Status Updates From The Bears of Brooks Falls: ...

Conflict is not an inherent outcome when people interact with wildlife. Conflict occurs most often when we don’t value the needs of wildlife and aren’t willing to change our behaviour to accommodate them.

National parks were never truly “vignettes of primitive America.” They are vignettes of what humans have chosen to save.

(Sometimes I have to lay down when I think about climate change…)

If the parks are places where natural processes dominate, then we must self sacrifice part of our experience to protect wildlife and the experience of people who come after. Not one person needs to stand in Brooks River to make a living. However, every single bear does. To accommodate a full spectrum of bears, we must fundamentally rethink how we use and enjoy the river.

“Pebble limited partnership, a corporation of Northern Dynasty Minerals, a Canadian mining firm, says the mine can be built and operated without substantially altering salmon habitat.”

Omg FUCK this company

“With salmon runs in the contiguous 48 states cleaved to a fraction of their historic highs, humans are the cause of and witness to the impoverishment of entire ecosystems.”

Damn.

“There are little bears and large bears, skinny bears and chubby bears. But few get as fat as 435 Holly. Standing at the edge of the water, she seems to have no neck, just a head and stubby legs projecting from a keg shaped body. When she enters the water, she floats effortlessly, buoyed by a life jacket of ample body fat.”

Legend 🥹

“I tried moving farther toward the falls but the strength of the rushing water was too great. I couldn’t keep my footing or stay in one place. Curious to get even closer (a thought that has led to the undoing of many young men over the history of humanity), I decided on an alternative route, this one following the base of the falls.”

Learning about the jacuzzi is so great!

“If wilderness can be a feeling, I’ve felt it most strongly while standing at the edge of the ocean.”

Reading about how salmon change their gill membrane proteins and direction of water / ion movement to prevent osmosis from killing then during the transition from freshwater to saltwater is GREAT. Because I worked on that kinda, in my co-op term! But it was for brook trout!

When given a choice among foods that offered primarily protein, carbohydrates, or fat, bears do not feed indiscriminately. They self selected a diet that contained about 17% protein. The rest was a combination of carbs and fat. This ratio provided bears with 2 important benefits: accumulation of fat and maintaining or even increasing their muscle mass.

“Bears don’t live within or have any conception of our codes of conduct.” Or morality! Which is something I need to remember when I get sad about nature being nature and bears pass away or fight

“Bear olfactory bulbs are 5 times larger than a human’s, impressively big considering their brain is less than half the size of our own.”

Reading about Grazer and 273 with their cubs is really sweet and loving. “Cubs become her students, fellow explorers, and companions. It’s almost as if, dare I say, we see a bit of humanity in a bear family.”

Bears are metabolic magicians. Not eating, drinking, urinating, or defecating, or developing osteoporosis or muscle atrophy or diseases from being immobile! They emit nothing except water vapour, body heat, carbon dioxide!

“When daybreak didn’t arrive on June 8, kodiak’s residents wondered aloud if they’d meet the same fate as the citizens of Pompeii. Townspeople even took the extreme step of closing saloons, agreeing that every man should keep his mind clear.”

that made me laugh; same energy as being on lockdown in Cancun for the hurricane and the Europeans were miffed they couldn’t drink

My latest August obsession is the livestreams of brown bears at Brooks Falls, Alaska, where massive brown bears are trying to get really really fat for hibernation. I’d like to learn more about Brooks Falls, and this book is written by their resident naturalist Mike Fitz. Looking forward to it!