Comment
Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Family with his wife, Julie, on the Anderson Ranch. When he was young, seeing grizzlies was very uncommon. Two grizzly bear cubs dig for caraway root in a cattle pasture in Tom Miner Basin. Tony Brady grabbed his binoculars and stepped out of his SUV, parked on the shoulder of Tom Miner Creek Road, in southwest Montana, on a chilly September morning last year. In the distance, a few brown dots milled around the meadows of the B Bar Ranch in the upper Tom Miner Basin, just northeast of Yellowstone National Park. Through binoculars, the dots resolved into a group of one of America’s most iconic creatures — grizzly bears.The view was a stark contrast to Brady’s home in Macon, Georgia, where he’s lived his whole life. “The very first time I was here, we saw six bears out in that field,” he said. “The guy next to me said, ‘You shoulda been here last night; there was 13 out here.’ ” The number of bears has drastically increased in the Tom Miner Basin over the last decade. And tourists like Brady have followed, congregating to watch the animals. That has presented challenges to local residents, creating more traffic and bringing people who drive too fast on narrow county roads, trespass on private land, litter and get too close to the bears. Plentiful food may explain the surge in grizzly numbers. The basin is home to an abundant supply of a non-native plant, caraway, with a calorie-rich root that grizzlies like to dig up and eat. Bears in the area have probably been eating caraway for a long time, said Kevin Frey, a biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, but within the last 10 years or so, both species have proliferated. Caraway thrives in the irrigated lowland fields of local ranch land, and as grizzlies forage for the plant’s roots, its seeds drop and scatter, allowing it to flourish again next year. “I’ve had collared bears that have traveled hundreds of miles for food,” Frey said. “But when food is ample enough, they stick around.” The bears of Tom Miner Basin are most visible in the late summer and fall, during a period called “hyperphagia,” when they’re packing in as many calories as possible before winter hibernation. Naturally, then, that’s when tourists in search of grizzlies swarm the basin, too. Locals worry that the confluence of humans and bears puts both species in a dangerous situation. “People not from the basin are often unmindful of the risks posed by their very presence, their speed, and their activities to humans, livestock and wildlife,” said Maryanne Mott, owner of the B Bar Ranch. “Fortunately, so far, this has not led to
Add Comment