Anchorage Daily News

From her office across from the confluence of the Kenai and Russian rivers, Dianne Owens watches a daily dance of grizzly bears and people and wonders what's next.

Already this year, a sow grizzly has been wounded in a spray of gunfire near the Sportsman's Landing campground; one of her cubs was injured when hit by a car on the Sterling Highway. The sow subsequently disappeared and is now presumed dead. The fate of the yearling cub hit by the car remains unknown.

Meanwhile, two other yearling cubs appear to have taken up residence adjacent to the campground since their mother died.

With the yearlings hanging around, the manager of the Russian River ferry said human-bear encounters have become an all-too-regular occurrence.

"Every day, two or three times a day," she said. "We're sitting on a time bomb here."

So far, the bears have not shown any overt signs of aggression, said Jeff Selinger, area wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. But that could change as food becomes less available.

For the bears, the remains of the early- run red salmon left along the banks of the river made for easy pickings in June. But that run is over. The state is working to get anglers to keep salmon carcasses away from bears. And the second run of reds to the river looks weak.

There are signs the young bears have gone elsewhere looking for food too.

When Owen Nicholls of Anchorage saw a nervous man with a handgun just off the Kenai River along the highway near the campground last week, he stopped to ask what was going on. A bear was on the riverbank below the pavement going through his gear, the man replied.

Once bears figure out that they can find tasty tidbits in people's backpacks or coolers, wildlife authorities say, they will come back looking for those things over and over.

NEW REGS FOR COOLERS

Across the Kenai at the Russian River, the U.S. Forest Service has seen enough of this problem that it is preparing to extend to the banks of the river a campground rule against leaving coolers, backpacks and other gear unattended.

To prevent bears from coming to the conclusion that humans are providers of tasty treats, the agency wants to "require people to keep their coolers and backpacks with them at all times,'' said Forest Service spokeswoman Rebecca Talbott.

She hopes the new rule will go into effect this week.

Russian River campground host Butch Bishop knows all about the problems with unattended coolers. There have been so many problems this year that he does nightly drive-arounds in the campground to make sure everyone has put everything away.

On a recent night, he caught a 2-year-old female grizzly whom people call Blondie dining on steak from a cooler that a camper had left out. Bishop tried to herd the bear out of the campground with his truck, but she wasn't very cooperative.

"I'd run her off with the horn and holler at her," Bishop said, "but she kept coming back."

Four times he drove her away from the campsite before getting her to leave, and then it was mainly because she'd eaten everything there. The Anchorage camper who'd left the cooler out was issued a $100 ticket.

Talbott said people should expect more such tickets. The Forest Service is about to get more proactive in its management of bears and people in the popular Kenai Peninsula recreation area.

"You're going to see a lot more people down there in uniform," she said.

For Owens -- who hopes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will follow the Forest Service's lead on land it manages in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge adjacent to the two rivers -- such actions are overdue.

"We don't have a bear problem,'' she said. "We have a people problem."

More accurately, one might say the site of the state's most intensive rod-and-reel fishery for red salmon has a people-caused bear problem.

Wildlife biologists agree on a pretty simple explanation for what has happened:

• Supply. Large numbers of red salmon return to the clear, fast-flowing waters of the Russian, attracting thousands of anglers.

• The kill. Anglers kill tens of thousands of fish, fillet them and throw the carcasses back in the river.

• The residue. Carcasses pile up. Bears find them. And they settle in to eat.

BEAR KILLER GETS JAIL TIME

For bears, finding the carcasses is like stumbling into free-food day at the local fast-food joint. The salmon carcasses might be short some meat, but they're usually loaded with tasty, fat-rich salmon egg sacs and brains.

Not only that, there's no need to chase around trying to catch this food. It's just sitting there waiting to be devoured.

"The unit of effort per calorie is very low," said Selinger.

The problems with carcass feeders appeared to be heading toward a climax last summer about this time, when a 350-pound grizzly sow with three cubs took up residence among hundreds of anglers on the lower river. Variously described as amazingly tolerant and dangerously protective, the bear and her cubs became something of a tourist attraction until she was shot in August.

