Listening and learning as a means to safely live with bears
Two grizzlies move through the Blackfoot watershed east of Missoula, Montana. Here, a landowner organization known as the Blackfoot Challenge is making a collective effort to safely live and ranch with grizzly bears. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE/ZANEN PITTS
In the rural 1.5-million-acre Blackfoot watershed, Montana’s characteristic working lands are on full display. Generational ranches are replete with grazing cattle and hay stacks; rolling grass and strings of timber are seldom interrupted by the intermittent farmhouse or cabin; deer and elk graze while songbirds and waterfowl decorate the river banks and sky.
Summer sojourners access the Blackfoot along Highway 200, and the valley’s small-town hubs might attract cyclists, river rafters, anglers and campers, as well as area residents. In the center of the watershed, just off the highway, the tiny town of Ovando greets visitors with a sign: “Ovando is Open.” For bicyclists, the town serves as a rest stop along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route that runs 2,700 miles from Canada’s Banff National Park to the U.S./Mexico border in New Mexico.
In July, Ovando made national headlines when a grizzly bear killed a California cyclist who was camping in town during her Great Divide tour. The bear, initially attracted to the campsite by food in the tent, killed 65-year-old Leah Davis Lokan before another couple in her party sprayed the bear with bear spray to drive it away. Three days later, after trapping efforts and helicopter searches were unsuccessful in locating the bear, wildlife officials shot and killed a six-year-old male grizzly after it raided a chicken coop just 2 miles outside Ovando. DNA tests confirmed it was the same bear that killed Lokan.
The incident was the first grizzly bear-caused death in the Blackfoot since an elk hunter was fatally injured in 2001, and according to conservation biologist Seth Wilson, Lokan’s death was a reminder that it takes continual work to live in areas that support bears. Wilson has worked for over 20 years in the U.S., Canada and Europe on resolving issues between people and wildlife, and currently serves as the executive director of the Blackfoot Challenge, a landowner-based organization that coordinates efforts to conserve and enhance the natural resources and rural way of life in the Blackfoot watershed.
“Our condolences are going out to Leah Lokan and her family and all of her friends and loved ones,” he says. “We’re working to make sure we have a really strong community response in Ovando to help prevent something so unfortunate from ever happening again.”
For two decades, landowners and natural resource professionals have worked within the watershed to reduce human-bear conflicts, adopting innovative strategies like electric fencing and proactive livestock management, but Wilson contends the work is ongoing and needs to continue to evolve as changes occur on the landscape. As an immediate response, the Blackfoot Challenge installed three food storage lockers at campsites in Ovando so that campers can securely store food away from their tents. The group also provided temporary electric fences for campers, purchased 16 bear-resistant trash cans available for checkout to residents, is working with area residents to install electric fences around chicken coops, and is providing bear spray to visitors and community members.
These efforts are part of the Blackfoot Challenge’s long tradition of working with the people that live in the watershed and are examples of how partnerships serve as a critical foundation for conservation solutions. By listening to and learning from each other, the watershed is making a collective effort to find strategies for safely living with grizzly bears that make the most sense for the community.
Guiding Light
Eric Graham, the wildlife coordinator for the Blackfoot Challenge, monitors a tranquilized grizzly bear’s vital rates in cooperation with MT FWP. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE/BARRY GORDON
It’s mid-afternoon during this year’s uncharacteristically hot June and Jamie Jonkel has just sat down for a cup of coffee. Jonkel is a bear management specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Missoula and is responsible for responding to conflicts between grizzly bears and humans in the west-central part of the state. Hired by MT FWP in 1996, the Missoula native has followed in the footsteps of his late father, a grizzly biologist who led research on the species after the bears were placed on the Endangered Species List in 1975. Jonkel has spent the last 25 years learning about bears, educating people, and dealing with problems when people and bears collide.
