Encountering Rival Predators
One of the most conspicuous spring events each year in Denali is the sudden appearance of brown bears seemingly everywhere in the moose calving areas, where relatively few bears are seen for most of the rest of the year. In fact, at this time of year, bears are heavier hunters of Denali moose and other prey than are wolves, accounting for half to three-quarters of moose calf deaths, compared with about a quarter from wolf predation. One well-known moose-hunting mother and three-cub family in the late 1970s was known as the “fearsome foursome.” They patrolled a twenty-mile transect through moose calving areas each spring, killing with considerable success and coordination as a unit.
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Field notes #3
May 22 [no year]
8:35 pm—blonde grizzly bear with a fair bit of brown mixed in eating on what appears to be a moose carcass, 1/3 the way up the north-facing slope of Jenny Den Ridge, about opposite the den—this is in high willows with scattered spruce, so my view is partly obscured. However I can see that the bear has piled up earth and is sprawled out on top, tugging away in the characteristic style while feeding on a kill. Single adult cow moose & 0 calves, 1 mile W of above bear, walking steadily farther westward—too far to tell if she is lactating, but she has no calves—possibly she is coming from the area of the bear, after having lost her young to it? Looks like an adult bear. Now I can see a light tan wolf about 20 ft from the bear, which explains why the bear is sprawled atop the carcass. The wolf then walked slowly to a snow patch 100 ft away, where it then lay down with a bone or chunk of meat and commenced chewing on it, its back to the bear, and vice versa—bear busily chewing and eating also, virtually ignoring the wolf.
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Moose calves have been killed within twenty feet of the front door of the park service headquarters, and within two hundred feet of the Denali Hotel; bears have pursued fleeing calves right through the middle of startled campers' tents and campsites and right past the hotel dining room window, with many patrons watching while eating supper—some even complaining that the management hadn't given them advance notice of the show.
Bears also move back into moose areas in the fall, to hunt bulls who have been weakened by rutting activities. In five cases I found bears killing two bulls together—the bulls had fought to exhaustion and could not defend themselves when the bear showed up. I once observed firsthand just how exhausted and vulnerable bulls are after a fight. I watched from the Savage River cabin as two bulls fought twenty feet away. They almost crashed through my front door as I prepared a fast exit out the rear window. Afterward, I could literally walk right up to the two behemoths as they lay exhausted and completely drenched in sweat.
This bear-hunting impact on moose calves in spring and rutting bulls in fall is likely kept in check by the intense harassment from the resident wolves, who are competing for the same prey. When bears reappear in spring and hunt heavily on moose calves, wolves resist their intrusion. This heavy harassment appears to deter a certain amount of bear activity: the bears don't enjoy quite the free run of the area that they otherwise would. This means that a reduction in wolf activity wouldn't necessarily translate into a reduction in overall predation, and might even lead eventually to a predation increase by bears. There is a standoff of sorts between the two predator populations, which could shift considerably with a sudden major wolf reduction.
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Field notes #3
May 22 [no year], continued
9:10 pm—the wolf walked back to within 10 ft of above bear, and suddenly a second bear appears 10 ft away from behind a tree, glowering at the wolf with a sideways look. This is a dirty blonde bear, a large female—therefore, what we have here is a mother bear and one older cub, in its 3rd or 4th summer. The wolf walks off ~100 ft behind the bears, sniffing around the bushes, apparently picking up blood, carcass pieces, etc., here and there—both bears are now eating, 5–10 ft apart.
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Both bears and wolves commonly attempt to steal a fresh kill from the other. I once watched five wolves drive a brown bear from the nearby carcass of a bull moose the bear had killed a day earlier. Ten other family members had already started eating. A bear requires at least a week to consume an adult moose carcass, meanwhile ferociously attempting to guard it against all comers. In direct combat, even a large group of wolves would be sorely outmatched by one adult brown bear. However, using systematic harassment, it is usually possible for only four or five experienced wolves to bother a bear enough so that it finally runs off, as was the outcome in that early October encounter.
