Program Updates, Winter Solstice 2011

“Grizzly!” exclaimed Adam Switalski, our Science Program Director, pointing straight ahead. I had seen grizzlies in the wild before, but always thankfully from a distance. This one was just a few feet away.

As it was, this was just a photo of a grizzly (sorry), but nonetheless it took me aback, as this griz had a particularly menacing look to its eyes. And the next photo Adam showed me was even better: two small shadows were in the grass following the bear — her cubs.

These photos, and this griz sow and two cubs, are special to Adam and Wildlands CPR, as they are our first photographs of grizzlies on a reclaimed road, captured using motion sensitive cameras we set up in the Gallatin National Forest (MT). The fact that this was a female grizzly with cubs is also significant, as females demonstrate a growing and expanding population more than lone, wandering males.

For the past seven years, Adam has spearheaded a long-term wildlife monitoring project, attempting to answer the question that seemed obvious, at least to us, but in which there was very little scientific evidence: after road reclamation, do wildlife actually return to reclaimed areas?

Thanks to support from the National Forest Foundation and others, Adam began this project in 2004, setting up remotely triggered cameras and track plates on roads, and former roads, in the Clearwater National Forest (CNF) in Idaho.

We started to get the answer to our question. With multiple years of high-quality data (Adam ran this project on the Clearwater for five years), we collected 900 photos and 650 tracks of wolf, coyote, fox, mountain lion, bobcat, fisher, American marten, ermine, moose, elk, white-tailed deer, black-tailed deer, field mice, jumping mice and voles, all using open, gated, abandoned and recontoured roads on the CNF.

Adam worked for months crunching the numbers on the Clearwater, working with former Wildlands CPR Board member and Assistant Professor of Restoration Ecology at the University of Montana, Cara Nelson. The results? The Clearwater study demonstrated that black bears use habitat on reclaimed roads far more (almost four times as much) than habitat behind roads simply gated or bermed. The reason? Road reclamation recreates habitat security and restores bear habitat, like serviceberry bushes and other available fall foods, while also providing needed hiding cover. Significantly, the Clearwater National Forest has developed one of the most active road reclamation programs in the country, with more than 3,000 acres of secure wildlife habitat created since its inception. Adam and Cara’s research was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal, Biological Conservation.

While their research dealt with black bears, there are important management implications for grizzly bears in the Clearwater as well, where restoration of this kind of highquality habitat could provide key linkages between expanding grizzly populations in the north, to prime habitat in the Salmon- Selway to the south. (In 2007 in fact, an adult male grizzly bear was inadvertently
killed by a hunter in the proposed Great Burn Wilderness, just north of Adam’s study area in the CNF — unfortunate that it was killed of course, but a grizzly hadn’t been officially documented in this area for 60 years.)

It’s a different story in the Gallatin. As of 2010 biologists estimated about 600 grizzlies living in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which contains the Gallatin National Forest. And in 2010 Adam expanded his wildlife-monitoring project into six different national forests in Forest Service Region 1 (Montana, eastern Idaho and western Dakotas), including the Gallatin.

This new monitoring project, also supported by the National Forest Foundation, is looking at Legacy Roads and Trails projects pre- and post-reclamation, to examine wildlife use and gather additional data to build on the CNF project. Adam hired two field technicians for the 2010 and 2011 field seasons. During the first year, they conducted wildlife (and vegetation) monitoring on roads before reclamation, and in 2011 the same monitoring on the same former roads after reclamation.

The 2011 field season recently ended, so Adam is just now analyzing the data, and it’s too early to report results. But here’s where the Gallatin griz comes in. In 2010 we monitored this site before reclamation, and while we did record some use by deer, elk and moose, there were no bears. However, just weeks ago, we retrieved the Gallatin motion sensitive camera back from the field. Upon checking the photos from this year’s monitoring of sites post reclamation, the sow griz with two cubs appeared twice over the course of a week. This was a preliminary but encouraging sign that even very road-wary species like griz will return to reclaimed habitat.

So if you want to see the beginnings of a success story, of grizzlies returning to new and restored habitat, go to the Gallatin. But if the prospect of literally running into a grizzly makes you hesitate, just look at our photos instead, knowing they are returning, knowing they are there, staring with those eyes, again.