Part 2

Out in the park there are no trails except for one down Savage Canyon. The country is so open that trails are not needed. The river bars furnish excellent hiking, and even walking across the upland tundra is easy. A number of campgrounds are located along the road between the Nenana River and Wonder Lake.

This booklet is made available as a quick reference pertaining to the mammals in the park. The comments on each species are brief but perhaps sufficient to suggest their status. Distances are deceiving so field glasses should be used in searching the landscape for the larger animals such as sheep, caribou, and bears.

Grizzly Bear Ursus horribilis

The grizzly’s domain in the park extends from the glaciers at the heads of the rivers, northward to the north boundary. The grizzly may be discovered on an old river bar, on one of the low passes between the rivers, or traveling high on a mountain slope. One of the favorite haunts along the road is Sable Pass, where each summer one to four females with cubs, along with a few lone or mated bears, take residence.

Any bear seen out in the park is almost certain to be a grizzly because the black bear is confined to the wooded low country along the east and north boundaries. The hump on the shoulder and the dishfaced profile (rather than almost straight, as in the black bear) are good field characters. The general coloration varies from cream color (rare) to straw color, brown, chocolate, and black. The legs are always blackish. The fur fades considerably during the spring and summer. Hence, the new coat, fully developed by autumn, is always darker, and gives the bear a new, fresh look. One old male grizzly, not very fat, weighed 650 pounds. The females are considerably smaller. Because of the long claws on the forepaws, the track of the grizzly can be readily distinguished from that of the black bear, whose forepaw claws are shorter and more curved.

In the spring when grizzlies first come forth from their dens they seem to do much wandering over the higher slopes. At this season I have noted their tracks leading to the remains of sheep, caribou, and moose that had succumbed during the winter. Usually the wolves, foxes, and wolverines have long since feasted on the fleshy parts, but the bears are happy to crush the bones that remain on the premises and thus obtain a taste of the succulent marrow.

The spring and early-summer food is chiefly the root of the peavine (Hedysarum alpinum americanum) that flourishes on old vegetated river bars and on many mountain slopes. Using both paws, with their long claws, and straining backward with his body weight, chunks of sod are turned over to expose the thick peavine roots. With delicate strokes, his paws further expose the roots, which taste much like the garden variety of pea. So extensive is the root-digging at times that an area may look like a plowed field when the bear has finished. At this season, because of these food habits, bears can often be seen on the open river bars and on the ridge slopes. Cranberries and crowberries that have wintered under the snow are often eaten in spring.

In June, green vegetation becomes available and a drastic change of diet results. The root digging is terminated for something better. A grass, (Arctagrostis latifolia), with a stiff and juicy stalk, and growing in swales and wettish areas, is a favorite. The bears also graze extensively on horsetail (Equisetum arvense), mountain-sorrel (Oxyria digyna), and the tall showy white saxifrage (Boykinia richardsonii). A pea (Oxytropis viscida), growing abundantly far up the streams on old river bars is extensively grazed.

The grizzly is quite fastidious in his feeding on dock (Rumex fenestratus). He severs the thick juicy stem with a bite and as he chews, the large reddish seed head drops from his lips, neatly discarded.

The grizzlies continue grazing and chomping green grasses and herbs until berry time when another major change of food habits takes place. Some grazing still persists but now the bears turn wholeheartedly to blueberries, crowberries, and the bitter scarlet buffaloberries, the three species of berries most abundant and available. The lush berry of alpine bearberry (Arctous alpinus), that ground-hugging woody plant that colors patches of the landscape a brilliant scarlet in autumn, are sometimes eaten, but not with any efficiency. The berry diet continues through the autumn but at this season a few roots may again be sought.

The bear belongs to the order Carnivora and yet little mention has been made of meat in the diet. He is perhaps, so to speak, a victim of evolution and has had to adjust. As his mature size became ever larger through eons of time, he became too slow to catch large herbivores such as the caribou, and his large body required more sustenance than could be secured by digging for mice and ground squirrels under usual circumstances. Therefore he had to turn more and more to vegetation which could be secured in quantity. This is not as drastic a change as we might offhand suppose. It is one chiefly of degree, because we find carnivores such as the fox and the marten turning to a berry diet for a period, from choice.

But it appears that the grizzly would like more meat than is generally available. This I infer from the quantity he eats when he finds a carcass and from the avidity with which bears of all kinds seek spawning fish when available. The only animal that the grizzly consistently hunts in the park is the ground squirrel, but a squirrel contributes only a mouthful and its capture usually requires excessive time and energy. Sometimes a squirrel is surprised and captured before it can disappear in a burrow. But generally a squirrel is secured only after extensive excavating which may involve as much as half an hour, and not infrequently the bear, after much digging, fails to unearth his intended victim. In years when meadow mice and lemmings are especially abundant, bears may make their capture a project which contributes at least a tasty diversion. Caribou and moose calves may occasionally be captured when very young, but the season for this food is short. Occasionally tidings come to a bear’s keen nose that carrion lies upwind, and the lucky bear keeps gorging until only a few bones and patches of hide remain.