Still, when it comes to bears and wolves, one is never sure what will happen. Imagine yourself enjoying a pleasant afternoon nap and suddenly waking to some close, oncoming huffing and puffing and the sight of three large, irate grizzly bears on a full charge. My pilot and I watched this scene unfold during a September 16, 2008, research flight in Denali National Park, as three bears woke three wolves of the Swift Northeast family abruptly at close range while the wolves were taking a break on a hunt.
Although wolf-bear encounters are common in Denali, this one was unusual among the many I've observed in the way the bears—a mother and twin three-year-old cubs—aggressively charged the wolves from a considerable distance even though there was no caribou or moose kill to try to take from them. More commonly I've observed wolves harassing bears, usually in attempting to take over a kill and often with what seems like an element of sport for the wolves. It is an age-old rivalry that I am convinced includes some genuine dislike for each other, beyond the normal aggression of other competitive and predator-prey relationships.
The wolves' bold behavior around bears—often even attempting to bite them in the rear end—always amazes me. Bears are quick, fast, agile, and much more dangerous than wolves, especially with the lightning-fast swats from their powerful, clawed front legs. There were no injuries in this case (typically there are none), and the entire encounter lasted only about ten minutes. The bears left, and the wolves resumed their nap as if nothing had ever happened. (See Plates 14–16.)
Wolves and bears sometimes, however, choose to ignore each other. In 2007 I watched a grizzly bear cross to the wolves' side of the main river channels and ignore them while digging pea-vine (vetch) roots, a late-summer delicacy. Two of the wolf pups approached to within one hundred feet and watched the bear intently for about twenty minutes; they seemed fascinated. The bear could have covered the distance to them within seconds but continued to ignore all of the wolves. Meanwhile, the alpha male was lying down in willows, keeping a casual watch on the bear, and the alpha female was resting near him. Were the bear to have made a move for the pups, the alphas would have been there almost instantly. Perhaps the alpha male's own early experience with bears was involved in allowing his pups a front-row seat for this bear show. As a pup of the same age in August 2003, he “chased” a grizzly bear for several hundred yards by himself when the bear finally left a mostly eaten caribou kill that the older wolves had been trying to appropriate. It was only after his obviously alarmed mother ran after him that he stopped pursuing. The bear ignored him, about seventy feet behind, while continuing to leave the area.
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Tweet
July 10, 2009
Grizz bear going same way on forest trail during my hike to den. Lukewarm droppings indicated he was a good half hour or more ahead of me.
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“Real Bad Brown Bear Country”
When I began venturing to one of the Toklat dens in 1966, several old hands on the park staff warned me that it was “real bad brown bear country.” Back in those days, only relatively few backcountry areas of the park saw much hiking activity, and such tales about bear activity in that area, together with its sometimes truly dangerous river crossings, helped to keep it among the least traveled areas. It took on a kind of bear mystique over the years.
But bears or not, I was determined to go wherever necessary to observe the wolves, and I be
gan frequent trips into the area that first year. It is now more than a hundred trips and forty-three years later, and I've had only a handful of bear encounters there. Probably the most unnerving was one in which I never saw the bear—only its fresh tracks. I crawled out of my tent one July morning in 1967 to discover that, sometime in the night while I slept, an adult bear had circled me at least four times only a few feet away, apparently debating whether or not to jump on the tent and give me what surely would have been the biggest—and quite possibly last—surprise of my life.
In fact, at many homesites, I could usually count on seeing one or two brown bears within a mile or two. Once, in 1969, I was met by a mother brown bear and her twin two-year-old cubs fifty feet from the burrow complex, and once in 1970 by a single adult brown bear about 100 yards from the den. In neither case were wolves currently occupying the sites, not surprising, given the animosity between these two top predators.
In June 1980, I was watching the den site from my usual campsite across the valley when suddenly a subadult bear appeared on the gravel bar about two hundred yards north of the den point. The bear looked and acted like a typical three- or four-year-old who has recently been chased off by its mother and is feeling quite alone.