A 26-year-old Anchorage man was subsequently found guilty of killing her without sufficient cause. Michael Oswalt got 10 days in jail and a $2,800 fine.

One of the sow's cubs disappeared. The other two cubs hung around and gradually began to lose nearly all fear of humans. They prowled the Kenai-Russian river area until the snows came.

Wildlife biologists hoped the pair -- a male and a female -- would hibernate and find new home ranges in the Kenai wilds when they awoke in spring. But it was not to be.

Both bears showed up back at the Russian early this year and have been hanging in and around the area ever since, although the female got into trouble elsewhere.

Selinger darted her once when she was into trash in Sterling and relocated her. She popped up after that trying to get into garbage in the Moose Pass area. From there, she moved toward Tern Lake at the intersection of the Seward and Sterling highways.

By early July, she was back at the Russian River going through the cooler where Bishop spotted her. She also gave a good fright to the owners of a motor home who had stashed a cooler beneath it to keep it out of the paws of bears.

"She put on quite a show trying to get that cooler out from under the RV," Bishop said. "(But) she did not get it out, so she did not get into it."

With the Russian between runs, she has moved on -- back to Sterling and getting into garbage again.

"The only option with her now is death," Selinger said.

TOO MANY GUNS?

The state has looked for certified facilities seeking grizzly bears but can't find any. Selinger said he doesn't want to shoot the bear, but she's clearly become addicted to garbage and if she starts to show signs of aggression, he may not have much choice.

If, of course, someone else doesn't shoot her first.

The prevalence of bears in and around the confluence of the Kenai and Russian rivers has resulted in a prevalence of guns.

"These people come in with their guns, and they don't think things through," Owens said.

She, Bishop and others fear that someone could accidentally get shot -- or shoot and wound a bear that could subsequently harm someone else.

Selinger, meanwhile, is optimistic that the Russian River bear-management nightmare is moving in the right direction.

"Things are in the works," he said. "Things have been elevated."

Along with the Forest Service extending food and gear-care requirements, Alaska Commissioner of Fish and Game McKie Campbell has tried to get something done about carcass disposal.

Bear experts believe that if the carcasses disappear, the bears will eventually disappear too -- much as the garbage bears in Yellowstone National Park went away when the dumps there were shut down.

In the short term, though, the bears trained to look to this area for easy eats will probably remain.

CHANGE WILL TAKE TIME

Fish and Game regional sportfisheries supervisor Barry Stratton is promoting a program to get anglers to "Stop, Chop and Throw" the carcasses of filleted salmon to keep them from becoming bear food. To date, cooperation has been limited but is improving.

Stratton said he thinks anglers can be won over. He noted their cooperation in staying off the banks of the Russian to allow stream-bank vegetation to regenerate.

Sportfisheries biologists note that chunked-up pieces of salmon carcass provide food for rainbow trout and Dolly Varden char instead of bears.

Selinger said there are also plans to do some testing of grinders to dispose of salmon carcasses. Fish and Game has not take an official position on the worth of grinders, but "I see nothing wrong them," he said.

Nothing will happen overnight, Selinger realizes. The bears in the area are too imprinted.

"That's what they learned," Selinger said. "That's how they grew up."

Some people think having the bears in the area is great. They remain an attraction for tourists and photographers, but when grizzly bears take up residence adjacent to a campground, there's an unavoidable danger, he said.

"There are toddlers," he said. "I've got a 14-year-old kid riding around on a bicycle having a good time."

A bear could hurt one of them simply by accident.

In fact, just three years ago a bear ran into Dan Bigley, walking along the Russian River trail. The bear grabbed the 25-year-old Anchorage man by the face. It was a near-miracle Bigley survived. Others on the scene immediately managed to control the bleeding just long enough to get him on a helicopter to Anchorage, where doctors saved his life.

But Bigley spent weeks in the hospital and months in rehabilitation, and he was blinded for life.

Daily News Outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.