Walking Bear Comes Home: A Tribute to Dr. Charles Jonkel

Dr. Charles "Chuck" Jonkel (photo by Eric Bergman)

“Bears are a very powerful symbol. We can learn a lot from bears.” – Chuck Jonkel

I learned a lot from Chuck Jonkel, the grizzled, gruff, inspiring bear biologist, teacher, activist and conservationist who spent so much time around wild grizzlies that he came to actually resemble the Great Bears in many ways.  He is the guy I always turned to when I had questions about grizzly bear biology, ecology, behavior and management.

Last night, April 12, 2016, Dr. Charles “Chuck” Jonkel died at the age of 85.

A co-founder and scientific advisor to the The Great Bear Foundation in Missoula, and founder of Missoula’s annual International Wildlife Film Festival, Jonkel was a pioneer in the research of black bears, grizzly bears and polar bears. He was known as one of the “fathers” of bear research, and part of what is sometimes called the “grizzly bear biology fraternity” along with Frank and John Craighead, David Mattson and Mark Shaffer. In 1966, Jonkel was hired by the Canadian Wildlife Service to conduct the first ever field studies of polar bears in the arctic. Jonkel’s monumental Border Grizzly Project, launched 40 years ago in Montana, was the most comprehensive study of grizzlies and their habitat ever conducted, and shaped critical habitat management and protection efforts that helped grizzly bears recover. After retiring as a wildlife biology professor at the University of Montana, Jonkel continued teaching courses for the Glacier Institute and elsewhere, helping people better understand bears and how to live cooperatively with grizzly bears to reduce bear-human conflicts and ensure the protection and conservation of grizzlies.

Jonkel was an advisor to the Great Grizzly Search, a collaborative effort by eight conservation and scientific groups to try and document the presence of grizzlies within the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness. As part of that effort, Jonkel once persuaded me to go on one of the most wild, crazy and interesting adventures of my life -- a five-day journey that entailed swimming, hiking, and snowshoeing to the high country during a time of extreme avalanche danger to dig out a bear's den and gather hair samples. (I wrote about the adventure here: Into the Bear's Den.)

Unlike many scientists, Jonkel was not afraid to passionately fight for the protection of bears and their habitat, and express his spiritual connection to the Great Bears. Working with Native Americans, he helped revive a time-honored spring tradition of welcoming bears out of hibernation with what has become an annual Bear Honoring ceremony held by The Great Bear Foundation -- but all are encouraged to revive the tradition in their own way, which I have done.

Jonkel influenced generations of bear biologists, students, conservationists and others, and his legacy also lives on in his son, Jamie Jonkel, who is a bear biologist with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

I, for one, am forever grateful to Chuck Jonkel for all he has done to help create awareness and understanding of, and help conserve the healthy, wild grizzly and black bear populations we are so fortunate to have in Montana and elsewhere.

May he forever walk among the Great Bears he so loved.

To learn more about Dr. Charles “Chuck” Jonkel, check out the documentary produced by The Great Bear Foundation and Salish Kootenai College: “Walkng Bear Comes Home: The Life and Work of Charles Jonkel.”   

Are Polar Bear Populations Thriving?

There's a new lie being spread by conservatives and those who continue to deny climate change stating that polar bear populations are on the rise. Some claim populations are "thriving" and "booming."  One meme (it's a meme, it must be true!) claims that "when Al Gore was born," there were only "7,000" polar bears left, and that today there are "30,000." (Deniers love to pick on Al Gore, as if he fabricated global warming and climate change -- and as if there didn't exist an overwhelming consensus among scientists all over the world, as well as harsh on-the-ground evidence happening around the globe.) 

I wish polar bears were thriving; unfortunately, they're not.

Complicated issues are difficult -- if not impossible -- to convey in a meme. It make take a bit of time and effort, but for those interested in facts here you go:

When Al Gore was born in 1948 there were no legitimate estimates of how many polar bears existed – guesses varied widely because they were based on stories from explorers and hunters rather than scientific surveys. Before the polar bear treaty was signed in 1973, and before polar bears were listed as endangered, several populations of bears were decimated by hunting which began around 1600 and continued unchecked for 350 years. Early scientific estimates from the 1980s, after polar bears were protected for a decade or so, are in the neighborhood of 20,000 to 40,000 polar bears. Most researchers assume that the number of polar bears did increase due to the controls and quotas instituted by the 1973 treaty.

Today, researchers estimate that there are 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in 19 relatively distinct sub-populations. Of those 19 sub-populations, eight are declining; three are stable; one is increasing and, for the remaining seven, there is insufficient data to determine. For comparison: In 2005, five populations were declining; two were stable and two were increasing. (There is insufficient data for the others.) 

Currently, most of the populations are losing sea ice habitat which has negative impacts on their hunting, as a result most populations are experiencing declines in weight and health of bears, along with low reproductive and cub survival rates.

Since satellite records began in the late 1970s, about 50% of the ice area has within polar bear habitat has been lost, and the ice that remains has lost about 50% of its thickness. In 2012, the area of sea ice loss was greater than the entire area of the United States. That is a significant degradation of critical habitat for polar bears. 

Because polar bears feed almost exclusively on seals they hunt on ice. Changes in the sea ice that affect access to prey has and will continue to have negative effects on the bears. In particular, if more snow falls, polar bears are less successful at breaking into the birth lairs of ringed seals. If too little snow falls, ringed seal pups are born on the sea ice without a lair and this makes them very vulnerable to predation by polar bears and arctic fox -- which can lead to a decline in seals. With less food, polar bears will fail to reproduce more often and give birth to smaller young that have higher mortality rates.

Unfortunately, polar bears are not "thriving" and their future doesn't look so bright.