Work on grizzly bear recovery in the North Cascades Ecosystem has been halted even as the continental United States’ two largest grizzly populations near removal from Endangered Species Act protection.

North Cascades National Park Superintendent Karen Taylor-Goodrich told the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee on Wednesday that her staff had been asked to stop work on its environmental impact statement by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s office.

The order also stalls discussions with Canadian wildlife managers who oversee a similar grizzly recovery process in British Columbia, she said.

“We were in the process of evaluating public comment,” Taylor-Goodrich said of the stop order. “We’re in year three of the process and all the public scoping has been done. The draft EIS went out for public review in spring and we’ve received about 127,000 comments.”

The North Cascades Ecosystem includes the national park and large swaths of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie and Okanogan-Wenatchee national forests, totaling 9,800 square miles. It holds an estimated five to 10 grizzly bears, which the IGBC considers “the most at-risk grizzly bear population in the U.S. today.” The Canadian portion supports another six grizzlies.

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Ever wonder what the world looks like through the eyes of a brown bear? Researchers at Katmai National Park wonder, too.

To learn more, they initiated a collaborative, multi-year study examining the relationship between intertidal resources, coastal brown bear behavior, and human influences. As a part of this study, nine brown bears along the Katmai coast were outfitted with GPS location collars during the summer of 2015 to help better understand how they use intertidal resources like clams and mussels.

Two of the collars were equipped with video cameras that captured a bear’s-eye view at regular intervals. The videos reveal just what it is the bears are doing when they are out in the intertidal mudflats, wandering through meadows, or hiding in the brush. This location data, along with on-the- ground observations and the video clips will help answer questions like: How much time do bears spend in the intertidal zone? What do they do while there? What kind of intertidal resources are they feeding on?

The study has only gathered one year of data, some of which is shared through this story map, so these questions remain unanswered at the moment. But another two years of field data should start to shed more light on this important relationship between the land and the sea.

The website for this study is a remarkable production.

Check it out for yourself…

For 20,000 years, grizzly bears padded over Washington’s North Cascades, foraging for berries and plants, hunting small prey, and fishing for salmon in frigid streams. Then a few centuries ago, white settlers showed up and starting shooting, and driving the bears out. Today only a handful of grizzlies remain in these mountains.

Documentaries and fictional films, from Grizzly Man to The Revenant, and plain old common sense have taught that Ursus arctos horribilis is an Animal to Be Avoided. But what if we learned to share some space with the grizzly, namely about 2.6 million acres of wilderness in remote north-central Washington State? Only four grizzly bear sightings have been confirmed in this region in the past decade, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service (which are co-leading the restoration talks) estimate that the area could support as many as 280 of the animals.

Because the grizzly bear is a threatened species, the FWS must draft a plan to help the population recover in areas where it’s warranted. According to Ann Froschauer, a FWS public affairs supervisor, there are four options. Option A is basically doing nothing and hoping the grizzly recovers on its own—an idea that’s a bit fanciful considering the grizzly’s dismal numbers. Options B and C involve capturing grizzlies from populations in Montana or British Columbia and gradually releasing them into the North Cascades. And then there’s fast and furious Option D, which would entail releasing as many grizzlies as possible until reaching the goal of 200 bears.

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The ascent and inevitable struggles of 399 and her offspring are in many ways representative of all grizzlies in the modern American West. Theirs is a tale of one of the most successful wildlife recovery programs in the world – a resurrection that has taken the bear from the brink of extinction in the Lower 48 to a population of as many as 1,000 in the Greater Yellowstone region, which includes parts of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, as well as an equal number in ecosystems around Montana’s Glacier National Park and farther to the west.

As their numbers grow, grizzlies face daunting pressures – from poachers, big-game hunters killing them in self-defense, crowds of admiring tourists, dwindling food supplies, and humanity’s increasing development of the wilds.

