Bears

  • Female griz trapped in apple orchard near Ashton, ID (update)

    Ralph Maughan

    Apples are natural griz food, though apple orchards are human planted- If you want to attract bears to your property, an effective way is to plant some apple trees. Of course, most plant them to harvest apples for human use. Bears don’t pick the apples neatly. They usually break tree limbs. A 300 pound sow…

  • Great photos of grizzly, wolves, and others on bison carcass in YNP

    Ralph Maughan

    The solidity of nature, even of creatures competing to eat the raw meat of the dead bison, is edifying. It brings a feeling of hopefulness at a time when humans claw at each other over political abstractions in a confused, but hostile, unnatural way, to detriment of all of us. There is currently a debate…

  • Celebration and warnings as Greater Yellowstone Coalition marks its 30th year

    Ralph Maughan

    Former Yellowstone superintendent Michael Finley doubts grizzly delisting due to lack of habitat- West Yellowstone, MT.  Last weekend the Greater Yellowstone Coalition celebrated the 30th anniversary of its founding back in 1983. Along with honoring the founders, especially activist Rick Reese, and former Board members, the Coalition (GYC) had a prime time panel consisting of…

  • Grizzly sow shot in Island Park, Idaho. Her cubs in jeopardy? (updated twice)

    Ralph Maughan

    Island Park, Idaho. A female grizzly bear with two yearling cubs was hot near Island Park, Idaho on September 12. Island Park is a relatively low elevation and primarily flat area (an ancient caldera bottom) just west and southwest of Yellowstone Park. This year there had been two grizzly bear-human injuries in the Island Park…

  • Greater Yellowstone griz to seek food in lower elevations this autumn

    Ralph Maughan

    Poor whitebark pine crop but a good berry crop brings bears lower and closer to people- This year as the Yellowstone country grizzly bears enter their time of peak appetite to prepare for hibernation they have a good berry crop to fatten on. However, there is a poor crop of the oil and protein rich…

  • Time of the year when grizzlies get very hungry is here

    Ralph Maughan

    It’s called “hyperphagia” Grizzly bears get a serious case of the “munchies” this time of the year. “Ravenous” is more the word. It is overwhelming and not a matter of personal character, but genetic programming to prepare for the winter hibernation. News media articles, agency warmings, and word of mouth tells people that the bears…

  • New research: Wolves indirectly help bears by promoting berry growth

    Ralph Maughan

    A new study by Dr. Bill Ripple and his colleagues, “Trophic cascades from wolves to grizzly bears in Yellowstone” in the Journal of Animal Ecology suggests a second way the return of wolves has helped the Yellowstone grizzly bears. Grizzlies have thrived in Yellowstone Park in recent years despite the destruction of the cutthroat trout fishery,…

  • Next to last of grizzly 399F’s adult cubs killed

    Ralph Maughan

    Put down for eating too many cattle- Grizzly bear 399’s next to last adult cub 587M has been killed by Wyoming officials for killing cattle in the upper Green River 40 miles southeast of Jackson, Wyoming. That leaves only 399’s equally famous adult cub, bear 610F alive. For those who have been in the upper…

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‎”At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour.”

Edward Abbey

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