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THE OLD WISCONSIN GOLD MINE
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BRITISH COLUMBIA ONE OF THE WORLD'S LAST GREAT WILD PLACES
Full grown male grizzly bear. Canada was green banks of timber ripe for the cutting. It was rivers teeming with salmon and forests full of wildlife. It was mountains and creek beds glittering with golden gravel. This is how it appeared to those who arrived in the mid 1800’s.
No other North American animal commands such respect when encountered in the wild. Bears are the largest land based carnivores on the planet.
Wildlife varies greatly throughout the Columbia Mountains, from the valleys to the mountain peaks, and includes black and grizzly bear, mountain caribou, moose, elk, white-tailed and mule deer, mountain goat, coyote, porcupine, muskrat, wolverine, lynx, and pine marten. Several large moose were seen on the mine trail during recent work on site.
Some people are happy to follow the busy tourist trail and see the sights all tourist do, but for others, there’s much more – a world beyond. There is more to life than simply increasing its speed. BEAR FACTS British Columbia is one of the few places in the world which still has significant populations of both black and grizzly bears. As many people are fascinated by bears we have prepared the following information. THE GRIZZLY - LARGER THAN LIFE ALMOST EXTERMINATED FROM THE USA
A LONER & NOMAD The grizzly bear is very much a loner spending much of its life as a solitary nomad, slowly roaming around its range - which can be huge - generally avoiding, except at breeding time, other bears. Much of a bear’s day is spent foraging or looking for food, with 80-90% of its diet being green vegetation, wild fruits and berries, nuts, and bulbs or roots of certain plants (huckleberries and the bulbs of the glacier lily at the Wisconsin). Bears also consume large numbers of insects, sometimes tearing rotten logs apart and turning over heavy stones in search of them or their larvae. Most of the meat eaten comes from animal carcasses, or carrion, of big game animals - although a grizzly will sometimes prey on elk or moose calves or smaller animals (marmots at the Wisconsin). A GRIZZLY MAY EAT FOR 20 HOURS A DAY PRIOR TO HIBERNATION
A grizzly must eat enough to store huge amounts of fat needed to sustain it through the 4-7 months of hibernation, and may spend up to 20-hours a day feeding in readiness for hibernation, putting on several pounds a day in weight. As the days shorten in October and coolness comes to the air, the grizzly will start looking for a place to dig a den, and may travel many miles to find a suitable site. Generally, they seek high mountain slopes where deep snow will lie until spring to serve as insulation. Bears often dig beneath the roots of large trees to create a den where they can curl up and drift off to sleep. It is not a strict hibernation in scientific terms and during this long period they live off their body fat, losing at least a quarter of their weight. THE ONLY MAMMAL TO GIVE BIRTH DURING HIBERNATION Sometime in January, at the height of the winter, the female gives birth, barely awakening. Mating season is in June through July but grizzly bear embryos do not begin to develop until the mother begins her winter hibernation. This is the only instance of hibernating mammals giving birth. The cubs - numbering one to four, but commonly two - are blind, deaf, toothless, almost bald and utterly helpless, about the size of a chipmunk. For the next four months or so the mother will only awaken to reposition herself slightly and check on the cubs. By 6 weeks the cubs eyes are open, by 12 weeks they begin to assume the fuzzy shape and comical playfulness so pleasing to human observers, but the mother sleeps on. The cubs gain weight quickly and by the time they come out of the den in April or May will have reached 20 pounds. It is at this time that bears are at their most vulnerable as they will usually travel to lower elevations to reach vegetated, snow-free areas. This brings bears into direct conflict with humans who traditionally build their homes in the lower elevations, along the very creeks and rivers that bears visit in order to find spring ‘green-up’. Cubs remain dependent on their mother’s milk for almost a year, stay with their mother for two to three years, and not reach breeding maturity until 5-9 years. Even then, they may only breed every three or more years. The mortality rate for cubs is as high as 50%.Grizzlies should live to be 15 to 20 years of age, with a few surviving for up to 30-years. However, with the pressure from humans, a bear’s life span continues to be limited below what would be biologically expected from the species. ONE OF THE MOST ‘LOVABLE’ OF CREATURES To most people, the grizzly bear is a lovable, fascinating creature, its great appeal coming not only from its shaggy, ungainly and lumbering manner, but also from its capacity to inspire dread - because it does, sometimes, kill people.
However, they do have a known propensity to charge intruders, especially mothers with cubs, and with surprising speed; a bear can accelerate - in a sudden burst - up to 30 miles (50 km) an hour. Very young brown bears can climb trees, but mature grizzlies, as distinct from black bears, lose that skill. A grizzly will maul its victim but not generally eat a human, whereas a black bear is more inclined to eat its victim. Thus, in an attack, it is advisable to fight a black bear, but feign death by lying inert with a grizzly – though this is easier said than done! It is not always easy to tell a black bear from a grizzly. Unlike the black bear, the grizzly has a rather concave face; high humped shoulders, and long, curved claws. The grizzly’s thick fur, which varies from light brown to nearly black, sometimes looks ‘frosty’, hence the name ‘grizzly’, or the less common ‘silvertip’. The grizzly has shorter, more rounded ears than the black bear. But it is a combination of characteristics that will help you identify one from the other. Each may have a similar colored coat, a less than concave face and small or large shoulder humps. Color alone is never an indicator of species; black and grizzly bears can each range from almost white to blonde to pure black and many color phases in between depending on age, sex and season. |
THE
GRIZZLY BEAR - Of the three species of bear that range across North America -
the polar, black, and brown – it is the brown bear, or grizzly, that is
perhaps the best known for inspiring most of those stories told around
campfires. (Note the hump on shoulders of this mature grizzly, which easily
distinguishes it from the black bear).
Larger
that the black bear, the male grizzly may stand up to 7-feet tall and weigh
anything from 350 to 700 lbs (160-320 kgs), and occasionally up to 1000 lbs.
Females are smaller. Due to their varied diet they are best characterized as
omnivores as typically, a grizzly bear’s diet in the Columbia Mountains
consists of less than 15% meat. The remainder is mainly roots, herbs, berries
and insects.
It’s
common these days, though arguably enjoyable, to speed along in a luxury tour
bus, to stop where only buses can, to pan for gold in a ‘salted’ box next to
the busy highway with 40 other tourists, to perhaps, if you’re lucky, glimpse
a bear briefly in the distance while speeding along.
Once
occupying much of Europe, northern Asia and the western half of North America,
the grizzly was a symbol of America’s wild lands, it’s historic range from
the mid-plains westward to California and from central Mexico north throughout
Canada and Alaska. Today, the brown bear has been driven out of Mexico and most
of the lower states, occupying today little more than one percent of its former
territory in those states. Its range is now centred almost exclusively in
Alaska, the Yukon and British Columbia, though efforts are being made to restore
populations in all of the ecosystems that are known to have suitable habitat.
The sad demise of the grizzly bear has been due in main to its conflict with
humans, since it likes to occupy the same territory - open woodland, valley
bottoms, estuaries and meadows - that people want. In 1975 the US Fish &
Wildlife Service listed it as an endangered species.
Unlike the black bear that never caches its prey, the grizzly may hide and
vigorously defend its prize. It is also built for digging, with massive muscular
shoulders and claws up to 6-inches (15 cm) long, and frequently pursues mice,
marmots and gophers into their burrows where it will mount a constructive effort
to dig them out.
When
startled, a grizzly will stand on its hind feet sniffing the air in a strange,
humanlike posture. This is not a sign of imminent attack, though
humans, not surprisingly, usually view it that way, but simply because in this
way the bear can better survey and smell its surroundings.