Wildlife

A lab has identified a possible cause of death for one of the two brown bears that died in front of the high-traffic bear cams in Katmai National Park last month.

After thousands of viewers watched a spring cub die in late October, the animal’s remains were sent to a lab in Madison, Wisconsin, for a necropsy.

Roy Wood, the Chief of Interpretation at Katmai, said the cub tested positive for canine adenovirus, an infection that is also found in cats, dogs and wolves.

“It’s called canine infectious hepatitis, and it causes liver damage, lesions in esophagus and nose,” Wood said. “And when the symptoms present themselves, they do present similar to what we saw with the cub – loss of motor skills, lethargy, ultimately convulsions and seizures leading to death.”

This is not the first time this disease has been found in bears in Southwest Alaska. A 1998 study showed 14 percent of brown bears on Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula had been exposed to infectious hepatitis.

In the recent Katmai case, Wood said they can’t be certain that the hepatitis is what actually killed the cub, but tests show the virus was present. And that means it could spread to other animals.

“When you spend time around bears, one thing you notice is they go up and smell and lick anything unusual. They will go sniff a pile of feces or sniff where another bear has urinated,” Wood said. “So even without consuming the flesh, it’s possible that a number of other bears may have come into contact with the pathogen.”

Within days of the cub’s death, a large male bear also lay down and died within view of the cameras. Wildlife technicians went out and dissected the body in the field to collect samples. And Wood invited the army of viewers along to help investigate.

“I posted the photos with disclaimers,” Wood said. “… so don’t go there if you’re likely to be upset. But for those of who are who are interested in viewing the science, here’s the link. I said, now, nobody talk about it for 30 minutes. Then we’ll come back and see if – examining photos and looking at your notes – we all come back with the same identification for the bear.”

Wood figured no more than a handful of people would be interested in studying gory photos in the name of science. But as it turned out, the photos got a huge amount of web views within the 30-minute window Wood had allotted.

“I think there were close to 2,000 views, and those were not the 100-or-so people that were on the cams chatting with us and were very, very upset… These were a whole additional group of people that we hardly ever interact with.”

Together, viewers and rangers identified the deceased as bear 868, an adult male known to the bear cam community as one of the ‘Wayne Brothers.’

The tissue samples from 868 came back negative for infectious hepatitis as well as rabies. But Wood said that’s about all they were able to test for, because the samples were too decayed by the time they reached the state veterinarian in Fairbanks.

“We suffered some of the same sorts of delays that we’re used to when we ship stuff from Anchorage out to our homes in the Bush,” explained Wood. “You just miss a flight, and it doesn’t make it on the next one, and now you’ve got a box of mold instead of the lettuce you thought you were getting. And we had that happen; there were some delays getting it all the way to Fairbanks. So we missed out on some test opportunities.”

Wood said biologists aren’t overly concerned at the moment, but they do plan to test for hepatitis among other things in a study next summer.

For now, the cameras at Brooks Camp are down due to ice and snow that covered the solar panels and caused an outage. Wood isn’t sure whether Explore.org will get them turned back on this winter or just wait until spring.

Last month at Katmai National Park, the final hours of two brown bears played out in front of an online audience of thousands. The two animals laid down and died within days of each other.

Bear cam viewers are acting as both eyewitnesses and detectives in this curious case.

Oct. 21 started as a normal fall day at Brooks Camp. Bears were fishing, preparing to den up. A sow and two cubs wandered in front of a camera close to Naknek Lake.

Then something strange happened, something that might have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for the thousands of bear cam fans who are always watching.

“We could see the cub stumbling, and its legs not really working, and then it kind of collapsed,” said Diana from Maryland, a 3-year veteran bear cam watcher who goes by the online name LovetheCams.

She was paying close attention when spring cub started acting strange. That evening, she said the comment board was swirling with confusion.

“Like, what’s happening to this cub, what’s going on? The first day the cub moved a little, but it didn’t ever return to its feet,” she said.

Diana said she took careful notes, counting each respiration. The cub took its last breath on Oct. 23.

Troy Hamon is the chief of resource management for Katmai National Park & Preserve. The staff decided to have the cub autopsied, so a few of his colleagues boated out and collected the 60-pound carcass.

“Which is surprisingly heavy,” Hamon said.

They shipped it to the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin. This is uncharted territory for Katmai rangers. Hamon says they’ve never had a bear necropsy done, because they’ve rarely, if ever, witnessed a bear die of an unknown cause.

“We see bears being killed by other bears, we also see occasionally adult bears killing each other … but our understanding of the non-traumatic deaths is fairly uncommon,” he said.

From a biologist’s point of view, this was a unique opportunity to learn about bear mortality.

And as Hamon described, they were about to get twice the opportunity.

