Gehrke's Grand American Fly-Fishing Reels ~ George Gehrke's Bamboo Fly Fishing

~ Wildlife Environmental Thesis ~

Wildlife: An American Ideal and Her Values: #6

THE GREATEST SCANDAL IS CLEAR CUTTING:

Demand after demand has been made to stop clear cutting and wilderness destruction, yet the Forest Service continues to ignore the public will. Does it require that citizens protect their Forests by driving long spikes into all the trees they wish protected because this is what's happening more and more often. The Forest Service is the party responsible for causing this kind of frustration on the public.

As far as "Visual Quality" is concerned, this is a ruse as is proven by most of the timber cutting practices and clear cutting around the Missoula, Montana area which are nothing more than open eye sores to the population.

Next is the admittance of flip propaganda regarding our fisheries, which belong to all Americans. To wit; the next paragraph quotes, A Road construction and timber harvest will increase sediment delivered to streams, which will cause an estimate 10 percent decrease from the current level in fish populations. The losses due to reduced carrying capacity of the natural habitat will be compensated for by habitat improvements, primarily improvements of Pool and riffle ratios by the addition of large woody debris."

Americans should turn down these greedy plans. Woody debris is logging left-over. In short, "We will throw some woody debris your way, peasants!"

The Forest Service is admitting they will damage your rivers and streams.

Draft Environmental Impact Statements state they won't allow damage or timbering near our running streams, yet we read just the opposite. They then say they will add large woody debris as habitat improvement.

Once cattle are allowed in, around, and on our Class-A Waters and streams, these waters no longer are safe to drink.

What the Forest Service doesn't promote or state is these streams and watercourses already are perfect, don't need any habitat improvement if they aren't allowed to timber near them.

STREAM AND RIVER FACTS:

The only remaining, few places, in the Lower United States were streams and rivers can be found that have no alterations by man are found in wilderness. Nothing is more beautiful, and nothing is more rare regarding undisturbed waterways, which the Forest Service wishes to violate.

What isn't stated is that ALL of the topsoil that exists on our mountainsides will be lost forever when these forests are clear-cut. Your crystal streams and rivers are degraded and the shade is gone. This doesn't include the massive loss of clean spawning gravel beds, which will be filled with silt. When this happens, they are useless to game-fish such as trout, steelhead and salmon.

Then the Forest Service states "Most of the riparian or stream-side areas of fisheries streams flowing through suitable timberland will remain forested." This is a lie. We can take anyone to stream after stream where logging goes right up to the last tree next to the water.

In the same paragraph under Wildlife and Fish, it continues, "Timber harvest will be limited to individual or small group selection harvest and fifty percent of the fisheries riparian area will be maintained as old-growth habitat." What the Forest Service is saying, is if TWO TREES exist next to a stream or river, the Forest Service will cut one of the trees as old-growth habitat.

There you have it. First the Draft Environmental Impact Statement misleads then it outright hides behind every "subtle word advantage" like a weasel before it goes for the chicken's throat. We all know the Forest Service wont abide by the rules in wilderness or national forests. That would be like making an omelet without breaking eggs. Yet, if the Forest Service breaks the shell, they are saying the egg is still an unbroken egg. It's ludicrous.

WILD CREATURES INVOLVED:

But first, a little groundwork on where we all came from and what direction we are headed.

North America is 9,420,000 square miles. At one time, every square foot of it was wilderness.

Two thirds of the United States was completely forested, and excepting for the desert areas, every square foot of it was either grass or trees, filled with wildlife as attested by all the early American Painters.

Accordingly, about one tenth of the world's land surface is under cultivation. Twenty percent of our world's land surface is covered by the dry lands we call deserts. What is called "the United States" was once a rich, grassland and forested nation. What remains is but a skeleton of what once was. The Forest Service wants to pick that skeleton clean.

Compared to a nation that has been completely deforested, these wilderness remains are the equivalent to that last drop of water out of a fifty-five gallon drum of water, which we as a nation, have consumed.

Compared to West Yellowstone, our wilderness forests have natural resource assets that can be found only in Alaska. These are readily available to all the American people in the lower 48 States of this Union without them having to go to Alaska for a rewarding and lasting wilderness experience.

Those who will read this in behalf of all the people of this nation must remember these points of truth. The Wilderness remaining in the lower 48 is a last haven.

