Candid cameras capture wildlife antics

It's not like the greatest hits of the natural world, a highlight reel of wildlife at their wildest, but images captured by grizzly bear researchers in Northwest Montana do provide fascinating, revealing glimpses of candid wildlife behavior.

"I think a major part of it is the proximity, getting a look at even a coyote trotting down a trail just 15 feet away is interesting," said Jeff Stetz, a U.S. Geological Survey research assistant who has developed a talent for using remote cameras to photograph wildlife in Glacier National Park.

"What do bears do in the woods?" is the title of a recent presentation Stetz offered in the park.

People have long been able to watch bears and other wildlife in the park, but those same people often have an influence on the behavior they are witnessing. Remote cameras see different things.

Stetz found a downed log on a trail, for instance, that was wildly popular with black bears and grizzly bears.

"This log has been chewed on by bears as long as I've been here," said Stetz, who started in the park on grizzly population study conducted in 2004. "They come in, hang out, take a nap. And we don't know why."

Stetz said he has seen as many as 14 different bears visiting the log in a single season.

Another star in Stetz's presentation is a large male grizzly bear that does an elaborate shimmy dance with his back to a relaxing rub tree.

The rub tree was one of many that were monitored during the 2004 study, which involved collecting bear hair samples for genetic analysis to produce a snapshot estimate of the grizzly population throughout the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.

The study, led by USGS ecologist Kate Kendall, collected 20,785 hair samples from scent-baited sites surrounded by barbed wire. Another 12,956 hair samples were collected from rub trees.

The study identified 545 individual grizzly bears throughout an 8 million-acre study area straddling Glacier Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. After statistical modeling was applied, the study officially estimated that the population of grizzly bears in the study area was 765 during summer 2004.

Stetz, Kendall's lead assistant, said remote cameras were deployed during the study and provided valuable information on how bears approached the barbed-wire hair-snagging sites and rub trees.

Remote cameras have since been applied to other wildlife research. They have been used, for example, to see how wildlife are making use of crossing structures that have been built under highways.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks bear managers have used them in Northwest Montana to avoid "non-target" captures of bears. A camera set up to observe a baited culvert trap can help managers determine if they have an unwanted black bear visiting the trap or if a specific trouble-making grizzly bear is visiting.

If they have the right bear, the trap can be set to capture the target.

"They've eliminated dozens of non-target animals over the last couple of years," Stetz said. And eliminating non-target captures reduces management costs and unnecessary stress on bears.

Remote cameras are hardly new when it comes to wildlife. Stetz said top nature photographers in the early 1900s rigged their clunky equipment with shutter triggers. And hunters led the way for a resurgence in remotely monitoring wildlife.

Stetz said hunters 'really were the impetus for the resurgence" in remote photography, which now mostly relies on passive infrared sensors of the type that turn on lights in restrooms.

As the technology has become far more affordable, it has been put to use in the field in a wide variety of applications, he said.

Remote cameras intended for bears have on many occasions captured other wildlife species. Stetz said his cameras have picked up just about every type of critter in Glacier Park: deer, moose, foxes, coyotes, martens, mountain lions, even a wolverine and wolves on rarer occasions.

One of the best sequences captured involved a grizzly bear with two young cubs that had been feeding on a deer. A lone black wolf teases the group, and the younger bears respond, chasing it off repeatedly.

Another sequence shows a group of eight wolves trotting along a trail. And yet another shows a male wolf marking his territory on a grizzly bear rub tree.

The various images gathered by Stetz have proven popular with news programs and documentary makers, including CNN, the Today Show, Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel.

The USGS images can be viewed on the Internet at:

http://nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/NCDEbeardna.htm

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com