Jonkel tells me bear conflict is at a momentary lull during the June heat, as grizzlies forage in the mountainous parts of his district, but he knows problems will ramp up again soon as bears begin to seek more food in preparation for hibernation. After berries and other mountain foods are no longer available, grizzlies and black bears often move into lower elevation foothills and valleys, where they sometimes seek out food in human developments. Things like garbage, fruit trees, dog food or home gardens are all an attractive food source to a bear.What Jonkel considers to be a critical part of his job is working with people in communities where bears live or travel in order to create preventative solutions that keep bears from accessing food attractants or reduce the likelihood of problems where people and bears overlap.
Just a few short years into his position, a growing number of grizzly bears began making an appearance in the Blackfoot Valley, where a coalition of landowners newly formed as the Blackfoot Challenge had already teamed up to tackle issues over recreation on the Blackfoot River. “I saw how wonderfully the Blackfoot Challenge was functioning,” Jonkel says, so MT FWP asked the Blackfoot Challenge Board if there was a way to incorporate the management of grizzly bears into their watershed work. He admits there was some trepidation at first—predators were a sore subject for many ranchers that feared predation and an end to their livelihood.
“We had 11 grizzlies show up into a mountain valley that wasn’t prepared for grizzlies,” he says, adding that the bears quickly started to cause problems for ranchers. During spring calving, ranchers commonly lose some calves and cows. Historically, ranchers placed dead livestock in a boneyard near their calving pastures, but as bears returned to an area where they’d been absent for three decades, this type of carcass management became a problem. “These grizzlies started circling the valley, going from boneyard to boneyard. We had upward of 11 at a time in a rancher’s backyard, where they found bird feeders, dog food, horse feed.”
In 2002, a year after a hunter was killed by a grizzly, the Blackfoot Challenge formed the Wildlife Committee to bring together landowners, biologists and other interested parties to identify community values and recommend strategies for minimizing conflicts with bears. Since then, the committee has been instrumental in developing actual solutions that work for the Blackfoot communities.
“The Wildlife Committee acts as a sounding board and provides guidance on issues,” says Jonkel, who is a member of the committee. “It serves as a guiding light.”
Making Sausage
About a decade ago, Potomac rancher Denny Iverson bore witness to the scavenging nature of a grizzly. With his ranch tucked in the valley bottom on the lower end of the Blackfoot watershed, he had transitioned his livestock carcass management from the traditional boneyard and was making use of the Blackfoot Challenge’s Carcass Pick-up Program. Personnel had cleaned up his old boneyard and dead livestock were taken off of the property for disposal. When Iverson lost a calf to pneumonia during the fall, he thought rather than bother the program organizer he would just bury the dead calf in the old boneyard.
Denny Iverson, a rancher in Potomac, Montana, with his grandchildren. According to Iverson, ranching in grizzly country requires a certain level of responsibility. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE/COURTNEY HATHAWAY
“I threw 4 or 5 feet of dirt on top of it then came by a few days later and it was dug up,” Iverson recalls. “I was amazed a bear would dig that far down to get to a critter.”
Today, Iverson never dumps a carcass on the ranch. He says it’s just not worth it. “Even if a bear doesn’t dig it up, they still might be attracted [to the area] and get into some other type of trouble. A troublesome bear is a dead bear,” he says, referring to instances when managers must euthanize a bear with a history of causing conflict.
Iverson has been a member of the Blackfoot Challenge Board for nearly 20 years and his ranch was among some of the first to participate in the Carcass Pick-up Program. “Part of it’s just getting used to them,” he says. “There are certain things that are our responsibility, like cleaning up our boneyards or not keeping grain out.”
During the calving season from mid-February through mid-May, a Blackfoot Challenge contractor visits ranches up to two times per week to pick up dead livestock and during other parts of the year contractors for MT FWP or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pick up and transport the animals. Carcasses are taken to a composting facility operated by the Montana Department of Transportation and recently, a nearby ranch has begun utilizing the livestock compost to enhance soil health. In its first year, 63 carcasses were picked up from a handful of ranches. Today, 90 percent of the valley’s livestock producers utilize the program and on an average year, roughly 350 carcasses are removed and composted.