After feeding on a carcass the bear often covers it with sod and vegetation. One fall at Stony Creek I watched a bear at a cache which showed up as a dark mound surrounded by a dark circular area from which the sod had been torn loose. For an hour the bear kept methodically raking the surrounding area beyond.

He was scraping the loose vegetation toward the cache, working leisurely with one paw at a time. The loosened material was pushed toward the cache as the work progressed. When I examined the area later, I noted a circular patch, extending out 20 feet from all sides of the carcass, that had been combed clean of loose vegetation. The bear finally lay down on the cache to wait for digestion to create more space for this rich fare.

North of Wonder Lake a grizzly had similarly covered a caribou that a hunter had left lying in the field. The bear was not at the cache, but since most of the carcass was still intact, he probably was not far away. I found some carcasses that were not covered with sod. A mother and two yearlings at Polychrome Pass left a caribou carcass without covering it and retired to some steep cliffs overlooking the area. The following day they rested near the carcass, but still no effort was made to cover it.

Mating takes place in May, June and early July, and a pair remains together for two or three weeks. I suspect that a male might look for a second marriage following the termination of the first. One large crippled male was successfully consorting with two females at the same time, neither female objecting to the presence of the other—in fact, both probably preferred it that way.

The cubs are born in the hibernating den in midwinter, are 8 or 9 inches long, and weigh less than 2 pounds at birth. The number of cubs in a litter ordinarily varies from one to three, two being the most frequent.

The cubs not only nurse throughout the first summer but to about the same extent during their second summer abroad, when they are robust yearlings. I had been surprised to find yearlings regularly nursing, but it was a greater surprise to observe mother grizzlies nursing cubs over 2 years old, in their third summer abroad. The protracted nursing period indicates a breeding interval of females with cubs, of three or more years, since females followed by nursing yearlings have not been seen consorting with a male.

The dens used for hibernation are excavated by the grizzly if natural caves are not available. A den is usually dug on a rather steep slope. The entrance to one I examined was about 2 feet wide and a little less than 2½ feet high. A tunnel 6 feet long led to the chamber which was roughly 4 feet in diameter. Cinquefoil brush and grass had been used for the bed. This den was still usable six years after it was dug. But another den dug in October caved in the following summer. It lacked the firm protective sod roof of the more durable den.

Bears, like humans, enjoy a good back-scratching. Trees along a trail or on some strategic point are much used, as shown by the rubbing signs and the adhering hairs. If trees are not available, willow brush, a boulder or a sod bank may be used. The corner of a log cabin is considered an excellent surface. A pole lying on the ground is a fair substitute, and where no structure is available and a bear feels itchy he may lie on the ground with all four feet in the air, wriggling ludicrously with excessive energy to do the job.

Generally the grizzlies wander freely over the tundra. But they are not averse to taking advantage of a convenient trail when they have a definite destination. Trails that are much used by bears, such as we sometimes find along the bank of a river or through a woods, show a series of worn depressions. These depressions are due to the grizzlies’ tendency to step in the same tracks. They no doubt have been formed by the passage of many bears over a long period. Pieces of such bear trails may be seen a half mile above Teklanika bridge and a short distance below the bridge, on the west side of the river bar.

The grizzly has survived in only a few states, more by accident than by our planning for his future. In Alaska we have a great opportunity for giving the grizzly and the rest of the fauna ample room for carrying on their living in a natural, free manner. The grizzly needs extensive wilderness country for his way of life, and wild country is also vital for the highest development of human culture. If we provide for the future of the grizzly, we at the same time provide wilderness for our own needs.

Black Bear Euarctos americanus

The black bear is widely distributed in Alaska. In the park it is confined to the forested areas along the north and east boundaries. I have occasionally seen one near the Nenana River and in the Wonder Lake area I have seen them 3 or 4 miles north of the park feeding on blueberries.

Black bears may be black or brown, but those I have seen at McKinley have all been of the black color phase. The black bear lacks the pronounced shoulder hump of the grizzly. The tan muzzle is also distinctive. Equipped with strong, curved claws, the black bear climbs trees with surprising agility, a talent the grizzly seems to lack.

The food habits of the black bear are similar to those of the grizzly, but in general they spend more time turning over rocks and tearing apart logs in search of insect life. They feed on herbs and grass, are fond of berries, hunt mice and dig out ground squirrels, and are ever on the alert for carrion. In the Rocky Mountains and on the West Coast, they occasionally strip the bark from trunks of spruces, pines, and firs in order to feed on the inner cambium layer. Along the coast of Alaska they sometimes congregate to feed on spawning salmon.

Where we have bears we have potential bear problems. Roadside feeding of bears creates beggar bears—always dangerous. Allowing bears to obtain food in cabins or camps demoralizes them, encourages them in a life of plunder and general anti-human depredations—the usual outcome is damage to humans and the death of the bears. A point of view generally disregarded by all is the effect of garbage on the bears. No garbage should be made available to bears anywhere for the simple reason that such artificial food interferes with the natural feeding habits of bears and their natural distribution, tending to congregate large numbers of them in a limited area. Administrators and public alike must ever be heedful of the problem. Clean campsites and proper garbage disposal are desirable in this regard.

Caribou Rangifer arcticus stonei