Grizz Quiz: How Much Do You Know About Grizzly Bears? | Short Film Showcase
Maybe they're your worst nightmare, or perhaps they bring a smile to your face. Grizzly bears are famous for triggering a whole range of different emotions, most of them passionate. You might have asked you a couple of questions. Let me start with this one: what's the first thing that pops into your head when I say "grizzly bear"?
I'll ask her, "What? Beautiful? Kill? Hunting Rudd?" Hmm, don't need him here. "Trouble? Really big? Scary? Magnificent? Wild creature? Felt in nature? A big bear holding a cupcake? A big rascal?"
I'm Chris Morgan. I'm an ecologist and filmmaker. Bears have been my specialty for 25 years. I've worked all over the world and even captured, radio-collared, and tracked them on foot for 2,000 miles in the Canadian Rockies. So I got to know them really well, and what started as fear ended up as a deep respect for an animal that fascinates me.
But as much as that, my other passion became sharing what I'd learned with other people. That is, gentlemen, here’s Chris Morgan. I came to Washington State 20 years ago and made it home. I set out to find out what other people know and how they feel about grizzly bears in the North Cascades.
You got time for a quick quiz? Have you any idea how heavy a grizzly bear might be when it's born? 80 pounds? 15 pounds? 14 pounds? 12 pounds? What if I told you one pound when it's born?
What does he want liked? Do you know how many grizzly bears there used to be in the lower 48? 5,000? 3,000? We think there were 50, maybe a hundred thousand Grizzlies in the lower 48, and now there are fewer than 2,000.
So we've done this amazing job of pushing them into these little corners, and we're standing on one of them right now. And in the North Cascades, fewer than 20, maybe only two or three, but we get a handful of unverified potential sightings every year.
There was a photograph in 2010 and a photograph in 2012 on those remote cameras just 10 miles north of the border. What percentage of a bear's diet is meat? 75 percent? 50 percent? I'll say a third. Generally, less than 20 percent.
Which one would win in a smelling competition: a bloodhound or a grizzly bear? A bloodhound goes. Grizzly bear? He's right!
What does a bear eat? Chipmunks? Berries? Fish? Baby elk? Cold cattle? Moths? Grass? Everything they can find! Good answer!
The bear's most common food? Plants. They are mostly grazers. In the North Cascades, there are 100 plant species on the bear's menu, and they can eat a hundred thousand berries or even 40,000 moths in a day.
What kind of things tell you that bears have been around? Scat? If you want to know if it's bear poop or deer poop, you could look into the poop and see if either seeds are there or not. Can they eat berries, seeds, and fertilizer all in one package? Look out for tracks—this is a rear track of a grizzly bear.
The other thing you can find is hair on trees where they've been back rubbing on trees. You know to look out for that stuff, and flipped rocks tell you a bear has been searching for insects and grubs.
What's the difference between a grizzly bear and a black bear? They have kind of a hump on their shoulder, and then a distinct nose, and claw length is a big one. A grizzly bear's dangerous, of course. They can be. They're wild animals trying to survive, so attacks are usually about defending food or cubs or in response to a surprise.
You can take some pretty simple precautions, though. Carry bear spray—it's way more effective than bullets. Wet noses and electric fences don't mix well, and make noise on the trail. Bears don't like surprises.
Well, do you think Grizzlies would be good or bad for the economy? Well, judging by places like Yellowstone, where people come to see them, yeah, it's probably good. In a national park such as this, it would attract people to maybe see the bears.
More volatility? Grateful economy? Definitely not good for the livestock industry. Probably good all in all for tourism. Anything? Actually, a whole bunch of studies have shown that they are really good for the economy in terms of bear viewing. Yellowstone and other places—they pump millions of dollars a year into the economy. They're just locally, by having grizzly bears. They're awesome!
How would you feel about seeing a grizzly bear in this ecosystem? Oh, I think it'd be cool, man. If I’ve gone through here and I saw one, you know, it’d be cool, yeah. But maybe you have bigger questions: are bears part of our natural heritage? Are they important for ecosystems? Should we steward them for future generations? A majority of people think so.
Can we coexist with grizzly bears? No, because people do stupid things. No, I know they can't coexist. They can't coexist in Alaska? Oh, absolutely they do in Alaska! Absolutely.
You're here once before, right? Grizzly bears have seen glaciers and entire species come and go. They've been a part of the North Cascades for around 20,000 years. They now live in a time when their fate will be decided by us.
The National Park Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, in collaboration with other agencies, have begun a process to figure out how to recover the North Cascades grizzly bear, and not everyone is in agreement. So it has to be fair and open.
Would you like to see a healthy population of grizzly bears in the North Cascades again? Why, certainly. They're part of the part of the nightmare? No! Yes!
What? Because the food chain needs help! The food chain needs to keep going! Well, I'm against it because why would you want something that's big and tough here?
You need— I just think they're a magnificent animal, so anytime that we can again bring something back and have it to where our kids can see it and know about it rather than just in a book, it's amazing. This is good for conservation! Good for anything! Technical? Girly wants to come in? Let him come in! He has a right to be here.
I don't want to see a mixed day at all. Recovery for the North Cascades grizzly bear won't be fast. It might take a hundred years. None of us want to see lions or elephants disappear.
In the same way, it's time for us to think really carefully together about the grizzly bear's place on Earth and here in the North Cascades. You got me emotional.