"The days of going at it alone, whether you’re a landowner, a conservation group or an agency, are gone. You’re not going to be successful. It’s about partnering up, being a team, finding that common ground."
While the new carcass management tool was suggested by wildlife officials, Greg Neudecker of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says landowners and ranchers ultimately decided how to organize the program and whether or not to try it. Neudecker, who is based in Ovando and was a founding member of the early Blackfoot Challenge Board, partners with private landowners in nine focus areas in Montana to develop conservation strategies for critical wildlife species.
“Just because someone comes up with ideas, that doesn’t mean they’ll work on the ground for landowners,” he says. “One of the things you learn in community-based conservation is that the folks most affected need to be there during the sausage-making process.”
At the time, the Wildlife Committee heard from people already working on carcass disposal programs on the Rocky Mountain Front and in Canada. As a result of those conversations, the group was able to develop a personalized program for the Blackfoot. Neudecker says it was a sensitive issue to work through—ranchers don’t want to be judged by their peers about losing cattle, yet some loss is an inevitable part of animal husbandry. But with dedication to what the Blackfoot Challenge calls the 80/20 rule, they were able to progress. On this premise, members of the group are committed to work on the 80 percent they have in common, not the 20 percent that divides. Once they have built trust and credibility on the 80 percent, then they’re able to tackle the remaining 20 percent.
“It’s really critical,” Neudecker says. “You’ve got to focus on those things that you have in common and you can’t do that until relationships are built. The days of going at it alone, whether you’re a landowner, a conservation group or an agency, are gone. You’re not going to be successful. It’s about partnering up, being a team, finding that common ground.”
Neighbored Up
Jim Stone of Ovando, Montana, has adopted a holistic approach to ranching and embraces community-wide partnerships. “It gives the bears a chance and it gives us one too,” he says. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE/PARTNERSCAPES
Jim Stone stepped up to the helm of his family ranch at the ripe age of 24. He was fresh out of college and ready to take on the world. “I spent more time worrying about cows than wildlife,” says the Blackfoot Challenge Board Chair. Thirty years later, he says his mindset has changed. Rather than focus on his cattle, the rancher says he focuses on the environment and knows that in turn, it will take care of his cattle. It’s what Stone calls a holistic approach, and includes wildlife-friendly fencing, intensive cattle management for soil health and weeds, and securing anything that might attract bears.
“If you secure attractants on all the neighboring ranches, then the bears start to change their behavior. For me the idea of partnerships is where it’s all at. We have to neighbor up,” he says, adding that the Blackfoot Challenge provides a forum for the communities in the watershed to get together on issues. “Without the Challenge, we would just be out there by ourselves trying to make a living.”
“When you do it not only as a community, but as an entire watershed, that’s powerful,” Stone adds. “There’s nothing better than seeing 1.5-million-acres working together and everybody pushing in the same direction. It gives those bears a chance and it gives us one too. The bears are going to be able to be here and I think we will too.”
David Mannix, who is also a member of the Blackfoot Challenge Board, agrees with Stone. He and his family operate the Mannix Family Ranch which dates back to 1882. “I was a lot more anxious 15 years ago than I am now simply because I think I can see a way forward. I think we’ll be able to maintain our livelihood. Ranching is a stewardship of the resource with a strong leaning for profit. We need to make a profit so we can be here for another generation, another decade, another year.”
Wildlife Coordinator Eric Graham uses radio telemetry to locate collared wolves and grizzly bears. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE/MELISSA MYLCHREEST
Stone installs fladry fencing around a cattle pasture. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE
Mannix says ranching and living around predators can incite fear and anxiety. There are legitimate human safety risks as well as threats to livestock. He says mothers worry about their children playing in the yard and ranch hands are at risk of stumbling upon a bear while checking cattle or fixing fences. He describes having to euthanize a calf that was mauled by a bear or wolf pack. “You might feel like a failure in your husbandry of that calf. Emotionally it is a big deal because the stress affects you every day and just a few people shoulder the vast majority of that problem. We need ways to empathize with each other rather than throw rocks at each other.”
