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For road-accessible Alaska bear-viewing, can't beat Solomon Gulch near Valdez

Last summer there were so many bears crossing Dayville Road, near the Solomon Gulch Hatchery, the Valdez Police Department deployed a trailer-mounted, variable-message, LED sign. In two-foot-high orange letters, the sign proclaimed "BEARS ON ROAD." What tourist could resist such a come-on?

When it comes to bears, far more Alaskans want to see one than shoot one. The same can be said about visitors from around the world. Many hope to see large wild animals, particularly predators, which are almost invariably scarce or long extinct back home. And many visitors are willing to pay for the experience. Unlike gold and oil, tourism is a renewable resource.

An increasing number of private lodges and wildlife guides cater to bear viewers, as evidenced by advertisements in visitor brochures, Alaska magazines and on the Internet. But these experiences can be expensive, and those of us with little disposable income are always looking for bargain-basement bear viewing opportunities.

Given Alaska's size, many national parks, wildlife refuges and abundant bears, it's a little surprising that there are so few public places where people can expect to see bears on every visit. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game website lists many of them, including Brooks River in Katmai National Park, Pack Creek Brown Bear Viewing Area on Admiralty Island, Anan Wildlife Observatory near Wrangell and, of course, the world's premier bear-viewing area, McNeil River State Game Sanctuary.

None of the top sites are road accessible. You have to charter a boat or floatplane, unless you own one. Denali National Park, the oldest and most visited location for bear viewing in Alaska, is bisected by a road, but bear viewing opportunities are limited unless you ride the buses, and bears aren't always loitering near the road.

Road-accessible bear viewing

It's time to add a new venue – Dayville Road – where one brown bear is single-handedly teaching the next generation of bears to tolerate the oohs and aahs of human admirers.

Unlike the other locations, bear viewing sites along Dayville Road, a few miles south of Valdez, are accessible to private vehicles. A dozen or more brown and black bears are frequently seen fishing for salmon in several streams near the road, according to Rich Long, a community safety officer employed by the City of Valdez to oversee bear-human interactions in the area.

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Long is a summer hire whose primary responsibility is bear safety. The "BEARS ON ROAD" sign wasn't effective last summer. The police department believed more of a "presence" was necessary. Because no Fish and Game wildlife biologists are stationed in Valdez, Long's duties include many bear-related activities ordinarily assigned to a state biologist or park ranger. He educates people about bear safety and attempts to keep bears out of garbage and other unnatural attractants. He warns both locals and campers to secure their garbage, fish, and coolers full of food. He tries to anticipate and oversee the "bear jams" that materialize wherever the bears are found close to the road.

Dayville Road connects Valdez with the trans-Alaska Pipeline terminal. The road skirts close to the Valdez Arm shoreline, crossing several small streams that support runs of pink salmon in mid-summer. One of the most predictable sites for bears is the Solomon Gulch Hatchery, which has the earliest run of pink salmon in the vicinity.

Bears are people magnets. Long has seen bear jams of 40-60 vehicles strung out along 400 feet of Dayville Road. Part of his job is patrolling the area to make sure vehicles are pulled off the road and people don't crowd the bears. Long has seen people – some with long lenses, some brandishing their cell phone cameras – inch to within 20-30 feet of the bears. That's way too close. The bears are not tame, despite being unusually tolerant. Eventually, someone will get too close and be swatted for their presumptuousness.

Training photogenic bears

One female brown bear is enhancing bear viewing opportunities near Valdez by leading her cubs to fishing sites along Dayville Road.

According to Long, "local lore" claims that the same sow has brought three sets of cubs to the Solomon Gulch Hatchery and other nearby fishing sites. Her first offspring were twins, the next set was triplets, and the last two summers she's been accompanied by four cubs. Brown bear cubs stay with their mothers for two or three summers.

