A year after nine bears were killed in defense of life and property near the confluence of the Russian and Kenai rivers, the death toll dipped to zero this summer.
The Russian River red salmon sportfishing season ended Friday morning, which sharply cuts the prospect of human-bear conflict in the area. All summer, hundreds of thousands of anglers pursue sockeyes on that clearwater river considered Alaska's most popular fishery. Strong red runs during a year of weak king salmon returns boosted the Russian's popularity even further.
While there's no single cause for the sharp decline in bear deaths, fish and wildlife managers say that simply removing nine bears in 2008 contributed.
"We killed a lot of bears last year, so we didn't have repeat visitors this year," said Bobbi Jo Skibo, an interagency coordinator working for Chugach National Forest, a big landowner in the area. "But new bears in the area are starting to learn bad habits."
Last year's death toll in a 5-mile radius from the confluence of the two rivers was one of the highest ever, but the number was small enough that one incident had a big impact. Alaska Department of Fish and Game area wildlife biologist Jeff Selinger said nearly half of the total came after a sow was shot and its three cubs of the year had to be euthanized.
"Obviously, zero is a lot better, but it's not totally unheard of," Selinger said of the absence of DLP killings.
In April, an interagency task force asked anglers to voluntarily change how they handled salmon this year -- packing fish out whole or carrying them to the Kenai River, chopping waste into small pieces and tossing them into the fast-moving current. Filleting tables on the slower Russian River were removed.
By several accounts, the effort failed.
"Worst conditions from confluence down I've ever seen," Selinger said. "Carcass-loading was terrible."
Dianne Owen, a manager at Alaska Recreation Management, the company that runs campgrounds for Forest Service along the Russian River and operates the ferry that crosses the Kenai, agreed: "It was a nightmare," she said. "Our dumpsters were atrocious for a while."
In 2008, four fish-fillet tables -- with two cleaning surfaces apiece -- were at the Russian River ferry crossing, two at the confluence of the Kenai and Russian rivers and five more upstream on the Russian.
This year there was one table on each side of the ferry crossing and two more at the Russian-Kenai confluence.
"Unless carcasses are returned into river in a form where they're not available as food to brown bears, we'll continue to have problems," Selinger said.
His Fish and Game colleague, sportfish biologist Jason Pawluk, agreed.
"A lot of carcasses were not chopped up," he said.
Long lines formed at the tables during busy periods, Pawluk noted, and once anglers reached the front of the line, many didn't take the time to chop up the waste in an effort to keep the line moving.
"With so few locations, some of them had to wait a long time," he said.
Janet Schmidt of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, a member of the Russian River Interagency Coordination Group, said that reducing the number of filet tables "was a strategy we used" to encourage anglers to pack fish out whole.
"Everything went very well this year," she said, "though luck played into the whole thing. The problem bears weren't there."
Skibo added that this season's rules were "an interim step" that reduced fish waste in the Russian River, if not the Kenai.
"It was much better on the clear water of the Russian," she said.
Even among the members of the interagency group, there was disagreement whether fewer fillet tables helped or hurt the ultimate goal, reducing conflicts with bears.
"The numbers of tables (set up in) previous years at the ferry/confluence area were better suited to accommodate the number of anglers that use them," Pawluk of Fish and Game said. "Why the numbers were reduced there this year is not very clear to (Fish and Game). We were not in support of it."
Any new voluntary effort experiences growing pains, said Bruce McCurtain, general manager Alaska Recreational Management. Anglers will need a few years to adapt.
"Not by any stretch was it a rousing success," he said. "There were tons of carcasses."
Still, he was "pleased to see people complying when it was difficult to comply."
One reason for the difficulty was the Russian's bounty.
A flood of early-run salmon -- 52,000 made it past the fishing-counting weir below Lower Russian Lake, the most since 2006 -- allowed Fish and Game managers to double angler limits to six fish in mid-June.
"I saw no small number of people struggling to take out full six fish," McCurtain said.
Six whole red salmon can weigh upward of 35 pounds.
"Asking people to pack six out full, that expects a lot," McCurtain said.
And luck may have played a role too.
"There were numerous close calls with anglers and bears," Skibo said.
And, added McCurtain, "there's probably a lot of DLPs in that area that nobody ever hears about where people just don't call officials to report it."
Over the winter, the interagency task force will consider whether additional changes are needed.
Owen, who spent most of her summer on the river, is worried the absence of DLP killings will foster a false sense of success.
"I'm so afraid they're going to give each other credit," she said. "There was more carcasses in the river this year that we've had in years. Thank God there were no incidents."
Reach reporter Mike Campbell at mcampbell@adn.com or 257-4329.
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By MIKE CAMPBELL
mcampbell@adn.com