“The situation is, when our staff pulled up to collect the cub, there were some webcam viewers that clipped images from the video of our people arriving,” Hamon said.

This compulsive documentation paid off when a few hours later, viewers looked at that same location, and saw a big, dark, bear-shaped blob where there hadn’t been a dark blob before.

By comparing the before and after photos, they could pinpoint just when the dark shape had parked itself out on a sand spit. Hamon said this caught people’s attention.

“Not because the bear laid down, but because it was still there the next day and the next day,” Hamon said. “We have bears that lay down and sleep for 6 hours, or even sleep for a day, but when a bear lays down for two days, it’s dead.”

Rough weather kept the wildlife staff from returning to the second body for a few days, but Hamon said he and other rangers soon determined that the deceased was an adult male. They knew because they’d watched another mother with cubs who walked by, took one look at the bear on the ground and bolted. Hamon said this is a telling reminder of bear social dynamics.

“The bear hierarchy system is very funny – a very important bear remains very important even after death,” Hamon said.

Meanwhile on the comment board, people now had two bears to grieve – and two mysterious deaths to investigate. As viewers hashed over details and reconstructed a timeline of events, Diana says they were in full-on speculation mode.

“I’ve read everything from, you know, foul play – has someone poisoned them?” she said. “Could it have been something chemical that leaked from a boat or left by a park visitor? Is it the plants, is it the mushrooms? Could it be disease? Could it be neurological?”

Ranger Michael Saxton is one of the bear technicians who collected the cub’s body. He says so far only a few things have been ruled out by the lab in Wisconsin.

“Rabies is negative, toxoplasmosis is negative as well — that’s just a contagious disease they check for,” Saxton said.

Samples from the adult male were sent to a state veterinarian, but the tissue was too decayed to do most diagnostic tests.

Diana said many bear cam watchers were deeply affected by the deaths, especially the spring cub’s. And there’s a tension in the comments, between those who are mourning the bears as you might a pet, and those who see themselves more as citizen scientists.

Diana is hungry for more information. But her mind keeps returning to certain moments, like when the sow and her healthy cub returned to where the cub lay dead.

“She would sniff near the cub and approach the cub near its muzzle, and seemed to be checking for things. And as a mom, I understand that. Checking for things, looking for clues as to what’s wrong. And I would like to have some answers to that,” she said.

Those answer may or may not come with the results of the necropsy.

This week is the 21st annual Alaska Bald Eagle Festival, put on the American Bald Eagle Foundation in Haines. Hundreds of visitors come to town to witness the gathering of eagles on the Chilkat River for a late salmon run. This year, the foundation is allowing the public in a place where they haven’t before — the aviaries where the foundation’s feathered residents live.

“So here’s where the public has never gone before!” said Raptor Curator Chloe Goodson as she led a small group of people into the collection of wooden sheds where eight owls, falcons, hawks and eagles live Tuesday.

Hans, a Eurasian Eagle Owl, squawked as the group stood in front of his aviary. Before this week, a visitor to the eagle foundation would only see Hans if he was taken out of his mew by a trainer and brought into the foundation for display.

“So many people wanted to see all of the birds,” said Eagle Foundation Executive Director Cheryl McRoberts. “When we tell them we have 12 birds there and they only see two on perches here and two eagles, they want to see them all. It’s something people were not able to do before.”

Back in the aviaries, Goodson leads the group to Sara, a great horned owl perched in the corner of her aviary. Like a lot of the raptors the eagle foundation houses, Sara has a disability that means she can’t be released into the wild.

“She was probably hit by a car, like a lot of our other raptors, and sustained permanent wing injuries,” said Goodson. “And that’s why she’s here.”

Sara used to be one of the birds that the trainers could hold on their gloved arm and take in the museum to educate visitors. But she’s not comfortable doing that any more. Goodson says the new tours are especially important for birds like Sara.

“Because they aren’t getting out on a glove and presenting in the museum, so it makes it so we can have as much education value as possible,” she said.

Goodson says in some cases, the eagle foundation would have to give their educational birds to other centers if they weren’t able to display them to public.

“Yeah, we would definitely have less birds if we didn’t open up the mew space.”

The tours could also help bring in donations. Boston resident Betsy Delorenzo was one of the first members of the public to see the raptor aviaries. She says she was considering making an “adopt a bird” donation to the foundation, but she hadn’t met many of the raptors until now.

“I think I’m sold on Hans,” she said after the tour. “He just has so much personality.”

DeLorenzo came to Haines this week for the eagle festival. She says she had never seen an eagle in the wild before.

“And now I’ve seen hundreds. It’s been amazing,” Delorenzo said. “They’re beautiful. It doesn’t even look real, it looks like a painting almost.”

McRoberts says there are a lot more eagles gathered along the Chilkat this year than there were during the festival last year.