Now comes a pivotal moment in the fortune of the iconic animal. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, official federal custodian of imperiled species, is poised to announce that grizzlies in Greater Yellowstone will be removed from protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Hiking in grizzly country, living in it, comes with the possibility that something bad could happen. But the likelihood of being mauled by a bear is incredibly low. For park visitors, the chances of being injured by a bear are approximately 1 in 2.1 million, the chances of being fatally mauled far less. As of late 2015, only eight people have been killed by bears in Yellowstone since the park was created in 1872.

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The analysis shows that the bear population in the ecosystem has continued to grow since the 1980s, as well.

Results indicate that the effective population size of Yellowstone grizzly bears, or the number of individuals that contribute offspring to the next generation, has increased 4-fold over a 25-year period. This provides evidence that Yellowstone grizzly bears are approaching the effective size necessary for long-term genetic viability, the study said.

“The increase in effective size of the Yellowstone grizzly bear population over the past several decades, with no significant change in genetic diversity, supports evidence of population growth based on traditional surveys,” said Pauline Kamath, USGS ecologist and lead author of the study. “This is a key genetic indicator of a population’s ability to respond to future environmental change.”

They found estimates of effective population size increased from approximately 100 bears in the 1980s to 450 in the 2000s. These numbers are smaller than estimates of total population size because not all animals in the population breed. Although an isolated population, grizzly bear genetic diversity remained stable and inbreeding was relatively low, 0.2 percent, over the time period.

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That changed in 1967, when two young women, both 19, were mauled to death by grizzlies at separate campsites on the same night. The emboldened bears weren’t discouraged by noise or the sight of bonfires — and they didn’t stop attacking even when the campers played dead.

The attacks, immortalized in the bestselling book Night of the Grizzlies, were provoked in part by the hordes of park visitors who had left a trail of trash behind over the years, acclimating the grizzlies to their presence and making them associate humans with food.

Ten people have been killed by bears in the park’s 105-year history, compared with seven at Yellowstone National Park. The National Park Service points out that more people have died — at Yellowstone, at least — by drowning or from burns sustained when they fell into the park’s thermal pools.

“To put it in perspective, the probability of being killed by a bear in the park (7 incidents) is only slightly higher than the probability of being struck and killed by lightning (5 incidents).”

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Researcher, Conservationist & Bushwhacker

Dave Landreth is an outspoken Southern Appalachian conservation advocate who, through years of researching wildlife in the Northern Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, has developed a passion for protecting clean air and water, public lands and the plants and animals that live among us. His penchant for collecting plaster molds of grizzly bear and wolf paw imprints from the mud of the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone gave him his handle, Griztrax.

If you missed Part 1 of Meanderthals’ interview with Dave, you can catch it here.

Dave Landreth Interview (continued)

[Meanderthals] Dave, this wouldn’t be complete without talking about the off-trail bushwhacking. You are renowned in the Southern Appalachians for going where there is no trail in the wilderness and documenting your discoveries. How did you get started? What is it like?

[Dave Landreth] As mentioned earlier, rambling around off-trail is just what I grew up doing for fun. I don’t look at it as ‘sport.’ It’s just a way of life. I’m a kid that never really grew up, at least not where playing in the woods is involved. I’ve always loved finding my way from Point A to Point B, along with all of the wonders that are discovered along the way.

I think that we as a nation have forgotten how important getting dirty and banged up is to learning to deal with the challenges that we face in life. We’ve gotten used to the belief that any valid outdoor experience has to be very structured and safe. That totally removes the thrill of discovery and the challenge of finding our way through difficult terrain.

Of course, in many smaller parks and reserves, off-trail travel is rightfully restricted, simply because there is little room to explore in those places. They would soon be covered in ‘volunteer’ trails along with the negative impact that goes with that heavy use.

In many of the places that my friends and I explore, we might very well be the only people to pass through for years at a time. In others, like the High Top slide that I love so much on the slopes of Mt. LeConte in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, each climb follows a different route, often following game paths or bare rock left behind after the numerous landslides. That’s violent, wild, dangerous and rapidly changing terrain and our moving through it has no more impact than the bear that roams the slopes in search of mountain ash each fall, and a lot less impact than the violent storms that sweep the ridges every year.

