"Hey, bear," she yelled, bear spray by her side. "Hey, bear."

She didn't actually want to see a bear, the Montana State University graduate student said as she hiked through the woods of Grand Teton National Park in September 2006. She didn't want to get gored by elk either. What she really wanted was to find out what Bear #22211 was doing a few days earlier when a research airplane picked up four signals from his radio collar. Was he eating Hawthorne berries? Was he snoozing? How far did he walk between meals?

Frattaroli is trying -- without disturbing the bears -- to learn how black bears behave in the absence of grizzly bears in the southern half of Grand Teton National Park. Her study complements a similar study in the northern half of the park, and probably will set a benchmark for future research into grizzly bears expanding out of Yellowstone National Park, said Chuck Schwartz, leader of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team based at MSU.

Only 200 to 220 grizzly bears, most of them in Yellowstone Park, lived in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem when grizzlies were listed as a threatened species in 1975, Schwartz said. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem consists of Yellowstone, Grand Teton and six national forests around those national parks. Today's population is estimated at 500 to 600, and some of the grizzlies have moved into the northern part of Grand Teton National Park. The Grand Teton is located about eight miles south of Yellowstone.

"Our goal is pretty much to never influence their feeding habits any, if at all," Frattaroli said as she continued to search for signs of Bear #22211. "If bear are in the area, we go somewhere else for a while."

Frattaroli -- who encountered only two uncollared bears when she conducted her fieldwork in 2005 and 2006 -- is earning her master's degree at MSU while working as a biological science technician at Grand Teton National Park. Her project had her following nine black bears from mid-May through September during her two years in the field. When it was Tuesday and good weather, a fixed-wing airplane flew overhead with Shannon Podruzny inside collecting GPS signals. A day or so later, Frattaroli and crew would hike to those locations and look for signs of activity. Podruzny is an ecologist with the Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center at MSU. She ran the field work for the northern Grand Teton study, but collected GPS locations for the southern study, as well.

On this particular fall day, Frattaroli drove a few miles from the Moose Visitor Center with Mary Greenblatt and Aly Courtemanch, park employees who helped with her field work. As Frattaroli looked for the first site of the day, a bugling bull elk crossed a clearing in front of them. Its shrieks joined those of other males looking for mates. The rest of the elk choir was hidden by trees, but hardly muffled.

"Hey, elk. Hey, " Frattaroli shouted, explaining, "I just don't want us to be gored by elk."

Leslie Frattaroli records information and takes a variety of measurements to see what Bear #22211 was doing a few days earlier in Grand Teton National Park.

"Bare, bare, bare, bare, bare, bare," Greenblatt said, referring to bare ground. She walked along an outstretched tape measure, reporting what she saw on the ground every three inches.

"Shrub, shrub, shrub, bare, bare, bare," she continued.

Frattaroli laid down a rectangle made out of PVC pipe, then measured the height of every type of vegetation within it. Courtemanch collected the red-tinted scat that revealed the bear had feasted on Hawthorne berries.

"It's been a great experience," Greenblatt said as she continued inspecting the site. During the summer, Greenblatt was a naturalist who gave campfire programs to tourists. In September, before helping Frattaroli, she handed out backcountry permits.

Finished recording information at that site, Frattaroli, Courtemanch and Greenblatt hiked over logs and through brush to the second site. Only 460 feet away from the first, it contained broken branches, scat and enough other signs to warrant a new round of measurements.

"We got lucky because we're in a dense food area," Frattaroli said. "Sometimes they really take you for a walk."

Moving on, the group hiked 390 feet to the third site, and the same distance to the fourth. After documenting their findings, Frattaroli said they would start looking for signs of Bear #22220. A female, her collar had malfunctioned and sent only one GPS signal during the last round of communication. The collars normally send a signal every three hours over a 24-hour period.

"It's been wonderful. I've been very fortunate to have such a great project." Frattaroli said as she took off again. Sad at the same time, she said the collars were scheduled to fall off the bears on Oct. 1, and that would signal the end of her field work. Researchers set the collars for the day and time they want the collars to drop. After following the bears for two years, Frattaroli would start analyzing her results and comparing them with the northern study. She expected to finish her master's degree work sometime in 2008.

In the meantime, Schwartz said he had preliminary results from the northern study. Conducted the same way as Frattaroli's, that project involved 19 black bears and 10 grizzly bears over three years. During that time, the researchers obtained more than 71,000 GPS locations. The field crew visited 3,200 of them.

The study so far indicates that grizzlies tend to live in open habitat such as meadows or grasslands, Schwartz said. They prefer higher elevations. Black bears, however, rarely venture far from the forest. They prefer to live in forested valley bottoms.

In some cases, both species eat the same thing, but it's probably growing in different habitats, Schwartz continued. He said he was surprised to learn about some overlap when it came to eating white bark pine.

With his field work ending the same time as Frattaroli's, Schwartz said he would begin analyzing results, too. That would take several months. He would then make recommendations to the National Park Service, which funded the study.

The main purpose of the study is to get a better idea of how the two species are sharing the environment, he said, adding, "Once we understand that, we will make recommendations to park managers for how they can prepare for changes that might occur as grizzly bears colonize the southern part of the park."

Mary Greenblatt, Leslie Frattaroli ad Aly Courtemanch help measure trees and shrubs.

Return to regular view	Text-only              Email this article	Published: 4/02/2007