Grizzlies getting closer to old Great Falls stomping grounds

Karl Puckett | Great Falls Tribune

Show Caption Hide Caption Grizzlies return to the range Young grizzlies bears are expanding the range of the population in northcentral Montana.

Grizzly bears are inching closer to Great Falls, Montana's third largest city, where two centuries ago they chased members of the Lewis and Clark expedition and vice versa.

“It’s just a matter of time before bears are on the outskirts of Great Falls,” says Mike Madel, a grizzly bear management specialist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

On June 1, a plucky pair of young grizzlies turned up at the mouth of Box Elder Creek, where it enters the south side of the Missouri River, between Ryan and Morony dams.

That’s 12 miles northeast of Great Falls, a city of 60,000 residents – and the same vicinity where Pvt. Hugh McNeal, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, ran into a grizzly bear in July 1806, when the expedition passed through the area on its homeward journey.

The expedition also portaged around a series of "great falls" on the Missouri River on its way west in 1805. Today, those water falls are the location of hydroelectric dams.

“Oh wow, so that’s very close,” Norman Anderson said of the locations of the historical and modern-day bear sightings.

Anderson is a Lewis and Clark expert who plays Meriwether Lewis in reenactments of the expedition’s portage around the falls.

McNeal, who was traveling on horseback from the expedition’s upper and lower portages to check a cache, was forced to scramble up a willow tree after he was thrown from the horse and broke the butt of his gun over the bear’s head, Anderson said.

His encounter was documented in Lewis’ journal.

The return of the pair of young grizzly bears to the Great Falls vicinity a week ago was documented by a landowner who took pictures of the bears running across a grassy green hillside.

“Each year it’s more likely bears will be close to town,” Madel said.

Where the bears were seen also is in the vicinity of bike and walking trails that are part of the River’s Edge Trail system centered in Great Falls.

One of the system's stops along the north trail is “Box Elder Creek Scenic View.”

FWP says the presence of the young grizzly bears just downstream from Great Falls drives home the importance of making rural residences safe.

The animals can be attracted by unprotected food ,including grain, livestock feed, beehives, livestock, garbage and pet food.

In the olden days, bison brought bears to Great Falls, Anderson said. “The buffalo came across by the tens of thousands every year."

Back then, the great falls of the Missouri River was a major bison crossing.

One shallow section of the river is located near the current railroad crossing over the river near the Great Falls Tribune building, Anderson noted.

In the 1960s, Anderson recalled, a guy drove a Jeep across that shallow section of river and a local auto dealership had him do it again so they could film a commercial.

Bison weren’t always as successful in making it to the other side. If they crossed when the river was flowing high, some would be swept down the river and be injured or killed on the water falls, Anderson said.

As a result, there were a lot of dead buffalo around.

And dead bison attracted hungry grizzly bears.

“There’s bears all over,” Anderson said.

Bison are long gone. Anderson wonders what's bringing the bears back.

"What' they're doing out here now on the prairie I don't know," he said.

It's just the natural expansion of a healthy, growing grizzly bear population that's putting them in closer proximity to people, FWP's Madel said.

“I think these bears are searching for areas to develop new home ranges," he said.

Historically, grizzly bears occupied grasslands like Great Falls all the way to the Mississippi River but they’ve been gone for more than 100 years.

In recent years, grizzly bears have been traveling river corridors like the Sun, Marias, Dearborn and Teton rivers east of the Rocky Mountain Front to the high plains.

The expansion onto the plains has come as the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem population of grizzly bears of northwestern and northcentral Montana continues to recover.

The population, currently listed as threatened, is more than 1,000 bears and growing at about 2 percent a year.

Sub-adult bears are the dispersing mechanism for grizzly bear population expansion, Madel said.

Most often it’s young males, which don’t take on a portion of the mother’s home range, that really travel.

“They go off far and wide, and they are exploring new places,” he said.

Right now, several groups of sibling bears are traveling together without their mother, he said.

Two young bears also were seen the last week of May along the Teton River near the vicinity of Floweree 24 miles northeast of Great Falls, and Carter, which is 5 miles northeast of Floweree, Madel said.

