Mania, management actions as 399, cubs split
JACKSON — When Lindsey Wennerth saw two of grizzly 399’s offspring meandering through the Solitude subdivision Thursday evening, her motherly instincts kicked in.
Seeing the 2-year-old subadults out on their own, knowing they’d been emancipated from their mother, proved emotional, Wennerth said. She and other wildlife watchers emphasized how 399 had been nursing her now sizable offspring only a few days before.
“Everyone gets to a point where they have to let their kids go be. It’s the best thing for them,” she said. “But it was nice seeing the two cubs together, just knowing that they have each other. Going from a group of five to single is pretty big.”
Solitude sits just 2.5 miles south of Grand Teton National Park headquarters in Moose.
Knowing the bears had been fed in the subdivision before and gotten into attractants elsewhere in the valley, Wennerth worried about the bears’ proximity to homes, and she wasn’t alone.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department, which is taking the lead managing the popular bears outside the park this year, hazed a collared male cub Friday that was still hanging around Solitude. Game and Fish personnel used vehicles and cracker shells to scare the bear.
Later that day, the collared cub was seen following another un-collared bear heading north as wildlife watchers scrambled around the park trying to catch a glimpse of the splintering bear family.
That wasn’t the first time the collared bear had been hazed. Game and Fish officials hazed 399 and her cubs multiple times while they were moving through Jackson Hole last fall.
Dan Thompson, the department’s large carnivore supervisor, said it isn’t necessarily department policy to try and haze bears out of residential areas. But he said it’s a commonly used tool.
“We’ve done it for years,” he said. “It’s not some new change. It’s just now everything that’s done seems like it’s documented.”
The spotlight is certainly on the bears.
Wildlife managers said in early April that 399 and her brood faced a “tough road” — and that all management options were on the table, relocation and lethal removal included. WyoFile reported last week that lethal removals have exceeded relocations in the state in the past five years. And Thompson reiterated to the News&Guide that relocating 399’s progeny could be tough given their history, leaving lethal removal as a likely tool for managing them if they get into conflicts.
He pushed back, however, on the notion that Game and Fish is eager to remove the bears.
“I have gotten hundreds and hundreds of emails asking me not to jump straight to killing them, but we’re not jumping straight to that,” Thompson said, pointing to joint decisions last fall from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bridger-Teton National Forest, and Game and Fish to haze the family and trap and collar some of the cubs. “The notion of us going straight to killing these bears is unfair to the work that’s been done these past few years.”
The famous five-some spent last fall in southern Jackson Hole, getting into garbage, livestock feed and other attractants. When the bears emerged from the den on Easter weekend, they left the national park and headed south, delighting Wilsonites with roadside views but raising alarm in the process.
The five bears managed to avoid conflicts on that trip and returned to the park. But now that the grown cubs have split from their mother, there’s potential that they’ll get into trouble down south.
“I worry about the ones that have gone into Solitude because of the food rewards they’ve gotten there,” said Henry Holdsworth, a Jackson wildlife photographer who camped out Friday on Teton Park Road, waiting to see 399 — or the emancipated subadults.
Thompson said Tuesday that the department hasn’t hazed 399’s progeny further. The cubs also hadn’t gotten into any other trouble that he or park officials knew about by press time Tuesday.
Justin Schwabedissen, the park’s bear management specialist, said Friday that the bears were in good places within Grand Teton. But he said he would “certainly have concerns” if they move past the southern boundary.
“Younger bears are super curious, more likely to get into conflicts,” he said. “We need everyone’s help to give these guys the best shot at long term survival.”
That conversation followed a day of relative pandemonium as wildlife photographers and watchers scrambled to figure out what had happened over the past 48 hours as 399 and her family split.
“They must still be here somewhere, but God knows where,” wildlife photographer Tom Mangelsen said, driving past the Murie Ranch on Friday morning, trying to find a trace of the bears.
The grizzly family’s official separation seems to have been spurred by a large boar that showed up to court 399. Wildlife watchers and photographers speculated that the bear was Grizzly 679, known colloquially as “Bruno,” but officials weren’t able to confirm that.
Last week, the bears spent a few hours together by the road near Jackson Lake Lodge, delighting passersby.
But soon after, one of 399’s two collared, male children separated from its mother and three siblings. The other three littermates also left 399 at one point, Schwabedissen said. Those three bears returned sometime Thursday night, only to be chased away by the boar interested in their mother.
Schwabedissen said the boar was “just focused on mating.”
“We watched repeatedly as [the] male grizzly was chasing the cubs off,” Schwabedissen said.
By midday Friday, one collared cub was seen alone farther north in Grand Teton. Two other bears, including the collared cub that was hazed out of the Solitude subdivision, were spotted walking north just west of the Moose entrance station. Determining the collar-free bear’s identity was difficult. At the time, wildlife watchers speculated that it was the other cub from the subdivision. But afterward, Mangelsen said he was confident it was 399.
The confusion highlights how large the cubs are now. When they were collared last year, Thompson said they were pushing 250 pounds. Now, they’re larger and closer to their mother’s size, adding to Friday’s bedlam.
Grand Teton Chief of Staff Jeremy Barnum said that people were getting too close for comfort.
At one point, the two bears spotted farther south in the park walked through the center of a bear jam.
The bears got within 50 yards of a line of photographers before the Wildlife Brigade, volunteers who help manage roadside jams, sent the crowd packing. The duo, one bear up front and a collared sub adult tagging along behind, passed directly through the tightly packed mass of vehicles.
Barnum warned that wildlife watchers need to be quicker to get out of the way when bears head toward them.
“If someone gets too close to a bear and does something unnecessary or foolish and that bear has to be relocated — or worse — that’s the visitor’s, photographer’s mistake,” Barnum said.
Mangelsen, who has followed 399 for years and tracked down earlier descendants after they’d been kicked off, said things were different this year. For one, there’s the heightened worry about the bears, particularly after they trekked through Solitude.
But 399’s popularity has also risen precipitously.
Kristin Combs, executive director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, a nonprofit raising money to help Jackson Hole residents get bear-resistant trash cans, has received donations from Florida, New York, Texas, California and Washington.
“There are far more people here and far more people interested just in her,” Mangelsen said.
Those fans include Teresa Griswold, who has developed an emotional connection to the five bears, wherever they may roam. Griswold has seen all five together, including emerging from the den this spring. On Thursday, she watched as the boar courted Grizzly 399, driving the cubs off. Watching the family split up, she felt like she’d watched a cycle complete itself.
“The anticipation of it felt kind of sad,” she said. “But it didn’t feel sad once I witnessed it and felt like the circle had been completed — that everyone was going to move into their natural space.”
This story was published on May 18, 2022