Brown bears love to eat salmon, and millions of salmon return to Solomon Gulch and other local streams. Milling about in shallow intertidal water and attempting to swim up the stream, fish become easy prey for the bears. Even cubs snag some. Catching fish becomes ludicrously easy when a flotilla of Steller sea lions – the brown bears of the ocean – congregate just offshore to feast on the salmon, which forces the squirming mass of fish even closer to the bears.

Pink salmon return to spawn in July. In mid-July all the action is at Solomon Gulch. Tides determine feeding times. Because the salmon are difficult to catch at high and low tides, mid-stage is when the bears are most often found fishing. During the peak period, the sow with four cubs was observed three or four times a day at the Solomon Gulch Hatchery.

By early August pinks congregate in other streams and the bears follow suit. After all the pink salmon have died and the tourists have left town, coho salmon return to Solomon Gulch and the bears troop back to the stage for an extended encore performance in late September and October.

Getting to and from their fishing sites often involves crossing the road. These are potentially stressful occasions when the sow must thread her way between gawking humans. Shepherding four cubs is much more difficult than tending to one or two. As cubs grow older, they start developing a mind of their own. Long said the four cubs already behave differently. One sticks close to the sow. A couple of the cubs often play with one another. The fourth cub, the runt, frequently brings up the rear and is "always in his own little world," Long said.

The Solomon Gulch bear has learned to tolerate humans to a remarkable degree. Long called her the "calmest, most sedate bear," and said she's "very, very rarely flustered." YouTube videos show her cautiously crossing the road near the hatchery, picking the only gap through a crowd of clueless shutterbugs. This level of tolerance is unusual in brown bears, especially those with cubs.

Bears don’t really bother us

Another YouTube video shows an obviously stressed brown bear, probably the same one, crossing a road near Valdez in 2010. Waiting for her third cub to cross the road (it had to grab a final fish), she's frothing at the mouth and huffing, signs of agitation and stress.

Despite chronic provocation from naïve onlookers, the sow has bluff charged someone only once this summer, according to Long. On a side road near the old Valdez townsite, a half dozen cars and people pressed a little too close to the sow and her cubs. Her aborted charge and lingering stare sent a crystal-clear message: don't get so close to me and mine.

Because the Solomon Gulch Hatchery, operated by the Valdez Fisheries Development Association Inc., is the epicenter of bear activity, especially in July, you'd think problems would have arisen between hatchery staff and bears. Hatchery manager Ken Morgan said the sow and her cubs are often encountered near the buildings. While there is "some concern," the bears "don't really bother us," Morgan said. He said his employees don't go out of their way to chase the bears off, but operating noisy machinery like forklifts lets the bears know when it's time to move out of the way. Equally significant, Morgan said the hatchery allows the bears no opportunities to find garbage or other unnatural attractants. It's all about the salmon, and there are more than enough for man and bear.

You can’t just let nature run wild

Because every brown bear is potentially dangerous and people often short-circuit their common sense when they encounter habituated bears, you can't just let nature run wild in popular or easily accessible bear-viewing areas. Trying to keep bears and people from hurting one another is a demanding job.

Former Gov. Wally Hickel's admonishment is even more applicable to cities. Although cities don't make good bear-viewing areas, Alaskans tend to tolerate bears more than most people, and even urbanites like to see bears from time to time, according to a survey of public attitudes conducted in Anchorage.

Juneau, Anchorage, and other Alaska communities have plenty of resident bears. Juneau has employed one or more community safety officers for over a decade to enforce its garbage ordinance to minimize problems with bears. The Anchorage Assembly toyed with a similar idea several years ago and passed a resolution asking the mayor to hire a bear safety officer, but the position was never funded. If the state's largest city can afford an urban forester and a non-motorized transportation coordinator, hiring a bear safety officer doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

The City of Valdez has taken the remarkably progressive step of hiring someone to focus on bear safety. That personal approach is working far better than last year's road sign.

Rick Sinnott is a former Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist. The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch. Contact him at rickjsinnott@gmail.com

Rick Sinnott

Rick Sinnott is a former Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist. Email him: rickjsinnott@gmail.com

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