GRIZZLY BEAR:

Without what remains here, the Grizzly Bear's only hope for its survival is in jeopardy. Only here, in all of the United States outside Alaska, can it be allowed to roam free and unmolested without roads. Only here, where no outdoor zoo atmosphere such as exists now in West Yellowstone will any last chance of it being allowed to live free, is possible.

The grizzly bear 10 (Ursus horribilis) of the mountains of western North America is one of the largest, and perhaps the most to be feared of any of the family. It is found from the Black Hills and the Badlands of Dakota westward to the Pacific coast, 12 and from Mexico to northern Alaska. A large specimen is nine feet in length and will weigh 1,000 pounds, but the size varies greatly. So does the color, which ranges from reddish-brown to hoary gray. Hence several varieties are recognized by hunters, such as "cinnamon," "silver-tips" (in which the tips of the hairs are white) and "grizzles." The typical form may be described as yellowish-brown, with a reddish mane, black dorsal stripe and dark-colored legs, in form they are massive, with broad, squarish heads and immensely muscular bodies. They cannot, or, at any rate, do not, climb trees, but they scramble about the roughest mountains or through a dense forest with surprising agility and can run very rapidly on occasions. They seem rarely, if ever to hibernate and go about alone or in pairs, eating all sorts of food, but seizing and pulling down large prey when an opportunity offers in former days even a bull buffalo was unable always to resist their strength and they constantly attacked them and the deer. At present the cattle and horses upon the ranges in some parts of the West suffer from their ravages. Though so mighty, and when at bay or enraged probably not less dangerous to encounter than a lion or tiger, they will usually avoid and flee from man and do not seem quarrelsome, the tradition of a constant enmity between them and the black bears not finding support in facts. The grizzly is easily the most terrible of the game animals of North America and one of the most formidable in the world; but different bears vary greatly in temperament and according to circumstances. The Indians and experienced hunters of the West, however, have learned to hold the entire race in the highest respect. Much the same statement will apply to the Barren-Ground bear and to the Alaskan bears the grizzly is still to be found throughout most of if s range, though no longer numerous except in the wilder parts of the Rocky Mountains.

The Encyclopedia Americana, Volume 3 1948 edition, page 385 11 But in fact, it is the common black bear that has taken more human lives than any other species of bear, especially the female of the species with cubs. This fact is not generally published nor is it of general knowledge. 12

The actual range of the grizzly bear has been exterminated in all but a very few areas within the Continental Limits of the United States since the publication of this American edition. 13 Their metabolism does slow down. 14 A hunter in Colorado was attacked by a female grizzly to which he killed the bear in hand to hand combat using only an arrow shaft hand held approximately three years ago. This attack was serious in more ways than one. Excepting the fact the man's life hung in the balance, the remarkable thing is a grizzly bear was found in the State of Colorado, which without shame, the Colorado Division of Wildlife was extremely interested and excited about. To lose such a magnificent animal was necessary, but this particular case not only was reported nationally,

The wilderness areas the Department of Agriculture wishes to intrude into will guarantee the removal of the last frontier hopes and a home for the grizzly bear. America does not have available to its people bears of such magnificence. West Yellowstone Grizzly Bears have been called "garbage dump bears." This area, without roads provides the last chance to provide grizzly bears in the most natural settings remaining under Wilderness.

It is necessary to provide all the senses and experiences as written by Mr. Erwin A Bauer rather than just providing the scientific data regarding Grizzly Bears. Otherwise the citizens of this country will never capture the aura of what is as stake. It's for this reason that Mr. Erwin A Bauer has given us permission to use his material on the Grizzly Bear and Gray Wolf in its entirety, to which we thank him most sincerely.

Mr. Erwin A Bauer said it best over the phone today. "George, you go right ahead, I'm for anything that will help protect what little wilderness we have left".

PERMISSION DATE: 28 MAY 85

"The grizzly, Ursus horribilis, or more recently Ursus arctos to some authorities, is one of the largest carnivores on earth. Only the Alaskan brown bear (if indeed it isn't only a bigger grizzly) and the polar bear are larger. Potentially, the grizzly is the most dangerous and formidable creature to walk on four feet. It is unpredictable and when full grown is as magnificent a brute as any outdoorsman will ever encounter. I have met lions and rhinos, jaguars and elephants at close range, but a large grizzly always seems more awesome.
No wonder it is considered such a great game animal and such a highly coveted trophy. And sadly, no wonder it isn't very abundant anymore. The grizzly is bordering on oblivion. The loss was deeply disappointing to all concerned. This hand-to-hand combat has been proven beyond doubt and to the full satisfaction of all agencies involved. In my opinion, the event almost matches what happened to Hugh Glass in early American Mountain Man days. Only Glass had to crawl on his belly for over a hundred miles for medical help. It will go down as one of the most remarkable outdoor feats in modem outdoor history. Johnson killed his bear with only a hand held arrow. The man not only survived after being hospitalized for many months, but he himself has the highest respect not only for the grizzly bear, but has stated he wished he didn't have to kill it. The bear had a cub, and there was a provocative situation to which this hunter could not remove himself. I believe this hunter's last name was Johnson and is open to correction if needed. Few remain in the United States, except Alaska, where a fair number of the bears remain. Canada also contains a sizable population. But nowhere is the grizzly more than a fraction as plentiful as during primitive time.

