Outdoors/Adventure

Photos: Building human trails with bears in mind

When I was Anchorage's wildlife biologist and dealt with wildlife and people on a daily basis, I could never fully appreciate the onset of spring like normal folks. With bears emerging from hibernation and humans stampeding to local trails, I braced myself for the inevitable seasonal spike in bear encounters.

Some trails, I soon realized, were worse than others for bear attacks. I'm not a big fan of signs – they can clutter up the environment and people frequently ignore them – but I often wondered if I shouldn't hang permanent signs over these trails with the admonition Dante inscribed in stone at the gate of Hell: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Even more worrisome was the perennial push by well-meaning individuals and groups to improve these trails to attract more people or to build new trails through the invisible auras of other bear magnets. The year before I retired I began collecting information on brown bear activity on three local trails, and I continued the study for several years under the supervision of Jessy Coltrane, who succeeded me as the Anchorage area biologist.

Coltrane has also moved on; however, we submitted the results of our research to Human-Wildlife Interactions, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Our article – "Brown bear and human recreational use of trails in Anchorage, Alaska" -- was published in the journal's spring 2015 edition.

Read more: Building recreational trails for humans with bears in mind

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