicts with humans. New research from Ciarniello points to a convergence of two phenomena creating conflict: blocks of cleared land in the forested plateau attract bears because of fast growing berry bushes, and roads created by logging attract hunters. B r itish C o lumbia M agazine • fal l 2 0 1 3 27