A New Threat to Grizzly Bears

  • The grizzly bear has a new threat - the Mountain Pine Beetle that's wiping out its food source (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

We’ve heard about a warmer climate affecting polar bears. Now, warmer weather seems to be threatening another kind of bear. Mark Brush reports on some tough times for Yellowstone’s Grizzly bears:

Transcript

We’ve heard about a warmer climate affecting polar bears. Now, warmer weather seems to be threatening another kind of bear. Mark Brush reports on some tough times for Yellowstone’s Grizzly bears:

Researchers say warmer temperatures in the last ten to fifteen years have been messing with the ecology in Yellowstone National Park.

In the fall, the grizzly bears eat pine cone nuts from white bark pine trees. It gives them a lot of nutrition before they curl up for the winter. But those trees are dying.

Mountain pine beetles are killing them. The beetle populations usually get knocked back by cold weather. But it hasn’t been getting as cold. So, there are more beetles killing more trees.

Doug Peacock lives near Yellowstone and has written several books on grizzlies.

“The white bark pine trees, this is the most important grizzly food of all in Yellowstone, they are gone. And we will not see them come back in our lifetime.”

And when the trees are gone, the bears get hungry – they go looking for food – and they run into people.

48 grizzlies out of the 600 in the region were killed last year.

Some environmental groups are suing the government to get the bear back on the endangered species list.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links