She’s following in the footsteps of her mother.
Grizzly bear 148 – the 4 -year-old-daughter of famous female grizzly 64 – is capturing the imagination of residents and visitors alike in Banff National Park.
Like her mom, she continues to defy the odds and make a living in this busy national park, all the while navigating train tracks, roads and a bustling tourist town.
“She’s using all the same areas as 64 so she’s being seen by locals and visitors,” said Steve Michel, a human-wildlife conflict specialist in Banff National Park.
“She’s quite prominent and I think people are developing the same attachment as they did with her mom,” he added.
“If she’s able to survive and have cubs in the future, the connection to her will be that much stronger.”
Grizzly 148 is one of the bears being monitored as part of the GPS collaring project – one of the initiatives in the Parks Canada-Canadian Pacific Railway joint action plan to try to prevent bears dying on the train tracks.
Michel said 148’s behaviour around people is pretty typical for a grizzly bear, noting she has had several encounters with people.
“Over the summer, we still saw some behaviour from her that shows she doesn’t like to have her personal space compromised by humans, so she will do some small hops, bluff hops and behaviour like that,” he said.
“It’s not full-scale bluff charges, but little short hops when people are getting a little bit too close to indicate to people she’s not happy how close they are. That’s pretty typical behaviour we would expect to see from a grizzly,” he added.
“We haven’t seen anything too concerning; she’s not overly defensive. She’s in close proximity to humans on a very regular basis and if she was extremely defensive and regularly exhibiting more significant defensive behaviour, that would be more concerning for us.”
Michel said one of his biggest concerns for 148 is her tendency to come into the townsite’s peripheral residential neighbourhoods, specifically to seek out fruit trees such as crabapples.
In early October, she made the rounds throughout neighbourhoods on the south side of the Bow River, including Glen Avenue, Spray Avenue and finally Park Avenue, where she found a crabapple tree. She was hazed out of town.
About 10 days ago, she was back in the townsite, this time on Cougar Street, eating fruit from a cherry tree.
Michel said neither the wildlife group nor the homeowner were initially aware 148 was on Cougar Street.
When they checked her GPS data, they realized she was there. Then, they found scat full of fruit in the area so knew she was eating from fruit trees.
RCMP, park law enforcement officers and wildlife staff were all at the site.
“We ended up having a couple of staff members work throughout the entire night to keep her from coming back into the yard,” said Michel.
“We were monitoring her closely with telemetry and she did make a couple of attempts to come back,” he added.
“Staff were able to haze her back into the forested area, and after a day or so, she decided to move away on her own.”
While she seems to be honing in on fruit trees this fall, in spring bear 148 developed a taste for spawning suckers at Vermilion Lakes.
Bear 64 started feasting on the suckers there about five years ago, teaching her youngsters how to fish there. Bear 64 is believed to have died in 2013 of natural causes at the age of 22.
“We were able to get fantastic video footage of 148 feeding down on the sucker pond,” said Michel.
“It’s a really significant food resource and it’s somewhat rare to be able to access that level of protein in spring without having to defend a carcass.”
Bear 148 is certainly looking healthy.
When wildlife staff handled her in mid-June to put a new GPS collar on her, she weighed about 80 kilograms. She’s beefed up a lot over the summer.
“She’s essentially a mature sized female, so I suspect we will start to see breeding activity with her next year,” said Michel. “That’s usually about the earliest we would see that around here.”
There were some issues with 148’s GPS collar this year, so there are gaps in the data, and as a result, wildlife staff don’t know where she was and what she was up to on occasion this summer.
But they do know she spent time in the Healy Pass and Egypt Lake areas, as well as in the northern end of Kootenay National Park, taking advantage of abundant food following the 2003 forest fires.
“It was really neat to see she was right there during prime berry season. It goes beyond the shepherdia. There’s more diversity in the berries there, and in the fruit species as well,” said Michel.
“We’re seeing a pattern emerge in the north end of Kootenay. We would not have known at all she was there without the GPS data.”
Michel said the bruin spent the majority of the summer away from the townsite, and did not return until fall.
“She wasn’t chronically around the townsite by any stretch, which was quite good to see,” he said.
“We did see her around the townsite during spring because foraging opportunities are a little more limited and she’s confined to low elevation,” he added.
“Her movements in spring would also be influenced by large males engaging in breeding activity. That’s when we would expect her to be near town.”
Bear 148’s home range is almost identical to that of her mother’s. She uses both sides of the transportation corridor, crisscrossing the train tracks and going through the highway underpasses.
She did spend most of her time, however, on the south side of the highway.
Michel said she did have a tendency to cross the cattle guard at the Sunshine interchange this summer, prompting Parks Canada to put a temporary electric mat in place to prevent her from doing that.
“We put up a remote camera and were able to document her turning around there,” he said. “It was effective.”
In the last couple of weeks, 148 spent time in the Mount Norquay area before heading further west along the Bow Valley Parkway, including in the burned area in the Sawback Range.
Michel said he expects 148 will den shortly.
“She was still active as of a couple of days ago,” he said, noting it’s thought she denned about the first week of November last year.
“Looking at the time and the weather conditions, I would expect to see her showing fidelity to a particular den site soon.”
