This booklet is made available as a quick reference pertaining to the mammals in the park. The comments on each species are brief but perhaps sufficient to suggest their status. Distances are deceiving so field glasses should be used in searching the landscape for the larger animals such as sheep, caribou, and bears.
Grizzly Bear
Ursus horribilis
The grizzly’s domain in the park extends from the glaciers at the heads of the rivers, northward to the north boundary. The grizzly may be discovered on an old river bar, on one of the low passes between the rivers, or traveling high on a mountain slope. One of the favorite haunts along the road is Sable Pass, where each summer one to four females with cubs, along with a few lone or mated bears, take residence.
Any bear seen out in the park is almost certain to be a grizzly because the black bear is confined to the wooded low country along the east and north boundaries. The hump on the shoulder and the dishfaced profile (rather than almost straight, as in the black bear) are good field characters. The general coloration varies from cream color (rare) to straw color, brown, chocolate, and black. The legs are always blackish. The fur fades considerably during the spring and summer. Hence, the new coat, fully developed by autumn, is always darker, and gives the bear a new, fresh look. One old male grizzly, not very fat, weighed 650 pounds. The females are considerably smaller. Because of the long claws on the forepaws, the track of the grizzly can be readily distinguished from that of the black bear, whose forepaw claws are shorter and more curved.
In the spring when grizzlies first come forth from their dens they seem to do much wandering over the higher slopes. At this season I have noted their tracks leading to the remains of sheep, caribou, and moose that had succumbed during the winter. Usually the wolves, foxes, and wolverines have long since feasted on the fleshy parts, but the bears are happy to crush the bones that remain on the premises and thus obtain a taste of the succulent marrow.
The spring and early-summer food is chiefly the root of the peavine (Hedysarum alpinum americanum) that flourishes on old vegetated river bars and on many mountain slopes. Using both paws, with their long claws, and straining backward with his body weight, chunks of sod are turned over to expose the thick peavine roots. With delicate strokes, his paws further expose the roots, which taste much like the garden variety of pea. So extensive is the root-digging at times that an area may look like a plowed field when the bear has finished. At this season, because of these food habits, bears can often be seen on the open river bars and on the ridge slopes. Cranberries and crowberries that have wintered under the snow are often eaten in spring.
In June, green vegetation becomes available and a drastic change of diet results. The root digging is terminated for something better. A grass, (Arctagrostis latifolia), with a stiff and juicy stalk, and growing in swales and wettish areas, is a favorite. The bears also graze extensively on horsetail (Equisetum arvense), mountain-sorrel (Oxyria digyna), and the tall showy white saxifrage (Boykinia richardsonii). A pea (Oxytropis viscida), growing abundantly far up the streams on old river bars is extensively grazed.
The grizzly is quite fastidious in his feeding on dock (Rumex fenestratus). He severs the thick juicy stem with a bite and as he chews, the large reddish seed head drops from his lips, neatly discarded.
The grizzlies continue grazing and chomping green grasses and herbs until berry time when another major change of food habits takes place. Some grazing still persists but now the bears turn wholeheartedly to blueberries, crowberries, and the bitter scarlet buffaloberries, the three species of berries most abundant and available. The lush berry of alpine bearberry (Arctous alpinus), that ground-hugging woody plant that colors patches of the landscape a brilliant scarlet in autumn, are sometimes eaten, but not with any efficiency. The berry diet continues through the autumn but at this season a few roots may again be sought.
The bear belongs to the order Carnivora and yet little mention has been made of meat in the diet. He is perhaps, so to speak, a victim of evolution and has had to adjust. As his mature size became ever larger through eons of time, he became too slow to catch large herbivores such as the caribou, and his large body required more sustenance than could be secured by digging for mice and ground squirrels under usual circumstances. Therefore he had to turn more and more to vegetation which could be secured in quantity. This is not as drastic a change as we might offhand suppose. It is one chiefly of degree, because we find carnivores such as the fox and the marten turning to a berry diet for a period, from choice.