Big bears

I've spent a lot of time over the years observing wild bears – black bears, polar bears and coastal brown bears – but I've always been especially fond of the Alaskan interior brown bears known as Toklat grizzlies, named for the braided glacial river that flows through the middle of Denali National Park and Preserve.

Toklats, living in the food-poor interior tundra, aren't big – averaging about 500 pounds, they are considerably smaller than the biggest male black bears in my home state of Pennsylvania, which can exceed 700 pounds. And compared with coastal brown bears, which can tip the scales at more than 1,500 pounds, they're pikers.


But what they lack in sheer size they make up in a solid presence and attitude, especially in early summer when the bears are still in their thick winter pelage, which highlights the distinctive tawny-colored body and dark legs typical of Toklat grizzlies.

In our time teaching at Camp Denali earlier this month, we saw lots of griz – one of the best (and occasionally alarming) things about being in the park. Along the partially frozen Savage River, we watched two caribou move nervously on the ice, unwilling to pass within a hundred yards of a sow grizzly and her two large cubs; when the female caught wind of the caribou, she came loping, but it wasn't a serious attack. (The next day, however, she had killed a moose calf in the same area.)

Along the East Fork of the Toklat, not far from the old ranger post cabin in which pioneering naturalist Adolph Murie worked while conducting his landmark wolf/Dall sheep studies in the 1930s, we encountered an adolescent grizzly, probably on its own for the first time, lying atop a red fox den in a thicket of willows.

At first, the bear was content to munch on mummified snowshoe hare carcasses lying around, but eventually it smelled food underground – fox kits – and began trying to dig through the tangled roots and rocks that protected the den.

Anyone who's seen a grizzly dig knows how much strength they possess in those massive forequarters. Once, along the Alagnak River, a guide and I spent three hours rolling massive driftwood spruce logs into a four-foot-deep gully and then shoveling several tons of gravel over top of them, to create a landing strip for a small plane. Then, while we waited for the plane, a bear came along and, suspecting food was cached beneath all that freshly dug earth, simply levered up the huge logs through all the gravel like they were jack-straws, while we watched, helpless.

So the foxes understood the danger, and attacked the teenaged bear, nipping the its flanks, barking and yowling, just barely avoiding the swatting paws and lunges. The bear seemed only half-interested, and kept wandering away, only to be lured back by the possibility of a meal, sending the foxes into new paroxyms of distress. The drama was still going on when we finally left.

I've had some heart-stopping encounters with grizzlies while on foot in Denali, but this time, the bears we saw while hiking were comfortably distant, and the close-up encounters occurred while we were in vehicles. One of the best came on our final day, when we and several Camp Denali guests were heading out of the park.

Just shy of the Eilson Visitors Center, we encountered a bear ambling up the middle of the one-lane dirt road, which in this area makes some stomach-lurching hairpins around thousand-foot-high bluffs (no guardrails). We ever-so-slowly followed, since we could hardly go around. Then, as the bear reached one bend, it met another grizzly coming the other way.

The bear we'd been following appeared to be a boar, the second one a sow – but the male gave way, scrambling up a steep slope, peering down nervously. The sow followed suit a few minutes later, and they faced off with growls and roars, baring their teeth and taking a few swipes at each other. Whether it was territorial aggression or courtship behavior is hard to say – both activities look a lot alike among bears. (The photo's a bit soft -- low light, rain and a hand-held camera.)



All photos ©Scott Weidensaul

Denali

Apologies for the long hiatus between posts; I've been home very little this spring. Here's a bit of what I've been up to.

The first time I visited Alaska, nearly 30 years ago, I fell in love with what the locals like to call the Great Land. I've been going back almost every year since, I've been able to travel to some of its most remote regions, from the western Aleutians and Alaskan Peninsula to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Pribilof Islands and the North Slope.