I tend to do most of my wilder off-trail routes with Ronnie McCall. His views toward exploring off-trail are a lot like mine. We enjoy a relaxed, non-competitive sort of rambling with the journey being more important than the destination. I had gotten away from hiking off-trail for several years while competing in road and bicycle racing, but after encountering Gretch and Paul (two more great friends from Maryville), I realized that I had met two kindred spirits.

We were soon roaming all over the backcounty of the Great Smokies. Paul has done a lot of our favorite climbs with me and Gretch has gotten into a few as well, though she doesn’t share our enthusiasm for the open ridges and cliff faces. I’m lucky — no matter how much I enjoy exploring the wilder reaches of the Smokies, the company of good and trusted friends is what really makes it so addictive.

Bushwhack Gang – Photo by Ronnie McCall
That’s the ‘crew’ that I do most of my crazier climbs with. From left to right in front, Chris Sass, Dave Landreth, Ronnie McCall, then in the back is Dusty Allison, Tommy McGlothlin and Seth O’Shields. If you look right over Seth’s left ear in the photo, you can spot the huge landslide near Alum Cave Bluffs that occurred a couple of years ago. We were climbing the Chimneys from the picnic ground on that day.

I don’t like or enjoy the competitive nature of the “only my way is right” fuss between on-trail and off-trail ramblers. To me it’s all fun, and what is really important is that we encourage people to get out there and do whatever they can to enjoy our public lands.

A lot of the anti-off-trail folks that I hear voicing their displeasure seem to have no idea of what we actually do on our treks. One fellow went on and on about how wrong it was to step around a mudhole on the trail or to cut a switchback. I can assure you that those actions have no resemblance to our exploring the wild valleys and ridges of the Smokies, often far from any ‘official’ trail or path.

Nothing gives me more satisfaction than the excitement that I see on the faces of the friends that are experiencing the challenge of a good off-trail trek for the first time. I have no desire to ‘test’ them or to prove any skill that I might or might not possess. I’m just a guy that likes to see what’s around the next bend or over the next rise and it’s more fun when I have some friends along for the trip.

Before we take anybody that is new to off-trail along on one of our trips, we do like to have an idea of what they’re comfortable with. Some of our explorations can really test the resolve of even an experienced off-trailer, especially when we get into the areas that are swathed in a rich growth of rope-like greenbrier where progress might be measured in yards per hour.

[Meanderthals] Are there too many maintained trails in the national parks and forests?

[Dave Landreth] No, flat out No! I think that if anything, we need a lot more trails. I don’t want to see trails in every drainage and over every ridgeline, but there is plenty of room for more good trails on our public lands. We need all the opportunities for getting our kids out into the woods that we can provide.

Some of my favorite ‘official’ trails in the Smokies have been closed or at the least, have been taken off the maintained list and I think that it is a great loss. I could see closing them to horseback travel because of the great impact that horses have on wet trails, but it’s a real shame to lose a beautiful path like the upper Hyatt Ridge Trail or the Pinnacle Creek Trail between Sugar Fork and Eagle Creek.

I like to keep those open by using them occasionally and clearing some of the overgrowth and debris from the paths. Upper Hyatt Ridge is pretty much lost to use now following some downburst weather events that flattened vast stretches of timber along the ridgeline. The Greenbrier Pinnacle Trail was one of the most beautiful and enjoyable paths in the park and I hated to see it taken off of the maintained list. I try to walk it at least once a year to keep the worst of the overgrowth cut back.

There are certain manways, or unofficial trails, in the Park that have great historical significance. The Ekaneetlee Manway, for instance, has been traversed for centuries by Native Americans passing over the mountains between North Carolina and Tennessee. I don’t want to see those manways become groomed trails or even easy to follow paths, but I feel that it’s important to maintain a trace of the route so that somebody with an adventurous bent, and a map and compass, can follow in the footsteps of those who passed that way in past times.

[Meanderthals] What is your most harrowing off-trail experience? With wildlife? And your greatest rewards?

[Dave Landreth] Years ago, when I was first getting into doing a lot of off-trail in the Smokies and in the Shining Rock Wilderness, my buddy Nolan and I started climbing each of the streams that have their headwaters inside the Wilderness. I had the bad habit then of letting my enthusiasm overrule my common sense.

