Coming to Terms with Bears: A conversation with Chris Morgan

The following is the transcription of an audio interview between Liam Moriarty of KPLU and Chris Morgan

LM: What is it about bears in particular that seems to attract and repel people at the same time?

CM: Bears are one of the most powerful representatives of wild areas, and my mantra is what’s good for bears is good for people. So, as a conservationist I use the presence of bears as a barometer in terms of identifying wild places around the planet that are wild enough for bears. Whether it’s grizzlies in Yellowstone, Indian bears in Peru, sun bears in Borneo, they’re living in some of the wildest places in the world, so as an ecologist and conservationist that’s a huge tool for me to use. 

LM: How do they act as that “canary in the coal mine”? How do they fulfill that function? What is it about their place in the ecosystem that does that?

CM: In the case of grizzly bears, they’re quite a small species. We’ve only got a small number of them here in the Cascades, for example. We used to have hundreds—

LM: We have grizzlies in the Cascades?

CM: Yeah, yeah.

LM: Really!? I didn’t know we had any left!

CM: Yeah—

LM: How many, do we know?

CM: We don’t have a sure handle on it, but it’s certainly less than twenty. Might be closer to five. We really don’t know, they’re not radio collared, they’re not monitored or tagged in any way, so it really comes down to finding tracks or sightings by the public. And you know, we used to have hundreds of them in the Cascades in historic times—maybe 50 or 100 thousand in the Lower 48 200 years ago. Now we’re down to just 1000 in the lower 48. We’re maybe 5 or 10 in the Cascades, so they’re a real indicator of where pure wilderness is, and we have that like—it starts an hour from Seattle and it’s amazing because it’s only four states in the Lower 48 that can claim that grizzly bear presence.

LM: You talk about your North Cascades Grizzly Bear Outreach Project, what is that project?

CM: Basically the Grizzly Bear Outreach Project is a way to communicate with people who live in and around Washington’s Cascades about what a grizzly bear is. What’s its ecology? How does it behave? How do you stay safe when you’re in bear country? How do you make sure bears don’t get into your backyard? You know, making sure you deal with bird feed and compost and garbage and hummingbird mix and all these attractants that bring in black bears and someday might bring in grizzly bears if the numbers increase. So we prepare rural towns-in a real sort of “non advocacy” way. We pride ourselves on being a public information service. You wanna know about bears we’ll give you all the information you need. 

LM: Why are they important? Why is the notion that we still have some grizzly bears in Washington state important?

CM: That is a huge question for me, because I have this British-European perspective.  The window of opportunity to protect these massive areas that are wild enough for suites of carnivores that we have in Washington state is long gone in England. And in fact in most of Western Europe, you’ve got to get to Eastern Europe before you find good, healthy populations of bears.

LM: Now you’ve also recently done a project-there’s this book called “Bears of the Last Frontier”, and it was part of a PBS Nature series that will be airing in May next month is that correct? 

CM: That’s right, yeah.

LM: And you had quite the adventure, you traveled the length of Alaska from Homer to Prudhoe Bay up at the top on a motorcycle. How did that contribute to your understanding and your appreciation of the role that bears play?

CM: It had a huge impact on me because my whole life, I’ve worked in various parts of the world and I’ve never spent so much time among North American bears as this. For example, the Alaskan Peninsula. It’s a place that is packed full of bears, it’s one of the densest populations in the world. You know, we count among them for weeks. We went from the breeding season right through the summer salmon season. Then we went to Anchorage. Anchorage is bear country too, and people have black bears and brown bears and moose and other species—even lynx I heard about from one lady there- in their backyards, and deal with it pretty much. Then we head north across the Arctic Circle, then end up on the pack ice tracking polar bears with an Inupiat Eskimo-which was incredible to me from the spiritual, cultural side of it- just seeing how this community reveres, respects, and understands these polar bears intimately. 

LM: You also mention in the book how the bears play a part in that nutrient transport mechanism that the salmon are like the central link in, because the salmon are the link between the open ocean and the mountains. 

CM: Basically, the salmon are feeding the bears and the bears are feeding the forest, and they’ll distribute the whole fish carcasses in some cases, or in the form of scat and urine, distributing nitrogen throughout these forests that make them intact and all up the west coast we have examples of that where these giant trees partly have brown bears to thank for providing fish fertilizer.

LM: How can people and bears coexist on the same landscape, or is that really even possible? How does that shake out do you think?

CM: It’s a dilemma. It’s kind of—learn to live with them because they’re not going anywhere in the case of black bears. And it is possible to coexist with these species quite easily. To me, we’re the smart ones and it’s kind of up to us to adapt to the ways that are necessary to protect this amazing state that we all live in. Surely that gives us some responsibility to do right by them

LM: Well Chris Morgan, thanks for coming in today, it’s been a pleasure talking to you.

CM: Thanks so much Liam.