610 and Family Returns North

It appears for now, Grizzly 610 and her three cubs have taken the cue and returned to Grand Teton National Park permanently – more or less.  The grizzly family had made its way down the Moose Wilson Road in search of ripe hawthorn berries, and late last week they wandered a little too far south.  That, says Grand Teton National Park’s Senior Wildlife Biologist Steve Cain, is when park and state biologists intervened.  Cain says the bears have been habituated to daily lives that are in close proximity to people present more of a challenge when they leave the park and arrive at private property. As such, Cain says, biologists convinced the bears to return to the park with the help of so-called “cracker shells” to haze them along.  Cain says they moved back into the Moose-Wilson corridor through the weekend, but now they seem to have moved on again.  In the last 24 hours he says, the bears appear to have moved from the southwestern portion of the park to the southeast part of the park – possibly near Shadow Mountain – but they have not yet been able to confirm that. Cain says with their disappearance from the area of the road, the Moose-Wilson road has been reopened to vehicle traffic for now.  Cain says an apparent scarcity of traditional food sources is leading biologists to strongly suspect that these bears were in search of food leading to their movement out of the park.