We were working our way up the Dark Prong, hopping from rock to rock and crawling along the steep banks of the stream. Near the top of that drainage is a high rocky bluff that the stream pours over. I was leading the climb to the top and broke the “3 good points of contact” rule. I grabbed a tree root to use to pull myself over the final ledge, maybe 30 feet above the rocks below.

Just as I pulled up even with the top, the root gave way and I peeled off backwards. I still don’t know how he managed to do it, but Nolan was able to throw up one hand to catch me and hold me long enough while I regained a secure hold, all while maintaining his own grip on the vertical cliff. At the least, he saved me from severe injury and in all probability, death.

Dave on Roaring Fork Branch – Photo by Seth O’Shields
A climb we did up Roaring Fork Branch from Grotto Falls to a point right below the Lodge on Mt. LeConte. To me, that’s one of the most exciting (and dangerous) creek climbs in the park. There are a couple of huge falls on it that don’t even have names on the USGS topo.

Other than the meeting I had with the grizzly in Yellowstone (on-trail), I really haven’t had any bad experiences with wildlife. I’ve encountered grizzly off-trail on a couple of occasions, but in both instances, they knew I was there and we had no problem with sharing the woods.

A lot of folks that aren’t familiar with hiking or backpacking seem to live in fear of 1. Snakes 2. Bears.

Snakes can be dangerous, but are fairly easy to avoid. They are invariably shy, and don’t want to see us anymore than we want to see them. They’re on my mind when I’m off-trail, but not something that I worry about a lot. With black bears, I keep a clean camp and step off the trail to let them pass if need be. I’ve seen hundreds over the years and it’s always a treat. I’ve chased one out of my camp at Sheep Pen Gap with a stick, and had one lick the inside of my van’s window, a few inches from my nose, while napping at a trailhead before a hike. They’re amusing, powerful and deserve respect, but we shouldn’t fear them.

Frankly, the one critter that my buddies and I fear more than any other when off-trail is very small — yellow jackets and to a lesser extent, hornets. On the trail, you can easily run to escape an encounter with a nest of angry bees, but we sometimes find ourselves off-trail in places where it would be impossible to beat a hasty retreat. We avoid areas in warm weather that tend to favor the nests and listen carefully for their hum when in a dicey spot.

Ronnie and I froze in place for a couple of minutes last year while descending the Devils Elbow. We could hear loud buzzing, but couldn’t see the bees. We were really relieved to find that it was just hundreds of large sweat bees making the racket.

Greatest rewards? The looks on my friend’s faces when they first see the wild beauty of some of my favorite places. More than anything else, I treasure the time that I share in wild places with my friends.

[Meanderthals] For those a little less daring, what are some of your favorite trails in Pisgah, Nantahala, and the Smokies?

[Dave Landreth] Pisgah National Forest is my ‘backyard’ playground and I have a lot of favorites there. There is a loop that I often take that walks up the Laurel Mountain Trail and then uses a manway to connect for the return down the Slate Rock Creek Trail.

When the Blue Ridge Parkway is closed, I love to take the Case Camp Trail up to the Parkway. I then walk the high road out to the Seniard Ridge Trail to descend back to the bottom to complete the loop. That’s got a great climb on it and the views are as good as it gets.

I really enjoy hiking the Squirrel Gap Trail above South Mills River during the winter months. I connect it with the logging road on Funneltop Mtn. to make a great loop that offers a little bit of everything in one good hike.

In the Smokies, Alum Cave Trail is by far my favorite. I don’t mind the crowds — I think that it’s wonderful to see all of those people out enjoying the Park. If they’re overweight and out of shape, I like it even better. That is such an incredible trail and I always recommend it first over all others to anybody that is visiting the National Park for the first time.

It was one of the first trails that I ever hiked in the Smokies and I never grow tired of its beauty. It’s also the trail that I use most often when I’m returning from some of my favorite off-trail rambles, so I’ve hiked it at least one way hundreds of times over the 40 something years that I’ve been hiking the Smokies.