But before the bear could proceed another fifty yards, six adult wolves exploded out of the trees from behind the point, raced up to the bear, and were instantly circling it in a menacing, no-nonsense way with tails and hackles raised. Very quickly they started attacking the bear: first one wolf darted in and bit a hindquarter, whereupon the bear swung around to retaliate; then another wolf bit the bear from the opposite side. It didn't take long for the bear to recognize its poor odds, and soon it was running for its life. All six of the wolves chased for about a hundred yards, until the bear crashed through a main river channel and suddenly turned on them in a burst of fury. This seemed to convince them that they had made their point and could go home now.
I try not to choose sides during incidents such as this; nonetheless, it did give me a nice feeling to see the bear resume its flight without serious injury and without wolves in pursuit. Then I realized that the bear's fast retreat from the wolves was taking it straight across the valley—to me. It kept coming, not yet aware of my presence, bounding along in that deceptively fast, rocking-horse way bears run, stopping twice to rear up and look back toward the den.
The bear saw me at two hundred feet and stopped abruptly. It raised up again, first to look at me, then back toward the den, and then sat down while continuing to look at me. I was slightly relieved, because it didn't have the menacing demeanor I have seen a couple of dozen times over the years when other Denali brown bears bluff-charged me at this range or closer. The young bear now seemed quite interested in me in a nonaggressive way, and not the least bit anxious to leave.
After studying me for another minute from the same sitting position, it retreated fifteen feet, then walked calmly first to my right and then to the left, maintaining a distance of two hundred feet and continuing to watch me with curiosity. This continued for ten minutes or so, at which point the bear started acting like it was going to stay around a while. It even began digging and eating roots while calmly keeping an eye on me. Simply put, it seemed apparent that the bear merely wanted some companionship, almost like a stray dog that has just attached itself to a newfound human. I remained wary but not panicky, and indeed was starting to feel sorry for this big baby. Nevertheless, I couldn't imagine crawling into my tent in a few hours for a restful night of sleep with a bear—friendly or not—hanging around just outside, perhaps entertaining the notion of joining me inside.
Twenty minutes later, when the bear began digging roots only about a hundred feet away, I decided it was time to break camp and leave. As I gathered my gear, the bear stopped rooting and started walking a bit closer, then stood and watched me. I quickly weighed my options as I continued watching the bear and decided to regain some space by throwing a rock at it. I plopped a big one right in front of the bear, and immediately it bounded away about a hundred yards. The expression on its face as it turned to look back at me was almost one of dejection. But then it came bounding right back, to within a hundred feet again. I waved my arms, yelled “Shoo, bear,” and threw another rock. The bear bounded off but then returned again. I shooed it away a third time and it bounded right back. It was behaving almost as if this was a game; its facial expressions and overall demeanor didn't convey any serious aggression.
My expedited camp-breaking soon saw me hoisting the old expedition Kelty onto my shoulders and departing the area. I threw another rock at the bear as it started to follow. This worked—it just stood there, with what truly seemed a look of dejection. I remained quite aware of the harm the bear could do to me if it wanted, but as it continued to stand there and I continued to put more distance between us, I couldn't help feeling sorry for it. Its own mother had probably chased it off recently, a bunch of wolves had just appeared out of nowhere and started picking on it, and who knows what else it had endured. And now I had just turned on it with rocks, and it was alone again.
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Snapshot: Wolves with Bears
Troy Dunn
Flying with Gordon, I got to see plenty of wolf-bear interactions, but I never saw a bear killed by wolves. Usually we'd see a bear eating, and then the wolves would come up, become an annoyance, and literally start nipping the bear in the behind. It was a standoff, and whoever got tired first didn't get the meal. Most of the time the wolves got tired and left first, and then the bear would lie down spread-eagled on the kill.
