1996 McNeil River Sanctuary Report

by Larry Aumiller

It was yet another wonderful season at McNeil River in 1996. In early June a fun group of volunteers helped open camp, gather firewood, and continued the never-ending trail maintenance.

Eighty-seven recognizable bears were observed in the sanctuary. That's a small increase from last year, and represents the second highest total since records were begun in 1976. Use by bears at McNeil Falls, however, remains somewhat low, probably due to lower chum salmon numbers.

The Alaska Board of Game closed the McNeil Refuge north of McNeil Sanctuary to brown bear hunting. This added protection along the north boundary may have contributed to the reappearance of all of the "regular" recognizable bears at the sanctuary in 1996.

Doogie, an older female, was the star of 1996 as she returned with three first year cubs. She spent most of her time in the sanctuary close to people. Unfortunately, she lost one cub in June when it fell off a cliff and died. But her other two cubs were large and healthy at the end of the summer. Teddy returned without cubs. She is such a tolerant bear and we are hopeful that she'll return in '97 with new cubs.

There are still several bears at McNeil that I saw in my first year at McNeil 21 years ago. These include Flashman, R.C., Sterling, Spooky and Earl. These bears are probably approaching 30 years of age.

Graduate researcher Polly Hessing continued quantifying how many chum salmon are taken by bears at McNeil Falls and under what circumstances. Because of Polly's sampling schedule, the staff and a few visitors spent three entire nights watching bears. We learned a few things while sitting around in the middle of a bunch of bears in the dark. The bears see well at night and avoided us. We learned that they fish all night although their numbers dwindle by about 2 a.m. Preliminary results show that the bears eat even more fish than we previously suspected.

Last winter Derek Stonorov and videographer Dan Zatz produced "The Way of the Bear," a video about bear behavior. In 1996 Derek began collecting bear hair for DNA "fingerprinting." He put up several scratching posts made out of driftwood and barbed wire. Whenever possible we collected bear hair left behind by a recognizable bear. This work has different potential applications including examining the interactions between bears that are "kin."

The McNeil chum salmon runs remain low. However, the Division of Commercial Fisheries has already committed some manpower and funds to examine methods for improving the run.

Beginning in July, the funding for the Sanctuary program was cut severely by the legislature. A variety of potential funding sources are being explored.

Every year that goes by I'm even more amazed at how the bears tolerate us. It seems they are much more willing to tolerate humans that visa-versa. I hope humans will find it in their hearts and minds to be equally tolerant of bears everywhere.