The Blackfoot Challenge provides information, programming and assistance on a voluntary basis to anyone in the watershed that wants to get involved.
Wildlife Coordinator Eric Graham has been with the organization since 2013 and says the wildlife program has evolved based on the needs of landowners and ranchers. In addition to carcass pick up, he assists with electric fencing around backyard attractants like gardens, chicken coops or beehives, as well as livestock areas such as calving pastures. The Blackfoot Challenge also oversees a range rider program where staff monitor a particular cattle herd while it is turned out on summer pasture on private land or grazing leases on state or federal land. These range riders check for signs of predation on cattle by wolves and grizzly bears and report findings back to the ranchers so that they can make informed cattle management decisions. Additionally, the increased human presence when range riders regularly monitor cattle may deter carnivores from preying upon the livestock.
Graham says all of these tools have to be adapted for the particular landowner and situation in order to have the most success. “I always say I ride the fence. I don’t come in with a certain frame of mind. Instead, I meet with a rancher and I listen a lot. I listen to their concerns and needs. Sometimes you’ve got to take it slow.”
Modern Methods
Currently, the Blackfoot Challenge is in development of a drive-over electric mat—just one example of the watershed’s adaptive approach.
“You can put in all this work to build a five-wire electric fence around a ranch compound, but it gets to be a lot for landowners having to open and close gates,” Graham says. In 2019, the Blackfoot Challenge secured funding through the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Conservation Innovation Grant to develop the mats, which will eliminate the need to open and close gates around electric fence enclosures.
The group is in the third year of testing, and mat prototypes are installed at a handful of ranches in the watershed where landowners are piloting several different designs. The mats are fabricated locally and are made of either rubber or plastic bottoms with galvanized steel overtop that can carry an electric charge. The developers have also installed game cameras at each test site to evaluate whether grizzly bears avoid the mats or not. While the electric current isn’t strong enough to injure an animal, it does provide a startling shock, which so far, has been enough to prevent bears from crossing over the mats.
Working lands make up a significant portion of the Blackfoot. PHOTO COURTESY OF BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE/COLTON COUGHLIN
MT FWP Wildlife Conflict Specialist Eli Hampson assists with the installation of a prototype electric mat. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE
In addition to developing and deploying conflict prevention tools, the Blackfoot Challenge is taking an active role in assessing the effectiveness of different tools. The coalition is one of a group of partners from seven western states working with the land stewardship organizations Western Landowners Alliance and Heart of the Rockies on a three-year study to assess the effectiveness of range riding, electric fencing and carcass removal at reducing the number of livestock lost to predators. Researchers are looking to understand what conditions make each tool most effective in different landscapes. Ultimately, study results could assist federal and state agencies in allocating funds for grizzly bear and wolf conservation work.
“We’re working directly with producers to ensure that the questions being asked are providing value back to them,” says Alex Few, a coordinator for Western Landowners Alliance who is overseeing the conflict reduction research.
“Private working lands are the most biodiverse lands in the Lower 48,” she says, adding that while public lands like Yellowstone and Glacier national parks provide significant wildlife habitat, migrations and dispersal often rely on intact private lands as well. “If we can find strategies that increase productivity of livestock operations while reducing conflicts with carnivores, we will have a win-win for both land stewards and wildlife. We can’t do that without including livestock producers in the research process.”
As landscapes throughout the American West bear witness to increasing development and recreation pressure, sustainable land stewardship becomes increasingly important, as do partnerships and respectful dialogue. By listening to and learning from one another, communities can collectively address challenges that come with grizzly bear recovery and turn them into landscape-level opportunities.
Jessianne Castle lives west of Montana’s Flathead Valley and is a freelance writer, editor and founder of the Grizzly Bear Collective. An advocate for solutions journalism and thoughtful storytelling, she passionately writes about the experiences of living in the West.