Alaska brown bear chasing salmon, Katmai National Park, Alaska.

Bear Encounters in Alaska: Perspectives on Bear Attacks and Wilderness Risk

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Grizzly bear, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska
Young male grizzly bear on the tundra in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

Bear Attack in Wyoming

I’ve been reading a little about a recent case of a bear attack, this time in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Fortunately, the fellow who was mauled is alive. Here’s one version of the story.

A lot of discussion has focused on this incident on various nature photography forums. I’m always particularly interested in the subject because I spend so much time photographing bears. I’ve had a few encounters that caught my attention. Much of that discussion revolves around the potential for this kind of thing to be a vehicle for new, tighter regulations brought into place by the National Parks’ Service, placing ever tighter restrictions on photographers and the activities they engage.

My Experience

I’ve been photographing bears in the wild a long time. Probably longer than most folks. I don’t know all there is about grizzly bears, but I do know more than most. I spend weeks on end every year photographing grizzly bears, hiking and backpacking in bear country, and talking to researchers and other naturalists who know bears.

So I’ve got my bear bones.

Points of Discussion About Bear Attacks

1. We Hope the Victim/s are OK

While I think that’s a worthy discussion, hopefully it’s not the be sole focus of our concern. Firstly, I hope the guy’s OK. I’ve been close enough to many grizzly bears that I can barely (now there’s a great pun) imagine how terrible it must be to be mauled by one.

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Rough-legged Hawk, Canning River, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.

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Rough-legged Hawk, Canning River, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

The Rough-legged hawk is a close relative of the red-tailed hawk that many people are familiar. The Rough-legged hawk (Buteo lagopus) travels to the northern reaches of the globe, and spends the summer on the arctic tundra and in the taiga forest of the far north. It’s a large hawk, with both light and dark forms common. Continue reading →

Short-tailed Weasel photo, Coastal Plain, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska

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Short-tailed Weasel, Coastal Plain, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska
Short-tailed weasel, from our Rafting Trip in ANWR.

Hey Folks,

I was lucky enough to spend a few hours one long afternoon with this little short-tailed weasel. I’ve hardly ever had to work as hard as trying to photograph this little fellow.

Weasels are like ferrets on crack. Unbelievable energy.

They stop for a second, glance around, and take off again, top speed, racing around, darting this way and that, pausing momentarily again, before charging headlong into some tiny crevice or tunnel to chase some unhappy lemming or similar-sized rodent.

I followed this weasel down the coastline, as he patrolled the bank by the side of the ocean. He seemed completely unperturbed whether I was close to him or further away. He’d stop, casually glance my way, look around in all directions, and race off again, sometimes towards me (they seem extremely curious), sometimes in 3 directions at once (it would seem).

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Tundra Swan, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.

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Another Tundra Swan, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

I wanted to follow my previous post with this photo, showing the environment and landbase the tundra swan lives within.This is the same bird, in the same pond, from almost the exact same spot – but this photo was taken with a wider lens (Nikon 70-200mm).

I love tight, close-up portraits of wildlife (and people) but I always enjoy a photo showing the subject in place. I think of ‘in place’ as reference to the greater scope of what we mean by ‘nature’. When we closely consider the world around us, we begin to see that these creatures and features we share this existence with do not live in isolation, and aren’t, in fact, separate from one another.

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Tundra Swan Photos, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.

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Tundra swan, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska.

Hey Folks,

On my last evening in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, camped out on the edge of the coastal plain by the Beaufort Sea, I hiked countless hours trying to find subjects to photograph. The light was magical, from about 10:00pm until I went to bed at 4:30am.

Unfortunately, I had a tough time finding subjects to shoot. I saw a few foxes, but didn’t get close enough to any for photos. I saw my first ever snowy owl, an unbelievably beautiful, yet extremely skittish bird that I never got close to.

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Red fox photos, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska

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Red fox kit silhouette, Arctic National wildlife refuge, alaska

Hey Folks

Wildlife in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge. This is a red fox kit, taken just a hundred yards or so from where we camped along the Canning river on the coastal plain. This photo was taken around 3am. It was pretty cloudy and overcast, but the clouds didn’t go all the way to northern horizon, so eventually there was a little break, where the sun dipped just below the cloudline towards the horizon, lit up the land for about 20 minutes, then it began it’s climb back into the sky and disappeared behind the cloud cover.

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Coastal Plain, Section 1002, ANWR, Alaska

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Arctic wildflowers, coastal plain, ANWR, Alaska
The Coastal Plain, Section 1002, in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Hey Folks,

Here’s a photo of the arctic coastal plain, near the Canning River, ANWR, Alaska. This is the now infamous ‘coastal plain’, known as Section 1002, the area that is so frequently proposed be open for oil drilling. One of the big arguments made in favor of opening the area to drilling is that the coastal plain is ‘boring’, or ’empty’, or ‘nothing’. I disagree that it’s boring. I found it stimulating – the place simply feels alive, vibrant.

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Double Rainbow, Brooks Range, ANWR, Alaska

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Rainbow over Brooks range, ANWR, Alaska

hey Folks,

This is another photo from my series of photos from ANWR.

This particular evening I was returning back to camp about midnight when this rainbow appeared. It had been a pretty long day, and I was actually ready to hit the sack. At first the rainbow wasn’t that special, and I kept trying to convince myself it was ‘just a rainbow’, and not worth heading over to photograph it.

As I got nearer my camp, the rainbow started to glow stronger, and then a second rainbow appeared behind it. I grabbed my polariser (filter)and started looking around for a composition to complement the rainbow. I loved the lichen covered boulder seen here, and spent some time trying to figure how to make a nice photo from a couple of scattered rocks. I ended up with a few compositions from here, and maybe I’ll post another tomorrow.

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Brooks Mountains, ANWR, Alaska

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Valleys and ridges, Brooks Mountain Range, ANWR, Alaska

Hey Folks,

Here’s another image from my trip to ANWR. This particular afternoon was early in the trip, and we hiked up around some ridgelines in the Brooks Range, not far from the Upper Marsh Fork river. It was an awesome afternoon, and we spent several hours clambering around the hillsides. The wind picked up pretty strongly, after a while. I had carried a tiny little gitzo tripod with me, and it really wasn’t up to the task of holding up my camera gear in wind this strong.

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Brooks Range trip, ANWR, Alaska

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Arctic Lupine and an unnamed mountain, ANWR, Alaska

Hey Folks,

Here’s the second photo from this series on ANWR. This photo was taken in the middle of the night. It doesn’t get any darker than this in the arctic north during the summer months, unless there’s serious cloud cover. I had camped near the junction of the Marsh Fork and Canning River, just north of the Continental Divide in the Brooks Range, ANWR. After dinner I set out on a walk to look around and to maybe make a few photos. I hadn’t gone far when the mosquitoes starting driving me crazy. My hiking buddy said he’d “had enough” and returned to the safety of his tent. I trooped on, and ended up having a nice walk.

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