“One person counted 55 eagles in one tree,” she said. “It’s crazy.”

The eagle festival events, including the aviary tours, will continue through the week. Events are listed at baldeagles.org.

Many parks and museums boast at least one bronze statue to honor a famous figure. Maybe it’s a noble steed and its rider, or a symbolic figure like New York’s Statue of Liberty. As for Kodiak, the city has a statue honoring the Kodiak brown bear.

Right now, a life-size fiberglass bear is located outside the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center. It’s about 60 years old, and it looks its age according to Paul Chervenak, the chairman of the Kodiak Brown Bear Trust, a nonprofit that works toward Kodiak brown bear conservation.

“Of course, just sunlight would do it, but wind and rain, salt, so the actual statue itself is cracking. There’s been some vandalism and damage, or maybe just accidents, people wanting to have pictures taken with it, so they’re climbing on it and breaking the claws off, etc. And we’ve tried to repair it and keep it up, but it’s sort of (a) losing battle,” he said.

There’s a price tag, but as with a lot of the statues in other communities, this bear is more than a piece of art.

The statue commemorates Kodiak’s first registered bear guide, Charles Madsen, one of the people to encourage the protection of the Kodiak brown bear after the popularity of hunting in the early 20th century started having an effect.

Chervenak, who guides big-game hunters, sport fishermen and wildlife viewers, said he can relate to the significance of the Madsen Bear.

“I am a firm believer in giving back, especially to what I derive my business from,” he said. “This particular project is special to a lot of us, but it really represents what guides and sportsmen have done for the Kodiak bear.”

Chervenak said the Brown Bear Trust has gotten involved in a project to replace the aging statue, which has moved all around town over the years — from the old Kodiak hotel to the spit.

Chervenak said the replacement project is called Rebuild the Bear.

“We started talking about it about a year ago and we started checking into the cost of — potentially bronze would be the nicest and most durable. The cost was pretty high. We happen to have a very wonderful offer from an artist who would help do a lot of it. So, it actually made it a potential reality,” he said.

The Kodiak Brown Bear Trust is negotiating with the artist, Stan Watts, and Atlas Bronze Casting, the foundry he owns in Utah.

Chervenak says the group has an idea of the steps it takes to make a bronze sculpture.

“They make a clay replica and so, this bear is gonna be life-sized or bigger than life-sized, probably close to 10 feet tall,” he said. “They’ll do it out of clay, they’ll let us view it, make any changes we want so we get a true Kodiak bear, and then after they have the clay sculpture, they then cast it in bronze.”

Chervenak says the Kodiak Brown Bear Trust has turned to social media and corporate donations to cover the $40,000 it will contribute through fundraising.

Chervenak says they launched an online fundraising campaign on IndieGoGo. So far, they’ve raised more than $8,000.

“The artist is trying to line up donors through people he knows to cover the rest of it. I mean, the total project will probably be $100,000 to $125,000 by the time you create it, ship it here and install it, and so he’s covering that end of it,” Chervenak said.

Chervenak said the Kodiak Brown Bear Trust will probably sign a contract with Watts this week.

Last month at Katmai National Park, the final hours of two brown bears played out in front of an online audience of thousands. The two animals laid down and died within days of each other.

Bear-cam viewers are acting as both eye-witnesses and detectives in this curious case.

Oct. 21 started as a normal fall day at Brooks Camp. Bears were fishing, preparing to den up. A sow and two cubs wandered in front of a camera close to Naknek Lake.

Then something strange happened, something that might have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for the thousands of bear cam fans who are always watching.

“We could see the cub stumbling, and its legs not really working, and then it kind of collapsed.”

That’s Diana from Maryland, a 3-year veteran bear-cam watcher who goes by the online name LovetheCams. She was paying close attention when spring cub started acting strangely. That evening, she says, the comment board was swirling with confusion.

“Like, what’s happening to this cub, what’s going on? The first day the cub moved a little, but it didn’t ever return to its feet.”

Diana says she took careful notes, counting each respiration. The cub took its last breath Friday.

Troy Hamon is the Chief of Resource Management for Katmai National Park & Preserve. The staff decided to have the cub autopsied, so a few of his colleagues boated out and collected the 60-pound carcass.

“Which is surprisingly heavy… and we shipped it to the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin.”

This is uncharted territory for Katmai rangers. Hamon says they’ve never had a bear necropsy done, because they’ve rarely — if ever — witnessed a bear die of an unknown cause.

“We see bears being killed by other bears; we also see occasionally adult bears killing each other… But our understanding of the non-traumatic deaths is fairly uncommon.”

From a biologists’ point of view, this was a unique opportunity to learn about bear mortality.

And they were about to get twice the opportunity.