Alum Cave Creek – Photo by Jeff Clark

I really enjoy the Baxter Creek Trail to the top of Mt. Sterling too, though it’s been devastated by the loss of the magnificent hemlocks that used to grace the climb. Inadu Knob (aka Snake Den Trail) is another favorite — I love the views there, especially during the rhodo and laurel bloom each year.

In the Nantahalas, I suppose that Naked Ground and the Hangover in Joyce Kilmer–Slickrock
Wilderness is a favorite, but there are so many good trails to choose from there that it’s hard to pick. I like the ‘old-school’ type of trails that exist in the Nantys — they’re steep and rough, but a blast to hike.

[Meanderthals] If you could go back in time and spend a day hiking with Horace Kephart, what would you want to know, and what would you tell him about our time, a century later?

[Dave Landreth] The thing I admire most about Horace Kephart’s writing is that he didn’t try to perpetuate the stereotype of the mountain people being a bunch of lazy ne’er-do-wells.

I would love to be able to ask his opinion about the removal of the families from the Park during its creation. I would like to be able to show him the park today so that he could see how it’s recovered from the ravages of logging that took place during his time. Would he feel that what we have gained is worth the changes in our mountain culture? What about the Fontana Dam that flooded so many of the places that he was familiar with?

Finally, I’d love for him to visit Mt. LeConte to witness the thousands of people that make the pilgrimage to the peak each year — something that might not be available if not for his efforts years ago. Oh, and of course I’d want to ask his opinion of off-trail rambling. I believe that I know what he’d say about that, but it would be interesting to hear him say it.

To many in our ‘gang,’ there are two people who we would really love to be able to bring into the present to share the trail with us — Harvey Broome and Dutch Roth. We feel a closer kinship to those two (and their companions) than with just about any other persons in the history of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Dutch in particular was very enthusiastic about going where few had gone before and loved nothing better than heading far off-trail with his group of fellow adventurers. Harvey Broome was instrumental in getting me addicted to off-trail exploration. His book, Out Under the Skies of the Great Smokies, a Personal Journal, is in my opinion, the finest book ever written about the Smoky Mountains. Broome contributed so much to the efforts to protect the park from development schemes and commercialization. He was truly the Edward Abbey of the East!

[Meanderthals] Southern Appalachia is one of the most fulfilling areas in the country for those who love the outdoors. What are we the people doing right, and what are the most pressing issues facing the outdoors community. Where are the volunteer opportunities most needed?

[Dave Landreth] We’re lucky here in Western NC in some ways. Asheville has been recognized as one of the great outdoor cities in America and even though some bemoan the increase in tourism that has resulted from the publicity, we need the enthusiasm for outdoor opportunities that the recognition has brought to the region.

Business interests realize now that preserving our public lands has an enormous financial payoff. The publicity has also resulted in a lot more support for the local land conservancy groups that work with landowners to make their property available to public access.

We’ve had some huge successes here in the southern Appalachians — the Jocassee Gorges, DuPont State Forest, Bearwallow Mountain, Chimney Rock State Park and many other beautiful swaths of mountain land have been saved from development for the benefit of future generations.

We have a governor in office now in the state of North Carolina who has done everything in his power to do away with the rules and regulations that protect our clean air and water resources. Despite the recent coal ash spills that have devastated miles of our state’s streams, the governor is now saying that the best course of action would be to remove even more of those protections.

His crocodile tears are a pretty lousy substitute for a heartfelt mea culpa to the citizens of North Carolina and to the agency that is now taking the heat for following his instructions to back off enforcement of the regulations that would have prevented the coal ash spills into our state’s rivers. Of course we all know that the $1.2 millon that Duke Energy, his employer for 28 years, popped into McCrory’s campaign coffers had nothing to do with his quick work at dismantling the rules that protected our water and air from abuse… did it?

It’s not just dirty water, it’s dangerous, poisonous water. It poisons the water that we drink, the water that we swim in, the water that we fish in, it poisons the fish that we eat, the shellfish that we consume, it poisons the water that livestock drinks before being slaughtered and sent to our dinner tables.

