Cameras reveal fault in Eagle River trail plan

Camera-shy these bears are not.

They've visited Meadow Creek about three times a week all summer -- most often a brown bear sow and a yearling cub, according to Fish and Game. At least one large boar clearly was photographed carrying salmon from the creek, and there was a sow with a 2-year-old cub too.

The bears are night owls -- all but one sighting came between 9:37 p.m. and 5:07 a.m. -- and they deftly avoided nearby areas thick with humans.

"Bears often follow natural features like river shorelines," Anchorage wildlife biologist Rick Sinnott of Fish and Game said in the report. "It is highly unusual for brown bears to approach or leave Meadow Creek through the developed parts of Eagle River."

The cameras are being deployed to buttress Fish and Game's opposition to a proposed state trail that they say would increase the risk of bear encounters near the river. According to Sinnott, few places in the municipality would be more dangerous for a trail.

The attack on Rees in August 2008 had similarities to an earlier mauling of Petra Davis, who was competing in an all-night mountain bike race in Bicentennial Park at the time of her attack.

"It's the same kind of situation that we had with Petra, in the sense that it's dark, a salmon creek and it's essentially a dark trail," said Fish and Game biologist Jesse Coltrane in 2008. "The same variables were there."

The proposed Eagle River trail triggering Sinnott's concerns is a 5.3-mile segment of the 14-miler from the Glenn Highway Bridge over Eagle River to the Eagle River Nature Center which includes a pedestrian bridge near the campground, two pedestrian bridges upstream and two trail loops less than 3 miles long on the south side of Eagle River.

Already, the highway and expanding Eagle River neighborhoods funnel bears into an increasingly narrow corridor "greatly restricted and channeled by human development," Sinnott said.

"If all of these trails are built," he said, "brown bears will have precious few places to avoid people in Eagle River canyon.

"Bears can be expected to use any new or improved trails in the Eagle River canyon and will use a proposed pedestrian bridge across Eagle River, near the campground, to avoid swimming across the river to access the salmon in Meadow Creek."

Monica Alvarez, land use planner at the state Department of Natural Resources, said the idea for the Eagle River greenbelt trail dates back to 1992.

"Lots of folks in Eagle River would like that amenity, would like to ride bikes along a greenbelt trail system like the Chester Creek system in Anchorage," she said.

But moving from concept to a cleared trail is a long process that she estimated would cost millions of dollars and take years to complete, even if Fish and Game's bear concerns are put to rest.

She and Tom Harrison, director of Chugach State Park, want to see what comments they receive to the route that's part of the Chugach trails plan. The comment period for that plan ends Oct. 16.

"I'm willing to put it through the public process," she said. "People need to digest the plan and understand it.

"People are well aware of the bear issues in that area. Whether they realize what putting more people there will do, I'm not sure."

Farther upsteam, there have been no serious bear encounters all season near the Eagle River Nature Center.

"This has been a very good bear year for us," said Asta Spurgis, the center president.

Since Aug. 13, the Albert Loop Trail near the center has been closed to reduce the risk of hikers encountering brown bears fishing for red salmon and, later, silvers. For the past decade, the trail has been off limits once the salmon show. Spurgis said it will remain closed until bear prints vanish from the trail, probably after the first snow flies.

The center isn't the only place in Eagle River with fewer bear conflicts.

This spring, homeowner Wanda Phillips described the bear situation in her neighborhood as "a real safety problem" that represented a ticking "time bomb."

Garbage-addicted bears were the problem.

"You can sit on the deck and look from our windows and watch them cruise the neighborhood looking for people that don't use bear cans. They literally go from driveway to driveway to driveway," Phillips said. "I think a kid is going to end up being killed."

But by this fall, she estimated that 95 percent of her neighborhood had begun using bear-resistant cans. The result?

"A significant decrease in bear issues," she said. "It's been a great summer. Hopefully, the muni will consider making it a requirement. It's been wonderful: Good for the neighborhood, good for the kids, good for the bears."

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Reach reporter Mike Campbell at mcampbell@adn.com or 257-4329.