“The situation is, when our staff pulled up to collect the cub, there were some webcam viewers that clipped images from the video of our people arriving,” says Hamon.

This compulsive documentation paid off when a few hours later, viewers looked at that same location, and saw a big dark bear-shaped blob where there hadn’t been a dark blob before.

By comparing the before and after photos, they could pinpoint just when the dark shape had parked itself out on a sand spit. Hamon says this caught people’s attention –

“… Not because the bear laid down, but because it was still there the next day… and the next day. We have bears that lay down and sleep for six hours, or even sleep for a day, but when a bear lays down for two days, it’s dead.”

Rough weather kept the wildlife staff from returning to the second body for a few days, but Hamon says he and other soon rangers determined that the deceased was an adult male. They knew because they’d seen another mother with cubs walk by, take one look at the body on the ground, and bolt.

“The bear hierarchy system is very funny — a very important bear remains very important even after death.”

Meanwhile on the comment board, people now had two bears to grieve – and two mysterious deaths to investigate. As viewers hashed over details and re-constructed a timeline of events, Diana says they were in full-on speculation mode:

“I’ve read everything from, you know, foul play – has someone poisoned them? Could it have been something chemical that leaked from a boat or left by a park visitor? Is it the plants, is it the mushrooms? Could it be disease? Could it be neurological?”

Ranger Michael Saxton is one of the bear technicians who collected the cub’s body. He says so far only a few things have been ruled out by the lab in Wisconsin.

Rabies is negative, >toxoplasmosis is negative as well… that’s just a disease they check for, a contagious disease.”

Samples from the adult male were sent to a state veterinarian, but the tissue was too decayed to do most diagnostic tests.

Diana says many bear-cam watchers were deeply affected by the deaths, especially that of the spring cub. And there’s a tension in the comments – between those who are mourning the bears as you might a pet, and those who see themselves more as citizen scientists.

Diana is hungry for more information. But her mind keeps returning to certain moments, like when the sow and her healthy cub returned to where the cub lay dead.

“She would sniff near the cub and approach the cub near its muzzle, and seemed to be checking for things. And as a mom, I understand that – checking for things, looking for clues as to what’s wrong. And I would like to have some answers to that.”

Those answers may or may not come with the results of the necropsy.

Using traditional knowledge to support ecological research was the focus of two presentations Saturday at the “Sharing Our Knowledge” Tlingit clan conference.

Behavioral ecologist Fred Sharpe, Ph.D., of the Alaska Whale Foundation, explained to attendees how researchers were using Tlingit place names to help better understand the historical ecology of Southeast.

Sharpe is most concerned about the eastern North Pacific right whale, a highly endangered species with an estimated population of about 30. He said the names of traditional sites or clan houses can indicate that a particular species once populated the area; that’s information that could help researchers understand why a species is in decline.

“Place names can be very instructive,” Sharpe said. “We learned that there’s a place on Chichagof island called Sea Otter Point. And that’s super cool because sea otters aren’t there (now) but it does suggest that they were there in the not-too-distant past.”

Sharpe said Tlingit traditional knowledge has influenced how he thinks about whales.

“I think that gaining some insight into the Tlingits’ perspective has really helped me see how a people can live for centuries, millennia, perhaps even longer with these animals and appreciate them in a nonconsumptive context,” he said. “We see that they loved them and were very proud of them. We take incredible inspiration from that to see how you can intelligently manage species.”

Using Tlingit perspective and knowledge as a guide, Sharpe said he hopes to find ways to return to a more equitable relationship with Southeast’s whales.

Another presenter, Allyson Olds, focused her master’s thesis on hooligan run times in the Chilkat and Chilkoot rivers. The main goal of her research was to establish a baseline for the annual arrival of the fish. Aside from other forms of research, Olds interviewed 20 people in the area to understand how the population has changed.

Little research has been done on the fish, which are not currently harvested commercially.

Hooligan is a subsistence food source in Southeast and parts of Southcentral. The small, oily fish usually arrive in Alaska streams and rivers in early summer to spawn, making them one of the first fish available for harvest by subsistence users and wildlife.

Understanding how climate change may impact run times could be key to sustainable management of the fishery, Olds said.

“There’s big implications on the influence of climate change, which not only affects run timing of course,” Olds said. “It affects everything else since so many wildlife predators rely on these. … They’re not just there, they migrate and they show up for these runs. If that run timing is changing, it can also affect their migrations as well.”

Olds said there is some concern that hooligan population decline is making its way north. On the Pacific coast, the once-prolific forage fish was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2010. The following year, British Columbia listed the fish as endangered. Earlier this year, the Alaska Department of Fish & Game closed the Ketchikan area fishery.

Ideally, Olds said, her research would be replicated in other spawning areas to help paint a more accurate picture of the health of the hooligan populations.