It seems that a $1.2 million campaign contribution is all that it takes for a company to avoid responsibility to the poisoning of our state’s most precious resource. If all of the money that Duke has pumped into political campaigns to obtain immunity from responsibility for their actions had been put into designing and using safe storage instead, we probably wouldn’t be facing this problem now.

I don’t make any bones about it — I’m a big believer in a strong government that uses common sense regulations to protect the interests of it’s citizens from rich and powerful corporate entities. I feel that those who fall for the “deregulation is good for our economy” line are gullible fools that are as responsible for the coal ash spills as the good governor himself. They remind me of the sheep in Orwell’s classic, The Animal Farm, who faithfully chanted whatever line that Napoleon the Pig told them to, regardless of how it would have contradicted what they had been chanting just the day before.

“Two legs good, four legs bad…” It’s Tuesday.
“Four legs good, two legs bad…” Must be Wednesday.

Good sheep, lousy government.

There is tremendous resistance in some quarters of our government to any public land ownership, ignoring the economic and social benefits that we might gain from those lands, along with clean air and clean water. Budgets for our national parks and forests, as well as state parks, have been cut to the bone, ham-stringing efforts to preserve our wild lands. Research budgets have been cut deeply or done away with.

Political and business interests exert tremendous pressure on our public land managers, especially in the National Parks, to manage our land for financial profits rather than resource and recreational protection. If we care about our public lands, we need to vote to protect them. Turning out the vote is one of the most important things that we can do.

On a more personal basis, doing volunteer trail work, river cleanups etc. can be a tremendous help to budget strapped agencies. As hikers and backpackers, we need to encourage others to get out and get familiar with the treasures that many take for granted here in the southern mountains.

Buckeye Ridge from Max Patch on the Appalachian Trail – Photo by Jeff Clark

Return to Part 1 of Dave Landreth Interview

[Meanderthals] Dave, thanks so much for all the time and effort telling your story, and for your works on behalf of the public lands across this country. This has been an educational opportunity for me, and a means of increasing awareness for those who are just discovering all that the great outdoors has to offer. Those of you reading, if you have any thoughts to share or questions to ask, please feel free to use the comments facility below.

This post was created by Jeff Clark. Please feel free to use the sharing icons below, or add your thoughts to the comments. Pack it in, pack it out. Preserve the past. Respect other hikers. Let nature prevail. Leave no trace.

Researcher, Conservationist & Bushwhacker

Dave Landreth is an outspoken Southern Appalachian conservation advocate who, through years of researching wildlife in the Northern Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, has developed a passion for protecting clean air and water, public lands and the plants and animals that live among us. His penchant for collecting plaster molds of grizzly bear and wolf paw imprints from the mud of the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone gave him his handle, Griztrax.

Dave recently agreed to this interview with Meanderthals and pulled no punches regarding how he feels about the current state government in North Carolina’s capitol city of Raleigh. But don’t take it from me, let’s let Dave tell his story:

Dave Landreth Interview

[Meanderthals] Thank you very much Dave, and welcome. So, tell us a bit about yourself; your background and what molded you.

[Dave Landreth] I grew up country in a then-rural county in Western North Carolina, with the hills and creeks of Green River and the Big Hungry area as my playground. No World Wide Web, no TV (thank goodness) and no video games. Playing outdoors in the woods wasn’t a ‘sport’ — it was just what kids did to fend off boredom. Some of my happiest memories are those of my buddies and me riding our bikes down to the logging roads that laced the mountains along Green River where the I-26 high bridge now crosses the Gorge. We’d leave at sunrise and spend the day racing and pushing our bikes up and down the ridges and through the river, then ride back tired and dirty, often well after dark.

None of us wore packs — we’d take a small cloth sack and carry a candy bar and a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and get our water from the streams and springs. Looking back, I wonder if the frequency with which we came down with the ‘flu’ wasn’t actually some sort of intestinal malady picked up from drinking the untreated water. At any rate, we survived and had experiences that I wouldn’t take anything for. I had two buddies that were really close, John and Mike, and we were like the 3 Musketeers, always ready for any sort of hair-brained adventure, especially if the adventure included bikes and mountains.

