Community Birds and Bears Festival celebrates role of animals in culture

With summertime temperatures drawing out animals across the Mission Valley, wildlife enthusiasts gathered at Salish Kootenai College last week for a celebration of all things fur and feathers.

The fifth annual Community Birds and Bears Festival featured displays and educational exercises aimed at emphasizing the role animals play in local science, art and culture.

“We were always taught to respect the animals,” Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Elder Johnny Arlee said during the ceremony’s commencement address Thursday night. “Each bird has a personality, each bird has a song.”

Arlee told the audience that Native Americans used to learn a wealth of information by paying close attention to the natural world, from using the fat layer inside a deer or bear as an indicator of severity of the upcoming winter, to predicting river flooding based on how high animals built their dens above the water.

The researchers and scientists at the festival continued this tradition with exhibits that both informed and engaged spectators.

Dale Becker, CSKT Wildlife Program manager, manned a booth featuring a pair of stuffed trumpeter swans and information on how the threatened birds are tagged and tracked. He said the subject typically incites enthusiasm from the young visitors.

“Anytime you get questions from kids it can be pretty hilarious,” Becker said.

When one parent tried to prevent her son from touching the impressive specimens, Becker smiled and told the youngster to go ahead.

“I used to have a sign saying no touching but I took it down,” Becker said. “I figure this is probably the only opportunity kids will get to touch them.”

Neighboring exhibits included an owl pellet dissection station and a display of live birds from the Montana Wild Wings Recovery Center. Volunteer Susan Miller held Igor, a barn owl who awed the crowd with an occasional screech.

Not to be outdone, CSKT Natural Resources put together a display showing how bears are trapped, tranquilized and studied.

Stacey Courville, a bear biologist with the tribes, said it’s been a busy spring in terms of bear activity. He said the tribes have set out traps for problem bears nearly every week for the past couple months.

While children peered curiously into the large barrel-shaped live trap used to contain grizzly bears, Courville said it was parents that often showed the most intrigue.

“They mostly ask if they can use it to hold their kids for a little while,” he said.

All joking aside, fostering parent-child interaction was an important element of the festival. As Johnny Arlee said during his commencement address, in the age of trophy hunting and other wasteful practices, fostering a respect for animals starts at a young age.

“We must teach our children this,” he said.