Bear season begins in Lake County

Residents and visitors can do a lot to protect grizzly and black bears from extinction in Lake County while they also protect themselves.

A grizzly bear was spotted in Ronan last week according to Stacy Courville, CSKT wildlife biologist, and verifies authorities’ concerns about the protection of everyone’s life.

This concern was reinforced on April 10 when a three-year-old grizzly bear was captured at a private residence along Tamarack Road in northwest Columbia Falls, said John Fraley, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks information specialist. 

Bears are known to become garbage conditioned and return to the same location repeatedly through the years once they have found food. That behavior puts human life in potential danger and it is one of the most common reasons bears are destroyed, a CSKT Bear Facts information sheet reports.

In the case of the Columbia Falls grizzly that was captured by Erik Wenum, FWP bear and lion specialist, the resident who reported the sighting told authorities that the bear killed some of his chickens. 

Small livestock like chickens, geese, turkeys, pigs and lambs are in danger of bear attacks, according to the CSKT Bear Facts information sheet. 

All captured bears are tagged with identification that enables officials to see if the bear was a repeat offender.

But in the case of the Columbia Falls bear, he was a first-time offender and anesthetized, radio-collared and released by Grizzly Bear Management Specialist Tim Manley of the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department.

The grizzly bear was relocated to the Whale Creek drainage of the North Fork of the Flathead, 34 straight line miles from where it was caught.

Specialists use automated bear traps, microchips, DNA, GPS radio collars and an Electro-Optic/Infrared imagery system to monitor bear activity.

Bear activity picked up again last weekend, Fraley said.

Six black bears were either “handled” or are on Wenum’s trap-and-capture radar because they were seen close to residences.

Earlier this month, officials conducted a radio-tracking flight in the Swan and Mission mountains and learned that seven of eight radio-collared grizzlies were outside their dens but still in the upper elevations. 

During the tracking flight, authorities found 16 Grizzly bears, cubs, yearlings and two-year olds with their mothers.