As I grew into my teens, I started spending time hunting in those same hills, toting an ancient 12 guage shotgun that my Dad gave me (it’s still sitting in a corner by my bed, but the barrel is worn so thin that I’d be afraid to shoot the thing.) I could buy shells for 25 cents a pop and 3 or 4 shells would be adequate for a day’s hunting. We rarely killed anything — the trips were mostly about rambling the hills down in Green River, telling tales and making excuses for not having any luck. To tell the truth, none of us really cared for the taste of squirrel or rabbit, so we would deliberately miss easy shots to avoid having to eat what we shot. I have some really great memories of those long days in the woods with good friends and unlimited horizons.

I mentioned that we didn’t have a TV in the house — Dad didn’t like them and figured that they would be a bad influence. Right or wrong, it was one of the best things my parents ever did for me. I learned to read at an early age and by the time that most kids were still reading the Adventures of Dick and Jane, I was devouring the stories of Mark Twain, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling and Jim Kjelgaard, a great writer of outdoor books for kids that not a lot of people are familiar with.

There was a lot of adventure in those books and I was greatly influenced by the early explorers and adventurers. One book in particular stands out as a life-changing influence in my life. I don’t remember the exact title and I’ve tried to find a copy on Amazon, but it was about the life of John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition who struck out on his own, being one of the first white men to explore the fantastic wonderland that we know today as Yellowstone.

I was hooked immediately and started reading everything that I could get my hands on about the mountain men that explored the west, often being more skilled in survival than the Native Americans that they shared the wilderness with. It became a lifelong passion and I couldn’t wait until I got old enough to see some of the wild country that they explored.

I have to mention a teacher that I had too — a grand lady named Mamie G. Wells at the old Flat Rock Jr. High School. When I found out that I was going to be in her room, I was terrified because I’d heard rumors that she was a holy terror of a teacher. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and one of my greatest regrets is that I never got around to telling her what a strong and positive influence she had been on my life.

I was a problem student, a teacher’s nightmare, always dreaming about the world outside the window, rarely listening to instruction or completing work on time. The one thing that I had going for me was my love for reading and science and she took a lot of time to urge me to use that love to my advantage.

She was a large lady, both in size and character and she loved to hike. She would often take us out of the classroom on warm spring days to go rambling along the back roads near the school, or to take us over to the the Carl Sandburg farm just across the road. She was friends with the Sandburgs and loved Carl’s poetry. I had some truly great teachers over the years, and I can’t imagine what my life would have been without their patient guidance and forbearance.

Speaking of Sandburg’s place, when we were kids, we would push and ride our bikes to the top of the mountain behind his home, sometimes camping at the tops of the cliffs on Glassy Mtn. The current trail isn’t the original one that he used — his was more of a meandering path that I think was much prettier and less prone to erosion. He had chairs setting at different places on the mountain where he would sit and write or just enjoy the beauty of his woods. That was before Mrs. Wells introduced us to his work, so we didn’t really appreciate his fame. He was just a friendly, quiet old fellow that enjoyed being out in the woods.

When I was about 14, my buddies and I were squirrel hunting up on Glassy Mountain one fall day. I’m not sure that Carl was still living there then, but his family still owned the property. I shot a squirrel on the hillside next to the little reflecting pond that is located part way up the first steep climb up the mountain. I was up on the opposite hillside about 100 feet away and took off running to pick up the squirrel before I lost sight of it in the leaves.

I didn’t know about the pool at the time and hit it at a hard run. It was covered in floating leaves, with just a trace of water showing through. I went in neck-deep in the chilly water — and never did find the squirrel. It’s hard to believe now how open the forests of the area were to hunting. I quit hunting early on, but as a kid, it was nearly always OK to hunt just about anywhere that wasn’t posted against it. It was a certainly a different world then — and not necessarily always a better one.

Carl Sandburg’s Connemara – Photo by Jeff Clark

[Meanderthals] You have studied grizzly bears in Yellowstone, the Tetons, and other areas of Wyoming for years. What have you learned, and what are some of your most amazing discoveries?

