Bring grizzlies, dread back to the wilderness

Nature without keystone species is incomplete, out of whack

It’s a memory filled with awe and fear.

I was drenched in sweat and badly dehydrated after I’d lugged a heavy backpack to the summit of 4,400-foot Desolation Peak in 2018. Upon summiting, I collapsed to rest and absorb the majestic North Cascades scenery towering above Ross Lake. 

A few minutes later, Roberto Castro, my hiking buddy, spotted a bear foraging in a meadow a quarter of a mile or so down a slope.

I got up to look — and then gulped.

It was a bear all right — a robust creature built like a four-legged Michelin man with thick fur. It shone like silver in the smoky, August afternoon sunlight. If this bear had  a mind to invade our camp, there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. Still, it was a magnificent creature.

“It looks like a grizzly!” I said. “I hope it doesn’t come up here.”

This U.S. Geological Survey photo shows a grizzly bear and a cub. Grizzlies’ color can range between black and light brown, sometimes making them difficult to distinguish from black bears.

I knew how to distinguish a grizzly from a black bear by looking for the telltale “shoulder hump,” the short snout and short claws. But except for its size, this beast was much too far away to identify with certainty.

Nevertheless, I was disappointed when a ranger told me the next day that there had been no confirmed grizzly bear sighting in North Cascades National Park since 1996.

There should be grizzlies there. And this is why it’s thrilling that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced recently that it is  preparing to reintroduce Ursus arctos horribilis into the North Cascades.

Land managers have sound biological reasons for wanting to restore a “keystone species” — one that helps keep an ecosystem in balance. However, for me, this is much more than that: It is about returning wildness back into the wilds. It’s about restoring risk and fear to a journey into the forest. It’s about testing our wits and being humbled by nature.

“Grizzlies, in this sense, are a little like a rumbling  volcano. We’re fascinated by them, but we must give them their space and cede mastery of the wilds to them.“

Grizzlies have had a special place in American natural history. Lewis and Clark reported their massive size and ferocity during the Corps of Discovery’s  journey from St. Louis to the mouth of The Columbia River.  Biologists estimate that 50,000 grizzlies once ranged across 18 Western states and Mexico.

History of extermination

My own first memory of grizzlies revolves around the infamous bear attacks that killed two young women in Glacier National Park on the night of Aug. 13, 1967. It led to publication of Jack Olson’s Night of the Grizzly. Attacks on humans are rare, and Olson blamed poor park and bear management. The book and episode prompted Sports Illustrated to ask on its cover of May 26, 1969 : “The Grizzly — Enemy of Man. Must he be exterminated?”

By then, of course, efforts to exterminate grizzlies had been well underway for more than 150 years as western expansion led to conflicts with ranchers. Wilderness then was an an enemy to be conquered. Apex predators like grizzlies and wolves were to be eradicated from the landscape. 

Government-funded programs encouraged bounty hunters to shoot, poison and trap the bears.  By the 1930s, grizzlies were found on only 2% of their former range, and  grizzly bear populations in the 48 lower states today number just under 2,000.

California’s state flag features a grizzly, but the species has been extinct there for nearly a century. A large bear spotted in the Chiwawa River Valley north of Lake Wenatchee in 2008 may have been a grizzly, but officially it had been decades since a confirmed grizzly sighting occurred in that area, according to the Wenatchee World.

Efforts to bring them back are driven by the realization that top predators play an essential role in keeping ecosystems healthy. The re-introduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park, for example, has  dramatically increased plant, mammal and bird diversity; reduced erosion;  and kept bison, moose and elk populations in check. 

Grizzlies are not major predators of large game, but they help spread native plants through their poop and grubbing for roots, grasses and and insects. Restoring them to their proper place would be a reminder, as naturalist Aldo Leopold wrote, about “what the land was, what it is, and what it ought to be."

To hikers like me,  grizzlies are an essential element of wildness, a place where the (apparent) comfort and safety of civilization end and when you are at risk from powers beyond your control. Grizzlies, in this sense, are a little like a rumbling  volcano. We’re fascinated by them, but we must give them their space and cede mastery of the wilds to them.  To share the woods with them takes careful thought and preparation — and sometimes a little luck.

Even with the grizzly’s eventual re-introduction into the North Cascades, encounters with hikers likely will be rare. Still, there should be risk and a little dread connected with a trip into the woods.  We should worry about — and be alert for — what lurks around the next bend in the trail, whether it be a grizzly or a cougar.

Fear is a great teacher. Fear — and the thrill of overcoming it —   drives people to climb sheer mountains and shoot violent rapids. It gives us a sense of accomplishment to overcome our anxieties and navigate danger. Fear forges powerful memories and solid friendships. It helps us focus and sharpen our minds.

No wonder the famed English nature poet William Wordsworth wrote that he was “fostered alike by beauty and by fear,” which he experienced in nature alone.  No wonder Henry David Thoreau, the American naturalist, considered wildness essential to freedom and self-reliance.

The wilds without its fearful predators  is nature sanitized, incomplete and with little power to instill dread — the dread that I got a small little taste of that day on Desolation Peak.