Corn Spills Become Bears’ Last Meal : Trains kill grizzlies as they eat grain dumped by wrecks, railroad garbage.

An unknown number of grizzly bears have been hit and killed by trains as the animals gorge themselves on what is left of corn spills along the Burlington Northern tracks near Glacier National Park.

Nine deaths have been confirmed, five of them breeding females, but park officials say that may be only half of the total loss, despite herculean efforts to clean up more than 10,000 tons of grain corn scattered by a series of three train wrecks during the winter of 1989-90.

Grizzlies are a threatened species, and biologists say the loss of so many in the last four years is alarming and a serious setback for recovery of the species.

It is not only the rotting corn that is attracting the bears. Wastes are being dumped on the tracks by Amtrak passenger trains traveling the mountainous rail corridor, wildlife experts say.

“I was shocked to learn that Amtrak dumps human wastes and garbage directly on the tracks,” said Tim Manley, a bear management expert with the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department.

“All long-distance trains dump (wastes) on the tracks, that’s the way it’s always been,” said Amtrak spokesman Bruce Heard. “We recognize there is a growing concern about dumping, particularly in Glacier, where it may attract bears.”

State and federal officials complain that Amtrak was ignoring requests to stop such dumping. “We don’t have Amtrak’s full cooperation on this,” said Gil Lusk, superintendent of Glacier National Park.

Park officials want Amtrak to use self-contained cars that do not discharge wastes on the run through the Miras Pass corridor, which is bounded by Glacier National Park on the north and the Flathead National Forest on the south. Amtrak officials, denying that they are delaying, say such cars will be in service by 1996. As for throwing kitchen scraps from the dining cars, “that’s strictly against regulations,” one official said.

“There is no evidence that Amtrak trains have killed a single grizzly or black bear,” Heard said. In addition to two Amtrak passenger trains, 20 freight trains thunder through Miras Pass daily. A busy highway, U.S. Route 2, parallels the tracks between East Glacier and West Glacier.

An estimated 200 grizzlies roam the park and forest wilderness areas, occasionally crossing the highway and train tracks. Grizzlies are solitary creatures that normally don’t congregate unless attracted by food. But after the grain spills, groups of bears were seen feasting on the bonanza.

Coming out of hibernation hungry in the spring of 1990, they soon discovered the fermenting corn caches. By fall, two dozen bears were hanging around the tracks. Six were killed by passing trains that year and the next.

The National Wildlife Federation and the Great Bear Foundation filed suit in federal court in May, 1991, contending that the railroad was illegally killing a federally protected species. The suit demanded a better cleanup.

Railroad lawyers argued that Burlington Northern was doing everything it could to clean up the area. The judge initially agreed. Then videotape shot by a local photographer came to light in 1992, showing that bears were still flocking to the spill area and digging up corn.

“I’d have as many as seven grizzlies in the (camera viewfinder) at once,” photographer Walt Derby said in a recent interview. He said he could identify 20 different grizzlies in the three-mile area, many of them females with cubs.

Carloads of tourists were stopping along the highway to watch. “They’d be only 25 or 30 yards away from the bears,” Derby said, despite warning signs making it against the law to stop in the hazard area. So far, no tourists have been injured by bears in the area.

The railroad redoubled its efforts to clean up the rest of the spilled grain, this time spending millions of dollars to bring in a hazardous-waste removal firm to tear out the old railroad bed and replace it. That work was completed during the summer, and a management agreement to better protect the bears is being worked out between the railroad, park and forest officials, state wildlife biologists and conservationists.