Bears Thrive in the Shadow of Los Angeles : Habits of Colony in San Gabriels Studied for Management Clues

Wildlife researcher Gerald Braden crept silently across the face of a steep rock outcropping near Mt. Wilson, his breath quickening as his radio receiver emitted an increasingly stronger series of beeps.

He spotted a dark, narrow corridor disappearing into the jumble of granite boulders below him and whispered to a visitor: “Bear heaven! I love this part of my work.”

Unseen and protected in a cozy den beneath the rocks, a 450-pound American black bear--fitted with a homing collar by researchers in 1986--had hunkered down for the long winter.

“He’s in there, but I don’t want to disturb him,” Braden said softly. “He could be sleeping, he could be sitting listening to me. I have no idea what he’d do.”

Thriving Community

Although it comes as a surprise to many city-oriented Southern Californians, here in the remote reaches of the San Gabriel Mountains, amid thick stands of manzanita and oak, a community of about 100 black bears is quietly thriving.

The shy, intelligent animals are descendants of 11 “troublemaker” bears shipped here from Yosemite National Park in 1933. They roam the rugged peaks and canyons just half an hour north of Glendale, ranging across a 150-square-mile area that was ruled by the grizzly bear until the last one was shot in 1912.

The Los Angeles County Fish and Game Commission is funding a $9,000 study to find out how to better manage them. And, because the bears are confined to a mountain range that is surrounded by an ever-expanding human population, scientists are anxious to find out whether they will continue to fare well in the San Gabriels, as a much bigger native population does in Northern California.

Braden, a graduate student in wildlife biology at California State University, San Bernardino, and Glenn Stewart, a professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, have for months been trapping and radio-tagging the bears to learn where they go, what they eat and what they may need to survive an uncertain future.

“I think if the world is going to survive as we know it, we’ve got to understand more about things outside the cities--the animals, the vegetation,” Braden said.

“When it comes to bears, we understand so little about their ranges and habitat that we don’t know what to protect and what to leave alone.”

Only One Den Found

Of eight bears tagged and studied so far, the den of only one has been found. It belongs to Lazarus, a large male named after the biblical character who rose from the dead. Lazarus had not been expected to survive the year because of a crippling leg injury that left him thin and near death in June.

“I was sure Lazarus was dying, but then I spotted him again in August, fat and healthy,” Braden said. “What happened in between is a mystery, but he earned his name.”

Originally, the researchers captured and tagged six males and two females, but a female and a male have since been legally killed by licensed hunters who claimed that they did not notice the bears were wearing radio collars and ear tags.

One of them, known as Kool Fool, was cornered by hunting dogs four weeks ago and shot to death as it clung, terrified, to a tree.

Kool Fool, a 7-year-old, got his name because his radio signal was often so hard to detect that Braden at one point suspected the bear of “moving so smoothly that we couldn’t pick him up.”

But on Oct. 18, Braden did pick up the signal, on a radio frequency allotted only to Kool Fool. As he tracked the creature in Upper Big Tujunga Canyon, Braden heard the high-pitched yelping of hunting dogs, then a blast of gunfire.

“It was a horrible thing to experience, and I just really let go when I found the hunters,” Braden said. “I was screaming at them, and they were very apologetic, but Kool Fool was dead.”

Mysteries Piling Up

In tracking the six collared bears that remain, mysteries about these complex animals are already piling up. Although hibernation usually does not begin for a few more weeks, the researchers have found that the male bears are disappearing from the slopes early, for unknown reasons.

In addition, Braden is not sure how the bears have been finding enough to eat. This year’s acorn crop never appeared on the oak trees, leaving the bears to forage for old acorns on the ground, manzanita berries and, occasionally, smaller animals.

During hibernation, the bears eat nothing and expel nothing. Groggy and almost powerless against attack, they live off fat built up during a frenzied food-gathering period in the summer and fall, and recycle their body wastes back into protein and usable water--a process still not unraveled by science.

Stewart said that for the males, hibernation is a solitary time, but for females it is a time of giving birth and nursing a family, usually one or two cubs every few years.

Newborn bears are “tiny, hairless, blind, utterly helpless, and have seldom been seen by man,” Stewart said. Weighing less than a pound, they could not survive outside a den. Braden said they look more like a “naked piglet” than a bear, turning into fluffy 10-pounders by the time they emerge in the spring.

In a rare sighting, Braden spotted a mother and cub this year, and watched in delight as the cub “bounced out of the brush and onto his mom’s back, really playful. Then she sat down and nursed him, and she began to walk and he followed right behind her.”

Stewart and Braden said that although as scientists they try to remain aloof, some feelings of kinship with the mischievous but likable creatures are almost impossible to avoid.

“Scientists aren’t supposed to get attached, but I’ve named the ones I’m tracking because they have distinct personalities, like dogs, but really more so,” Braden said. “You can tell without checking their collars who they are.”

Bouncy Spring in Gait

Trash Man is one of Braden’s favorites--a clownish bear who is easily recognizable at a distance because of the bouncy spring in his gait.

He’s also the foremost glutton when it comes to big dumpsters filled with juicy garbage at many of the campgrounds in the mountains.

“He has a certain style in a dumpster,” Braden said. “He’ll stand in the garbage, cross his front arms lazily over the edge of the dumpster, and gaze around like he’s really happy.

“If the dominant bear, Einstein, comes to the dumpster, all the other bears will just leave, but Trash Man only moves away a little, then tries to sneak back up.”

For all his gumption, Trash Man “is near the bottom of the pecking order,” in the bear hierarchy, Braden said.

Einstein, a 5-year-old, earned his ironic name after Braden watched him attempting to cross the Angeles Crest Highway.

The first time Einstein stepped onto the roadway, a vehicle appeared and Einstein was nearly struck. The unnerved animal waited several minutes, peering anxiously down the empty road, only to venture back onto the pavement in the path of a car approaching from behind him. Visibly shaken, Einstein made one last attempt, but a truck appeared and narrowly missed hitting him.

“He gave up and stayed on his side of the highway,” Braden said. “I named him Einstein.”

While Einstein may be no genius when it comes to the machinery of humans, he commands respect as the dominant bear in the group under study.

Low-Key Threat Gestures

Stewart said bears use low-key threat gestures--a quiet “huff” sound, and a chomping of the jawbone. They also excel at subtle facial gestures, such as the “dirty look,” Stewart said. In the case of a dominant bear, “one glance is really about all it takes to keep the others in line.”

Bears also engage in the “bluff charge,” in which they stamp their feet and run toward their opponent, stopping at the last moment.

Around garbage dumpsters, which are popular feeding areas for many bears, the animals are bold because they expect to see humans, Braden said.

But in the wild, the bears he has met face to face have “looked me over, then turned and walked steadily away or ran, almost treating me like a dominant bear. The ones who seem to know who I am might check me out for half a minute or so, then turn away.”

Nevertheless, bears can be deadly. A male bear will kill and eat any cub--even its own--if the mother fails to fend him off, and occasional bear attacks on humans are reported throughout the United States.

Braden has spent much of the last year in the forest alone, wandering the ravines and ridges of the San Gabriels, mapping bear sightings to learn what kind of areas they frequent, and studying their fecal matter to determine their food preferences.

He says he never completely forgets that he is not really alone in the forest, and reminds himself never to look a bear directly in the eyes--an act of aggression.

“It was eerie, spooky at first, especially whenever I found a well-worn bear trail and realized I was literally following their footsteps,” he said.

“But now it’s like a mutual admiration club. I know they’re not going to hurt me and, apparently, from the way they behave toward me, they’ve decided I’m not going to hurt them.”