Bottle-fed grizzlies make nice for science

While Nelson and Robbins hope to work in person with Mica, Luna, Peeka and Kio well into the bears’ adulthoods, they know they’re in uncharted territory and constantly evaluate their subjects for clues to changing personalities that could make them decide it’s unsafe to continue.

At this point, Robbins, Nelson and vet school technician Pam Thompson are the only humans to join Mica and Luna inside their enclosures. And once Peeka and Kio go into hibernation this fall, they’ll no longer be entertaining visitors on the same side of the fence either.

Nelson harbors no illusions about the potential danger. The center’s six adult bears must still be tranquilized for tests because “I wouldn’t dream of going in with them to do it.”

But Nelson and Robbins do dream of a greatly expanded facility, one three times the size of the current Bear Research Center. Pointing to land just across the road, Robbins outlines his vision for a “dedicated facility that would meet national needs in terms of understanding bears”: 18 pens and three separate outside areas; larger pools; sterile medical suites; room for more than 20 bears and the possibility of adding a second species to study.

Such a facility would also be much easier to manage. With the addition of remotely controlled chutes and doors, the adult bears from the wild could be herded into people-safe spaces appropriate for training them to participate in some studies without being tranquilized, Nelson says.

Goal: $5 million
Robbins is trying to raise $5 million, which seems a huge amount of money compared with the center’s annual operating budget of $60,000.

He’s able to run the center on such a shoestring because he donates a lot of his own time and gets help from others like Nelson and graduate student Jennifer Fortin, who splits time between the WSU campus and field studies in Alaska, where she is examining how grizzlies and black bears share salmon resources.

“Jen and I are here on Saturday and Sunday, taking care of bears,” he says. “And we depend a lot on undergrads who just want to have the experience.”

More information on Washington State’s Bear Research, Education and Conservation Program is available at this university Web site.

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