Once this amazing bruin was abundant almost everywhere in the West. There isn't any way to determine accurately the number of grizzles in existence more than a century ago, but in certain areas they were numerous enough to be a nuisance to ranchers, and farmers. One area, believe it or not, where grizzles were especially plentiful is the one now occupied by the city of Los Angeles.

The Indians of our West learned to live in semi-compatibility with grizzles, and vice versa. Most tribes attributed great wisdom, strength, and even magical powers to the bears. Some thought grizzles were brave ancestors reincarnated. Occasionally Indians would hunt grizzles, but with their primitive weapons it wasn't a very healthful pastime. A necklace of claws could be proudly worn.

Nobody will ever know who was the first European to meet the grizzly, but almost certainly it was either Cabeza de Vaca or Francisco Coronado (or a member of their parties), explorers who wandered about the Southwest during the first half of the sixteenth century. It's likely that the first grizzly killed by a non-Indian was shot with a Spanish crossbow. A Jesuit missionary, Claude Allouez, made the first clear reference to grizzles. In his Mission to Kilistinouc as written in 1666 about the Assiniboine River region of western Canada, he notes, "Indians are eaten by bears of frightful size, with prodigiously long claws."

The early explorers found it hard not to encounter grizzles, and there are many quaint and interesting accounts of these meetings. In 1805 Lewis and Clark met this "tremendously looking animal," [sic] and it wasn't exactly a cordial contact. The bruin chased Lewis back into the Missouri River. Lewis later wrote: "There was no place by means of which I could conceal myself from the monster until I could charge my rifle. In this situation I thought of retreating in a brisk walk until I could reach a tree about 300 yards below me, but I had no sooner turned myself about but he pitched at me, open mouthed and full speed. I ran into the water to such depth that I could stand and he would be obliged to swim, and that I could in that situation defend myself with my esponton."

Luckily for Captain Lewis, he didn't have to use his esponton, which is a short pike. But some frontiersmen who followed weren't so fortunate. Kit Carson was treed like a possum a number of times, and old Jim Bridger regarded the bears with great respect. "grizzles," he told a friend "is nothing but devils in fur coats."

Another of the greatest mountain men, Hugh Glass, survived a brush with a grizzly that seems incredible. In 1825 Glass shot a bear but only wounded it, and the bear dragged Glass from a tree into which he tried to escape. The animal proceeded to maul and mutilate Glass beyond recognition, breaking bones and tearing most of his scalp away. His condition appeared so hopeless that his companions (including Jim Bridger) abandoned him for dead. But somehow, unattended, and after lying in a coma for days, Glass survived and crawled more than one hundred miles on his belly down the Missouri to Fort Pierre, South Dakota. There he continued his recovery, and he later went back to trapping and exploring in the Rockies.

An adult grizzly is truly impressive and remarkable. He can run with startling speed, and an actual charge must be a chilling, fearsome thing. I have watched a female grizzly negotiate a rim rock that appeared difficult even for a bighorn sheep. Still more remarkable, a pair of small cubs followed her.

It isn't easy to confuse grizzles with black bears that often share the same range. The wide dished-in face and shoulder hump of the grizzly are highly distinctive. And to me at least, a grizzly has a bolder, more confidant and rolling gait. Even the paw prints are distinctive from black bears, because the long claws of a grizzly's front feet are etched in soft earth. A black bear's claws do not show unless he is scratching or is injured.

Ask a hunter how big grizzles grow, and his answer will invariably be exaggerated, because his trophy is such an impressive beast, but reports of grizzles far exceeding a half-ton in weight must fall into the category of legend. Zoo bears have attained extraordinary size (one up to 1,350 pounds), and it is even remotely possible that some grizzles reach that size in the wild. But few bears bagged by hunters can ever be weighed, a fact that adds to the lore and mystery An entire library could be filled with grizzly-hunting stories. Ben Lilly of New Mexico, the most famous bear hunter of all, once tracked a giant grizzly for five years. An eastern industrialist, who said he wanted the trophy, paid the bearded old man a salary to carry on the relentless tracking project. But he never found time to join Lilly for the kill.