The bears that showed up just northeast of Great Falls are likely the same bears as those seen near Floweree and Carter, Madel said.

Monte Giese, who lives on the Teton seven miles north of Carter, was outside when he saw two bears 200 yards away from his house. He shot video of them walking across a field.

“I may not be in the majority, but I think the fact we live in a landscape that can support those kind of animals is pretty neat,” Giese said.

Eventually, they took off down the Teton River, and presumably headed south toward the Missouri River and Great Falls.

To reach Box Elder Creek northeast of town, the bears would have had to cross the Missouri River, a formidable obstacle when it’s flowing high in the spring.

Grizzlies are good swimmers, but Madel doubts they would have attempted to swim the Missouri at the rate it’s flowing now.

However, the reservoir area above the Morony Dam is calm.

“It’s really possible they got down to the river and they got to the still water of Morony Reservoir, and they swam the reservoir,” Madel said.

On the west side of the Continental Divide, Madel noted that bears have crossed sections of Flathead Lake.

“In this case, I wouldn’t say it’s unusual, but it’s certainly a first in recent history a bear has made it across the Missouri River that we know of,” Madel said.

Box Elder Creek, where the 21st Century grizzlies were seen, is too steep to farm and hasn’t changed much since the Lewis and Clark Days, Anderson said.

“If they swam the river, then they could go up Box Elder Creek,” Anderson said.

On June 14, 1805, a grizzly bear chased Lewis into the Missouri River. Today, an iron grizzly bear sculpture in West Bank Park marks the approximate location.

The encounter probably occurred closer to where the Albertson’s grocery store parking lot is today because the river was wider 200 years ago, Anderson said.

In 2004, Anderson played the role of Lewis in a reenactment of that encounter for a short film on the expedition. A 450-pound, 6-foot-8 young grizzly named Adam was brought in for the part of the wild grizzly, roaring and swatting his big paw. At some point, Anderson recalled, Adam got bored and jumped a fence set up to keep him in like it wasn't there.

"He takes off running across there, because it's pretty shallow," Anderson said. "When he hit the current on the north side of the river, it swept him a way like he was a twig."

Adam pulled himself out of the river at Steamboat Island downstream.

Another location where expedition members clashed with bears came at the upper portage camp on the banks of the river off of what is now Lower River Road.

“They had bear trouble all around there,” Anderson said. “They actually went and hunted bear a couple of times on White Bear Island to try to get rid of them because they were having bears raid their camp at night.”

Lewis and Clark hunted the bears and used the oil for cooking, Anderson said.

Historical accounts of the Crow and Blackfeet also document grizzly bears being close to their camps on the high plains, Madel said.

“Certainly Great Falls must have been a favorite area,” Madel said.

Obviously, people get concerned about grizzly bears being around, but in general the bears are wary of people, Madel said.

“They usually run,” Madel said of the sub-adults that are searching out new territory. “But they are learning and dispersing and exploring new habitat and that brings them into close proximity to people.”

FWP has received no reports of the young bears since they were seen June 1 northeast of Great Falls.

“It will be interesting to see where the next observation of those two are,” Madel said.

With areas east of the mountains dominated by cropland, there is less suitable habitat available for grizzly bear occupancy, Madel says.

There is one place in northcentral and central Montana where grizzly bears might be able to make a go of it, and that's the Missouri River Breaks, Madel said. That's because it includes vast areas of public land such as the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument and the Charles M. Russell National Widlife Refuge.

“If a bear makes it out there, it might actually stay there and all of a sudden you have the creation of an island population,” Madel said.

Secure food, FWP advises

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is advising homeowners in areas where grizzly bears are now showing up to take down bird feeders, secure garbage inside a closed garage or secure shed, feed pets inside, clean up chicken and livestock feed and remove all odorous substances such as hummingbird feeders.

FWP also advises ranchers and farmers to use some form of aversive conditioning if they see a grizzly in their yard. That could be firing cracker shells provided by FWP. Firing the shells creates a loud noise and is meant to scare the bears off. It is legal to escort a bear off private property in a vehicle, but it’s considered illegal harassment to chase them for a long time, FWP says.