Once we watched a big grizzly take down a moose, and the six wolves of the Mount Margaret group showed up. They started hanging around, but it was a big bear, so they ambled off. Then they came upon a scrawny cow moose that looked like she was on her last legs. The cow took off running with the wolves in pursuit. She ran up Riley Creek, made a U-turn, came back down Riley, and ended up within one hundred yards of where the wolves had harassed the bear. The wolves took down the cow, but then the bear kicked the wolves off it, and dragged it through the brush to the other kill. Now the bear had two moose, and the wolves just curled up nearby to wait him out.
Once near Teklanika we found a subadult bear sleeping with a group of wolves. We were counting the wolves and then realized, wait a minute, that's not a wolf, that's a bear.
“Is that bear alive?” I asked. So we continued our orbit and saw that it was.
“Yeah,” said Gordon, “that's a subadult, probably just kicked off by its mother and feeling lonely.”
That was one of the darnedest things, a bear hanging out with wolves, and the wolves didn't seem to care a bit.
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CHAPTER 10
NATURAL FEARLESSNESS: WOLVES AND PEOPLE IN DENALI NATIONAL PARK
MORE THAN FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE VISIT DENALI NATIONAL PARK and Preserve every year, drawn by the natural scenery—particularly Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America—and by the wildlife. More than the sheep, caribou, moose, or even brown bears, what many people want to see are wolves. Haber was well aware of this, and took issue with the National Park Service many times for what he saw as mismanagement—especially in designated wilderness areas—of their primary directive: to protect the natural systems of the park. His relations with the NPS, as with all federal and state managers, as Joel Bennett recalled, varied with political winds. But at least with one longtime NPS wildlife biologist, Dr. Tom Meier, Haber maintained good relations and mutual respect. According to Meier, he and Haber talked nearly every day, comparing notes about Haber's observations and NPS tracking data. “Gordon had a real history with the park,” Meier said, “I admired him, getting out there so much, doing really tough and grueling work.”
In this chapter, Haber addresses three of the issues that he and the NPS disagreed upon: whether the tolerance toward people shown by park wolves is habituation or simply wolves' natural fearlessness; whether the subsistence moose hunt in the preserve shoul
d allow killing of park wolves and bears as well; and whether the methods for darting and collaring of wolves, notably involving the accidental deaths of three wolves subsequent to darting, were sound. Previously, Haber had agreed with NPS about habituation; however, his long-term and continuous observations of wolf families, particularly of the two newcomers to Toklat in 2001, led him to a different conclusion. The fear wolves show toward people, he concluded, is a realized fear, not a natural fear—one born of persecution. In the absence of persecution, as in the wilderness areas of Denali National Park, wolves show a nonthreatening fearlessness, and perhaps some mild curiosity, toward people. For Denali's eastern wolf families, this natural fearlessness toward people makes them easier targets for trappers and hunters in the Wolf Townships.
Not Habituation but Natural Behavior
IT IS CONVENTIONAL WISDOM THAT WOLVES AND OTHER CREATURES should inherently fear people, and if they do not, something must be wrong with them. This isn't, however, necessarily true. For wolves, it isn't possible to draw clear lines between natural and unnatural, wild and habituated in the way they respond to people. This is in part because of expected variation among individuals and groups and over time, as earlier chapters have shown. In fact, for wolves in particular, it is more likely the other way around: fearless, bold, inquisitive behavior around people is much closer to “natural” and “wild” than are fear and wariness.
In 2002 the superintendent of Denali National Park declared that the “fearless” behavior of Denali wolves was unnatural, potentially endangered park visitors, and had to be reversed. The National Park Service began advising Denali visitors and employees to throw rocks at any wolves within throwing distance to make them afraid, and to “be aggressive” toward any wolf that approached within one hundred feet, “to send a clear message to the wolves that they are not welcome.” NPS gave implied consent to visitors to use virtually any weapon available on a wolf perceived—accurately or not—to be dangerous. It began experimenting with its own, mostly covert, aversive measures, including shooting at wolves with a paintball gun and luring them to a booby-trapped tent where a pepper spray discharge awaited.
Among Wolves: Gordon Haber's Insights into Alaska's Most Misunderstood Animal Page 14