It is hard to say how the grizzly first received its name. Earliest accounts used the terms "gray bear" or "white bear," both of which were probably translations of Indian names for the animal. But more than likely, grizzly is derived from one of two sources: from grisel, and old French word meaning "gray"; or from the Old English grislic, which meant "horrible" or "demon like." Some early writers called the brute a "grisly" rather than "grizzly" bear. Later on, during the era of Jim Bridger and the Mountain Men, a grizzly was called Ephraim, or Old Ephraim, or Old Eph. A common term today is "silvertip," a name that describes the animal when the sun backlights the long guard hairs on ifs back.

Actually, grizzles come in various colors, from almost black through all shades of brown to almost light blond. Occasionally younger bears are bi-colored: dark brown underneath with a blond or near-yellow saddle of the critter. A 500-pound male is a good one, rest assured, and so is a 400-pound female.

Grizzles figured prominently in the early days of southern California's settlement, both as a nuisance and as they furnished strange kinds of sport. If ranching wasn't always profitable, it was because the bears found fat cattle easy to catch and even better to eat. Hunting the bears was at first a serious business, but it evolved into a dangerous and harmful game.

Those Spanish settlers, it seems, missed the excitement and spectacle of the bullfights and cockfights they had enjoyed at home. Maybe it was inevitable when one bright day somebody suggested lassoing a grizzly. The "vaqueros" were skillful riders, recklessly brave; whose horsemanship was a matter of immense pride. Roping (or trying to rope) bears with ox hide reatas became an important pastime hard to match for pure thrills. Every fiesta was an excuse to go out and rope some bears - and every roped bear was an excuse for a fiesta. Life, we suspect, was lively in old California.

One day somebody suggested putting a captive bear into an arena with a bull to see what would happen. The result was a savage bear-bull fight, the first of thousands held on every feast day or birthday of a saint for almost half a century thereafter. Both bulls and bears were handled and treated, as were valuable gladiators in ancient Rome or prizefighters today. The fiercer they were, the more famous they became. All over California the most ferocious bears became highly valuable properties.

As late as 1857 a bull-bear fight was held at the mission of Los Angeles, and others were held at the San Fernando mission after 1860. The spectacle caught on briefly elsewhere in the West, and on October 8, 1868, a fight was staged in Helena, Montana. The bear was a huge male captured along the Sun River nearby, but no account remains of how it fared against a bull or bulls. Fortunately, that seems to have been the last of a bloody, deplorable sport. But the incredible strength and ferocity of grizzles in those battle pits contributed much to grizzly legend today.

It's curious how little is known about grizzles today, in this era of science. It is believed by many, for example, that these bruins are purely flesh eaters, but that isn't true: they're really omnivorous. Perhaps the largest portion of a typical western grizzly's diet is obtained by grazing on grass and berries. I have watched a grizzly eat not only blueberries he found on an Alberta hillside, but entire berry bushes as well.

As a result of their scientific and exhaustive study spanning seven years in Yellowstone Park, biologist John and Frank Craighead have become the best authorities on grizzly bears today. Using baited traps made of sections of culvert pipe and falling trap doors, the brothers captured alive 391 bruins. Next the animals were drugged and, after investigation for age, sex, health and other biological data, were released. From the results, the Craigheads, learned a good bit about the species.

The Craigheads found, for example, that the average grizzly in the Park lives to be only six years old, and that four of every ten cubs perish before a year and a half (which is weaning age). Causes of death include a forty percent loss to hunting when the bears wander outside the park onto National Forest Lands. Problem bears, which must be eliminated to protect people in the Park account for another eighteen percent loss. Still, the Yellowstone population appears to hold at a level of between 250 and 300 animals. Late in 1961 the Craigheads trapped and drugged a female grizzly, which was destined to make history. On regaining consciousness, the sow found a bright new two-pound collar around her neck. The collar contained a two-ounce radio transmitter complete with batteries and antenna. By using radio receivers, the biologist-brothers became the first men ever to maintain contact with bears as they traveled about and the first researchers to learn much about a bear's wandering habits. Eventually transmitters were attached to twenty-nine bears and their itineraries charted on maps of the Park.

