Male grizzly released in Cabinets

A young male grizzly was released west of Spar Lake in the Cabinet Mountains on July 31 to augment the grizzly bear population.

The three-year-old male weighed 200 pounds and had no history of human conflicts.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks personnel captured the bear in the North Fork of the Flathead River about 25 miles north of Columbia Falls.

The bear will be monitored by weekly flights.

Two other augmentation bears are also being monitored.

One is a three-year-old male released in 2012 and was most recently located in the East Fork of the Bull River. The other is a two-year-old female released near Spar Lake in 2011.

Within weeks of release, the female left the Cabinet Mountains and traveled over to Glacier National Park where she denned for the winter of 2011-2012.

In spring 2012, she trekked back to the Cabinet Mountains and denned within three miles of her release site during the winter of 2012-2013.

This spring, she began the trek again and her most recent location was on the west side of Koocanusa Reservoir a few miles north of Ziegler Mountain on the return trip from Glacier Park.

Fourteen bears have augmented the Cabinet Mountain grizzly population since 1990 (11 females and three males).

Of those, three females and one male have left the target area and four bears have died.

Captures, mortality and genetically analyzed hair snags have identified 35 individual grizzly bears between 1997-2012 in the Cabinet Mountains, according to Wayne Kasworm, USFWS biologist.

Twenty of these bears are descendants of a 1993 augmentation bear. Nine of the 35 bears are known to be dead.

The few hair snags obtained from non-augmented bears estimates the population before augmentation at fewer than 15 bears.

This indicates that the Cabinet Mountains grizzly population would probably have disappeared without augmentation, said Kasworm in a press release.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks personnel hope to capture a young female grizzly to be released in the Cabinet Mountains later this summer.