The brave grizzly bears wandering outside the protected Northern Continental Divide may encounter all kinds of human troubles. This year, vehicles are causing losses again, but highway funding may now help reduce road fatalities.

On Wednesday, the wildlife and land managers of the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem learned that this year is a year of high incidence: high grizzly bear mortality, high numbers of conflict calls, high livestock losses, and a large number of uncontrolled bear attractants.

Cecily Costello, a bear biologist for fish, wildlife and parks in Montana, said that 42 bears died in the NCDE monitoring area this year, including a buffer zone, area 1, and surrounding areas. Wild primary reserve. Prior to this, the most NCDE bears killed in a year were 31 in 2018.

This year, of the 30 bears that were not cubs, 7 were killed on the road, FWP eliminated 7 due to livestock conflicts, and 5 more were poached or died under investigation.

In contrast, an average of 3 bears die every year due to livestock conflicts, 3 die from poaching, and vehicle collisions kill nearly 2 bears every year. Some cubs also died on the road.

Another 10 bears died outside the monitoring area, mostly in the east. Among them, three died on the road, and four clashed with livestock in a field on the front line of the Rocky Mountains.

A total of 6 bears died along U.S. Highway 89, and 2 died in the Flathead Valley on U.S. Highway 93. Two other people were killed on Montana Highway 83, which passed through Swan Valley.

Vehicle collisions can cause burly animals like grizzly bears to suffer great pain before they die. Costello described a woman who was shot at least four times outside of Glacier National Park. Someone saw another bear struggling in Salmon Lake, only to find that his back was broken and his pelvis was smashed in a vehicle collision.

"In the poaching incident, we had quite a lot of car deaths and more bears," Costello said. "In the main reserve, the death toll has not really changed significantly, but we do see that the number of bears dying outside the recovery area and even outside the DMA is increasing."

But Costello said that the death toll of 10 women and 20 men is still below the mortality threshold specified in the NCDE protection plan.

Biologists in the area have been busy answering phone calls about bears, installing electronic fences, and trying to educate people about the need to keep unsafe garbage, birds, and pet food indoors.

Several bears killed 53 cattle and 21 sheep this year, mainly in Glacier and Pondela County, causing chaos. George Edwards of the Montana Livestock Loss Commission said he paid the rancher a record $270,000 in dead livestock expenses, but denied the report that the Loss Commission had no money.

Edwards said: "I said that if the grizzly bear's predation continues to increase at the rate it has always been, we may be out of money in a few years."

In the Flathead area, bear biologist Tim Manley said that he used to receive about 200 calls each season, but this year is close to 300. He eventually captured 32 bears, 11 of which are now dead. This did not exceed the high of his 40 bear markets in 2004 and 2011, but it easily surpassed the average of 19 bear markets each year. He was so busy with the conflict that he had no time to transport bears to increase the number of cabinet-Jacques Grizzlies.

Further south, bear biologist Jamie Jonkel also handled about 60 incidents. Fortunately, the Blackfoot Challenge helped reduce conflicts in the Blackfoot Valley, as problems in almost all other areas are increasing, especially Lake Westlee and Missoula.

Jonkel is still fighting the trash problem in the Seeley area, where some residents with limited income do not have bear-proof trash cans because they do not subscribe to trash services. After the local resorts bought out most of the hotels, the situation got worse.

As a result, people who have no place to live end up camping in private campgrounds without bear-proof containers. Jonkel said that a man fled into his car, only to see a grizzly bear dismantling his cooler and tent.

"We tried a lot of different strategies there. But we still have a lot of problems in Sealy," Junker said. "So from now on, we will become more active."

But Missoula didn't look much better, and people still kept bird feeders and trash cans outside. Recently, a female grizzly bear with three cubs successfully entered the hut, chicken coop and garbage truck in Beishan. She may have been the bear who bumped into the same chicken coop last year and learned that she can get food rewards. A full-fed bear is a dead bear for a reason.

"We will meet with the commissioner, the city council and the mayor to see what we can do to advance things in Missoula," Junker said. "We have been telling people that eventually we will have grizzlies in this area and manage ourselves accordingly. The time has finally come."

The Grizzlies are moving to many areas they haven't been to in decades, and some are traveling hundreds of miles to do this.

This year, two bears have shown how far they can travel if allowed. Costello said that a bear photographed in Big Hole Valley had traveled 120 miles from his birthplace in NCDE.

However, a collared bear called "Lingenpolter" not only amazes biologists. In addition to traveling at least 80 miles from north of Drummond to east of Sura this summer, Lingenpolt also demonstrated the threat of Interstate 90 to wildlife.

Last fall, his GPS location showed that he spent 29 days looking for places to cross the road before giving up the winter. When he woke up from hibernation this spring, he spent another 24 days driving parallel on the highway until he found an intersection with the Clark Fork River flowing under the highway. Without that discovery, Lingenpolt might be another Grizzly collision statistic.

"The interesting thing is that he seems to be having trouble crossing I-90," Costello said. "The Xs I made on the map show the time when the GPS location is within 500 meters of the highway. To me, this seems to be when he tried to cross the highway but was refused."

Joe Weigand, a biologist at the Montana Department of Transportation, was surprised by the number of bear collisions. But he worked on some animal crossing structures in the state, and knew that wild animals tried to cross some problem areas on various roads, sometimes unsuccessfully.

Weigand hopes that Montana will receive part of the $350 million in the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Employment Act dedicated to animal transit.

"It may not go too far; it can be used very quickly," Weigand said. "But we have established a partnership and we are already working on it, which is good."

The timing couldn't be better. Weigand said that local groups, including the Missoula Area Connectivity Working Group, are already trying to develop intersections on some problematic highways. They started with some small-scale projects, including improving the area under the highway that Ringenpolt crossed. Weigand said this can lay the foundation and gain support for larger projects in the future. Perhaps fewer bears will die as a result of collisions.

"The two things fit very well," Weigand said. We have hope for funding, we can continue to advance, and these local community groups, who hope to take the lead and try to prove that Montana can succeed and complete the work with the funds available to us. "

Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com

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