To date the Craighead investigation remains as one of the most worthwhile and dramatic wildlife studies ever completed. It may help save the species from extinction. But apparently nothing can save a close cousin, the Mexican grizzly, Ursus nelsoni. This animal was fairly abundant throughout the northern Sierra Madre until about 1850. But since then unregulated hunting and, worse still, in recent times the indiscriminate use of sodium fluoroacetate poison (1080) have virtually wiped out the largest and most majestic animal native to Mexico. If any remain, they are concentrated in the Cerro Campana about fifty miles north of Chihuahua City. As elsewhere, Mexicans in bear country developed an unreasonable fear of the animals, and mothers warned children that a bear would hug them to death if they were naughty.

One thing is certain in Mexico or anywhere else: grizzles do not attack by grasping and hugging a victim to death ---- the old bear hug. A grizzly's attack (which, luckily, I've never seen) is a head-on frontal onslaught in which the brute bites and slashes with it's forepaws at anything that moves. Persons who have survived attacks by grizzles agree that the mauling usually stops when the victim is still.

Probably there are more opinions on this than there are grizzly bears, but the wisest answer might be "No - not ordinarily." A lot depends on how you define provocation.

Is it provocation when a cub wanders into your path and cries out in surprise? Next thing you know, Mama may be on your back. Is it provocation if you unknowingly stumble on a bear's meat cache? Or if you meet a grizzly that has just been stung by a whole hive of hornets and is furious with the world? Or how about the big old sow I shot in British Columbia several years ago - the one with abscessed, almost completely hollow teeth? My dentist examined the skull and reported that the bear must have been suffering incredible pain. If that bear had attacked out of pure desperation, would it have been provoked or not?

Because grizzles are potentially dangerous to men and even more so to livestock, they have always been relentlessly hunted and persecuted. This will continue until all are gone. Everything has been used from helicopters to poison cartridges and electronics. Some people will not mourn the passing, those who shudder every time they hear of a rare grizzly incident and then remark that such a dangerous beast doesn't have a place in the civilized world. Well, airplane and car crashes kill human beings wholesale, and no one suggests that we save the civilized world from flying and driving, In addition, many times more humans are killed or injured every year by domestic cattle--and even by bumblebees than have been injured by bears in the last half-century. Like plane crashes, bears simply make headlines. They always have.

In diminished numbers members of the bear family, Ursidae, still exist almost everywhere on earth. But nowhere in the world do so many bears or such a vast assortment of them survive as in North America--in just one state, Alaska, where all North American species are found. This includes the very common black as well as the rare blue (a color phase of the black) glacier bears of Cape St. Elias and Glacier Bay, the blond Toklat grizzles of McKinley Park, and the polar bears of the Arctic Ocean. But in a narrow belt, which closely coincides with the coastal salmon spawning grounds, lives the greatest grizzly of all: the brown or Alaskan brown bear. It's the largest living carnivore.

Everything about the brownie is the most. It is a most impressive brute to meet anywhere anytime, and a prime pelt which squares at ten feet is a most coveted trophy, Brown bears may be the most unpredictable of an unpredictable family: only seconds after scratching it's flanks and gamboling clown like in a stream, I once saw a half-ton male become insanely aggressive when another bruin invaded his pool. There is also the most confusion and disagreement over this bruin's scientific name.

Some consider it only a large race of Ursus arctos or Ursus gyas. Whatever the correct nomenclature, the big bears natural range includes the entire Alaska Peninsula and all the islands of Alaska except those in the southeast, south of Frederick Sound, those west of Unimak in the Aleutians, and the islands in the Bering Sea. There may be as many as nine different races, with those of Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula the largest.

For the remaining text on the grizzly family, the book of "Treasury of Big Game Animals" costs $12.50 and is published by Harper & Row as An Outdoor Life Book Copyright 1972 by Erwin A Bauer - Popular Science Publishing Company, Inc. (A Times Mirror Subsidiary.) Contacting Mr. Erwin A Bauer in Jackson, Wyoming, may obtain copy information.

With permission we present the detailed information provided by Mr. Erwin A Bauer on the Gray Wolf, which also could have a home in the Wilderness, the Department of Agriculture wishes to destroy:

GRIZZLY FACTS: continued~

We are not talking of introducing the Grizzly and Gray Wolf into the civilized world but into an already uncivilized one called wilderness. If YOU (dear reader) allow the Forest Service to continue robbing you of it there won't be any home left for your wildlife. That is what YOU are letting to happen!