But no place is more magical than Denali National Park and Preserve, in the Alaska Range of the southern Interior. Nowhere else in Alaska is it easier to observe large mammals and the full range of subarctic birds, from grizzlies to diminutive Wilson's warblers - and there's no better time to visit this 6 million-acre wilderness than early in June, right after iceout, when the moose and caribou are dropping calves, and the migratory birds have returned from wintering grounds as far-flung as Africa, the Philippines and South America.

Earlier this month, Amy and I spent more than a week in the heart of the park and preserve, based out of Camp Denali, one of the best ecotour facilities I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. We were what Camp Denali calls "resource leaders," there to assist the staff naturalist-guides on daily birding forays, and I was subbing for my old friend Stan Senner of Audubon Alaska, who's been teaching at Camp Denali for years but had to miss these sessions.

Just getting to camp is half the adventure - a seven-hour bus trip along the 90-mile dirt road that bisects the wilderness core of the park (the original Mt. McKinley National Park, before the park and preserve was tripled in size in 1980). Along with the staff, we pointed out caribou and Dall sheep, harlequin ducks and beavers, willow ptarmigan and a great horned owl nest with two fluffy, almost-ready-to-fledge chicks.

We saw more than half a dozen grizzlies, including one that upended our plans for a picnic dinner along the East Fork of the Toklat River - it was busy trying to dig up a red fox den (to the frenzied alarm of the foxes, which yowled and nipped and avoided the bear's swatting paws) just a few yards from where we were supposed to eat. No one complained about delaying the meal a few hours, while we watched the drama - though we had to leave before we learned whether or not the bear was ever successful in breaching the den.

Camp Denali is a mix of rusticity and decadence; the one-room cabins are heated by woodstoves and lit by propane, each with its own outhouse, but the dining room

Dall sheep ram (©Scott Weidensaul)

was a brand-new timber-peg structure with drop-dead views and a modern kitchen that turned out extraordinary meals. On clear nights, the sky dimmed a bit after 1 a.m. when the sun dipped slightly below the horizon, but you could still read on your porch, with the more than 20,000-foot summit of Denali/Mt. McKinley (take your pick; Alaska calls it the former, the U.S. Geological Survey the latter) bathed in rich pinks and oranges again at 3:30 a.m. with sunrise.

The birding was simply wonderful, even from the outhouse. Ours perched on the edge of a 500-foot rise above Moose Creek, and from it we were serenaded by Swainson's, gray-cheeked and varied thrushes, with white-crowned sparrows, orange-crowned and Wilson's warblers everywhere. Our first morning, two flocks of several dozen gray-crowned rosy-finches flew over camp, considerably lower than these alpine birds are usually seen.

The routine was for me to lead a 5:30 a.m. birdwalk, then after breakfast everyone would make their own sack lunches and spend the day in the park with guides. Among the favorite destinations for our birding groups were a series of glacial kettle ponds around Mile 81 on the park road, and Ranger Pond, close to the Wonder Lake ranger station -- lots of lesser scaup, buffleheads, pintail, green-winged teal and wigeon, along with lesser yellowlegs, least sandpipers and a few red-necked phalaropes. Greater white-fronted geese, Arctic terns, long-tailed ducks (the drakes in their black breeding plumage) and black and white-winged scoters were also around, and we often saw northern harriers and short-eared owls hunting the surrounding tundra. We watched common loons on their nest, and gray jays hitting us up (unsuccessfully) for a handout.

Not far from camp, the park's ornithologist Carol McIntyre had earlier discovered a gyrfalcon nest, which we could watch through a spotting scope; one day as one of the adults flew by, it took off after a northern goshawk that was intruding on the nest territory; although a goshawk is a big, tough bird, it wasted no time in lighting out for safer terrain with the gyr in pursuit.

I'm only home for a brief time between trips, but will try to post a few more episodes from Denali before hitting the road again -- fighting grizzlies, alpine hail storms, and more great Alaskan birds.




Rock ptarmigan in Highway Pass. (©Scott Weidensaul)

More on the Border Wall

The Washington Post on Sunday ran a feature on the conservation implications of the border wall, here.

