Alaska News

Could Karelian bear dogs help solve Alaska's urban bear problem?

The town of Inuvik, an Arctic oasis nestled in the northwest corner of Canada near the Beaufort Sea coastline and only a stone's throw from Kaktovik, Alaska, has seen some unconventional visitors as of late.

In March, researchers traveled north from Montana to conduct field work just outside the Northwest Territories town. The two human biologists had a pair of canine researchers in tow.

The black-and-white, thick-eared, curly-tailed canvassers -- named "Baloo" and "Satchmo" -- are expertly trained Karelian bear dogs out of the Florence, Mont., Wind River Bear Institute. The dogs and their biologists traveled to Inuvik to locate grizzly bear dens as part of an environmental impact statement concerning a proposed road from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk, NWT, Canada, a land road that would replacement the current ice road.

'They'll find ... the bears'

Handling Baloo and Satchmo were Wind River researchers Nils Pedersen, originally of Fairbanks, and Trent Roussin. Pedersen and Roussin work with the dogs at home and in the field as trainers, handlers and research partners. In Inuvik, the men took the dogs to suspected denning areas and let the animals' powerful noses do most of the work, Pedersen explained.

"They're bred for this," Pedersen said. "They like to work with you, and they'll go out and find the bears."

When a Karelian has located a den, it lets its handlers know by standing on-guard, barking and digging. That's when Roussin and Pederson step in, re-harness the dog, record the den location and reward the excited pup.

"This work is important to bear conservation," Pedersen said. "We have the most consistent and accurate means to perform bear den surveys in areas that are likely to be disturbed by industry. We just performed a polar bear and grizzly bear den survey out of Prudhoe Bay, and now we are on (the Inuvik) contract before we begin our summer work in ... Alberta, performing the longest-running grizzly bear aversive conditioning in the world."

ADVERTISEMENT

At the moment, there are only a few Karelians and their handlers doing this kind of work in Alaska. Among them is Dick Shideler of the Department of Fish and Game, but Pedersen has a keen interest in bringing more of this work back to Alaska.

Shideler and his Karelian "Riley," who recently passed away, pioneered den location work on Alaska's North Slope. Shideler continued the work with his remaining Karelian, "Kavik." And although he admires the breed, Shideler notes that Karelians need a lot of work, attention and, in particular, good handling.

"They're not like a snowmachine, where you just park it in the garage when you're done," Shideler said. "When they're not doing their job, they get restless. These aren't dogs you can take out for a hike a couple times a week and then just shut them up in your apartment. They're an independent breed that need a lot of activity."

Option for bear conflict management?

In Alberta, Canada, near Banff National Park, Wind River Bear Institute has operated a bear shepherding and aversive-conditioning program for 14 years, one of the few and longest-running programs of its kind in the world.

Generally, two dogs and two handlers monitor the bears of Peter Lougheed Provincial Park and, according to Pedersen, "walk" or "push the bear" out of problem areas.

"We teach the bears to stay out of human-occupied sites ... campgrounds, trails and roadsides," Pedersen said. "We never do anything that would elicit an aggressive response. We only express that we want (the bear) to leave and we need it to leave, and they seem to respond to that."

Bears learn quickly, Pedersen said.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Jessy Coltrane agrees. "Bears learn, they do," she said.

But Coltrane is less enthusiastic about using Karelian bear dogs to manage bears in and around Anchorage, the town of nearly 300,000 residents in southcentral Alaska. "In general KBD have a really purposeful application for hazing bears (driving them out of an area), and they've proven to be pretty successful. There are lots of different applications for Karelians, but (in Anchorage) we use ourselves to haze, and from a practical standpoint it's not something that we'd look to apply."

If Fish and Game used Karelian bear dogs for non-lethal bear conflict management, the agency would have to purchase and maintain a trained Karelian -- or contract out a working dog and its handler. That could prove expensive.

"It's not that they wouldn't be useful in Anchorage, but at this time we don't have the money," Coltrane said. "I'm just not looking to add a Karelian to my team, and the only other way is contracting out, and we don't have the funds. It's a cost-benefit analysis."

Pedersen acknowledges the lack of money, but believes Karelians could benefit urban areas under the supervision of a well-trained handler, especially with the recent uptick in urban bear-human interaction. In the meantime, the obvious and best way to reduce bear conflict in urban areas is to be responsible.

"People living in bear country need to manage their attractants" -- things like garbage, chicken coops, dog food -- "responsibly," Pedersen said. "Since this seems to be a never-ending battle with few organizations around to help fund the implementation of bear-proof garbage cans and electric fences for chicken coops, KBDs in Anchorage area would probably spend a lot of time tracking down injured bears that were shot by people protecting their homes, finding dead bears, finding poached animals, pushing bears out of bad places, keeping bears out of campgrounds and off of roadsides and popular trails, hard releases (trapping, collaring, then releasing a problem bear), and probably dealing with problem moose as well. The applications ... are endless."

It's just the funding that doesn't exist.

Contact Katie Medred at katie(at)alaskadispatch.com

ADVERTISEMENT