Meanwhile, the reaction from much of the birding community remains a yawn or even - because of the incendiary nature of the immigration debate - active hostility to those on birding forums trying to discuss the impacts of the border barrier. Many have asked, 'Birds can fly, so what's the big deal?'
True, birds can fly over a fence, but that's not what we're talking about here. The border "wall" will actually be two walls, with a cleared, lighted patrol strip between, and cleared land on either side - a devastating loss of habitat, especially in areas like the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where habitat is limited to a narrow corridor along the river...a corridor conservationists (including the federal government) have spent tens of millions of dollars to restore, and the very corridor through which the wall would run.

Wings or no wings, birds need habitat, and the land on the southern side of the border, which will include most of the good riparian forest, will quickly become as degraded and the land currently on the Mexican side of the river. And good luck trying to get access to what used to be prime U.S. wildlife habitat, and which will suddenly require a border and river crossing to visit.

For species like the 70 remaining Sonoran pronghorn antelope, the endangered handful of Texas ocelots, or the newly returned Arizona jaguars, the wall would be a death-knell. Birders, I would hope, should be interested in more than just birds.

More information on fighting the wall can be found here.

Border madness

If nothing else, the timing was sickly appropriate.

Last Tuesday – April Fool's Day – Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff announced one of the most breathtaking assaults ever on half a century's worth of environmental protection, while simultaneously attacking some of the richest wildlife habitat in the country.

If only it were a joke, instead of a nightmare.

With a stroke of his pen, Chertoff waived 36 bedrock environmental and land-management laws designed to protect our most sensitive natural communities, announcing that the federal government could ignore them in order to complete more than 670 miles of "the Fence," the proposed barrier running along the Mexican border, in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

The magnitude of the loss to conservation became clear in the subsequent days. Although Chertoff had used his waiver authority before, including to ram the wall through two sensitive wildlife areas in Arizona, the border wall will devastate the lower Rio Grande Valley corridor, a showcase of land restoration that holds some of the greatest natural diversity in the country. It's also an economic engine in the Valley, as the region is known, attracting hordes of birders from around the world, who spend millions of tourist dollars every year.

National Audubon's Sabal Palm Audubon Center in Brownsville will be on the wrong side of the wall, cut off and effectively ceded to Mexico. Ditto the Nature Conservancy's thousand-acre Southmost Preserve, where last week birders were flocking to see a fork-tailed flycatcher. John Arvin, of the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory, has noted that virtually every birding hotspot in the Valley, except for those in urban areas, will be walled off.

Congress created this mess when it passed the 2005 REAL ID Act, tacking it onto a massive military spending bill. One facet of that rider gave the Homeland Security chief sole authority to ignore essentially any law hindering construction of border barriers, and severely limiting court review of his decision.

Environmental groups are preparing lawsuits, but the bill limits such legal challenges to constitutional issues only, a steep hill to climb, especially given the current 5-4 conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

Congress is the only body that will be able to correct this mess. One solution would be the Borderlands Conservation and Security Act (H.R. 2593), introduced by Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, which would require DHS to abide by existing environmental laws, and to consult with land managers, Indian tribes and local officials on barrier construction. You can learn more, and contact your representative, here.

How are birders reacting? Mostly with a yawn. Many in the Valley are shocked and outraged, but otherwise, there seems to be little awareness of the issue nationally, or realization of what's at stake. Except for David Sibley, I couldn't find that any of the prominent birding bloggers have even addressed the issue.

It's not as though this is merely about access to birding sites. Once the wall (actually two walls, with a cleared and patrolled strip between) is built, the land on the far side effectively becomes Mexican territory, subject to the same abuse and degradation we've seen on the south side of the river already.

The barrier will also cut off movement of endangered species like ocelots – the very reason millions of federal, state and private dollars have been spent in the last 20 years, painstakingly assembling and restoring the Lower Rio Grande Valley wildlife corridor, which will be sliced apart if DHS is allowed to have its way.

And it's not just birds in Texas – the border wall will be devastating to Sonoran pronghorns and Mexican black bears, to the tiny, resurgent population of jaguars now recolonizing the sky island mountains of Arizona and New Mexico, and to countless other species.

The only thing that will stop this is outrage and protest from the millions of birders and conservationists across the country. If you've ever enjoyed the sight of a green jay at Santa Ana, or a chorus of chachalacas at Sabal Palm – get mad, and get involved. If you've ever hoped to one day look for tropical parulas or hook-billed kites in the Valley, or a jaguar in the Huachucas, get involved – because that chance is about to slip away.

* * * *


Here's a story from the New York Times about the fate of the Sabal Palm Audubon Center, along with statements on the border wall announcement from National Audubon and Defenders of Wildlife.

'Weekend America' this weekend

Barring an especially news-rich morning, I'll be making one of my periodic appearances on public radio's "Weekend America" this Saturday. It's part of a segment in which listeners share their stories of spring, including several about robins - and I'll be talking about the bird most naturalists consider the real icon of spring, the American woodcock.

Crab moratorium passes

On March 17, the New Jersey Senate - by a 39-0 vote - passed a moratorium on horseshoe crab fishing in state waters. The bill goes to Gov. Jon Corzine, who is widely expected to sign it. More details here.

The action overturns the Feb. 11 decision of the state Marine Fisheries Council to lift an existing moratorium - the only one of its kind on the East Coast, and a measure conservationists consider critical for preventing the further decline of the rufa race of the red knot, which has plummeted from a population of more than 100,000 in the early 1990s to near-extinction today. Similar declines are now beginning to manifest themselves among ruddy turnstones and semipalmated sandpipers, two other species that depend on the crabs' eggs during their spring migration to the Arctic.

Should we all just congratulate the N.J. legislature (and ourselves, since conservationists from around the country lobbied hard for this bill) and go back to birding? Hardly. The existing annual crab quota, set by the federal Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, is too high, and the commission should again consider a region-wide harvest moratorium, thus superceding a Delaware state court ruling last year striking down a state moratorium there.

The best source for information on the red knot/crab situation remains New Jersey Audubon.

No rest for the weary...

I'm blessed to have a remarkably enthusiastic and highly trained banding crew working on the Ned Smith Center's owl research project, but they really don't know when to stop.

Back in October my King's Gap crew, which bands at a state environmental education training center on South Mountain, near Carlisle, PA, started more than two months of nightly netting to catch migrant saw-whet owls. It's fun but tiring, and by the time they finished in the first week of December, they'd banded almost 240 owls.

They'd also fitted several with tiny, 2-gram radio transmitters, which allowed us to find the owls each day on their roosts, part of a study we've been conducting since 2000 to look at roost site and habitat selection. That part of the project has long been overseen by Aura Stauffer, a state DCNR biologist who has been one of our banders for years. So several nights a week Aura was staying up past midnight banding, and most days either she or one of the other volunteers was also out with an antenna and radio receiver, tracking the owls through Michaux State Forest.

One of the birds, radio-tagged Dec. 1 and nicknamed "Grinch," stuck around through at least the middle of February, when the signal from her radio faded and died -- probably empty batteries, which had reached the end of their expected life.

Now, having had just two weeks of rest, the King's Gap crew is moving back into a month of nightly banding again, as we try to document the spring saw-whet migration, which is far less well understood. Tonight was the first night, and my King's Gap site coordinator Gary Shimmel, along with volunteer Rhonda Hackenberg (who with her husband Scott, the park director, lives on the mountaintop) opened the nets at dark. (That's Gary in the photo, tracking the Grinch last month.)

Less than two hours later, Gary called to report that they'd just caught eight owls, and that the woods were full of vocalizations from others. Considering that our entire season total in 2001 (the last time we tried spring netting) was just seven owls, we're obviously off to a great start.