[Dave Landreth] I’ve been fascinated (some would say obsessed) with bears since I was a child. Mom used to tell me the first ‘sort-of’ sentence that I ever put together was one that I said while we were driving back from a visit to Virginia. “Bear in tree, duck on pond…” The bear in the tree is still there by the roadside, Hwy. 176 near Saluda, NC — a black metal sign marking the entrance to a mountain home. I’m not sure about the duck on a pond though.

Reading about the adventures of mountain men stoked my passion for grizzlies, and I read everything that I could get my hands on in preparation for the trip that I knew I was destined to make to grizzly country. I had no idea of how important those trips would be or how often I’d be going to the Northern Rockies.

Something I learned is that probably 95% of what I’d read about grizzlies was total BS. They were either portrayed as bloodthirsty beasts in a constant hunt for human prey or cuddly teddy bears with no capacity for violence or aggression. Grizzlies are studies in contradiction. They’re ferocious predators, but are capable of moments of surprising tenderness with their young.

The she-griz are great role models of parentage, ready to sacrifice their own safety in a heartbeat to protect their cubs. Most grizzlies have a mostly vegetarian diet, though some specialize in predation or scavenging carcasses. They’re remarkable opportunists, rarely passing up anything that might possibly provide a meal. They have a sense of smell that is much more powerful than the best bloodhound. If they have the choice, they’ll avoid human contact, but if a hiker or backpacker breaks the rules of bear country etiquette, they won’t hesitate to pound a bit of sense into the offender.

399 and her cubs – Photo by Dave Landreth
I’ve been watching this grizzly mama for quite some time now. Last year, I probably shot over 1500 photos of her and several hours of video. She’s one of the most prolific grizzlies in the Yellowstone ecosystem and now her daughter, #610, is carrying on the family tradition of large litters being raised to maturity. That’s something rare in a creature where normally over half of the cubs don’t survive their first year. Something that I want stressed about the pictures is that they were shot with a telephoto lens with 1200mm capability. A lot of the photos and video that I’ve shot were taken from over a quarter mile away. That is very important – far too many people try to photograph wildlife, especially grizzlies, with lenses that are inadequate for the distance that should be kept from the subject. I’ve seen grizzlies initiate a charge from 500 yards away, or more, when they felt that their cubs were in danger.

Regardless of how much I love the grizzly, they don’t love me or any other human in return. We’re tolerated, barely (bearly :), and if the human race disappeared from the earth tomorrow, the grizzly would hardly mourn our passing. What a grizzly does best is to simply be a grizzly — a great big, stinking, brawling, magnificent beast that makes wild country really and truly wild.

One of the most amazing things that I’ve learned about grizzly is their capacity for forming rough partnerships with wolves when hunting. It’s not a friendship, but the two animals will sometimes combine forces to score a meal and even share a kill side by side at times. Grizzly sows have also been observed watching calmly as their cubs play with wolf cubs, though the two species are more often bitter enemies that will kill one another if given the chance. Again, one of the traits of grizzly is their individuality.

I’ve had one really hairy encounter with a grizzly where I had to use pepper spray to turn its charge. It had mauled two hikers that passed through the area earlier, but I was unaware of that incident, having been out in the backcountry for several days. It charged from behind in dense timber, flowing over downed trees like smoke over water. It’s impossible to describe how fast they can be, even over rough, broken terrain.

I didn’t have a chance to get my hands on the spray at first (should have had it in my hand and ready to use, since I’d been seeing scat on the trail for some time.) I threw my hands up in the air above my head and yelled at it like I would a charging dog. It plowed to a stop only a few inches from me and started circling, growling louder than I ever dreamed any animal could growl.

I mentioned to one of the bear managers later that it ‘roared’ and he told me that bears don’t roar. I beg to differ — when a growl is that loud and that deep, it’s a roar. It sounded like it was coming from inside a 55 gallon drum.

After a standoff that might have lasted 30 or 45 seconds, I was able to ease a hand down to my belt where the spray was and blast the bear at point blank range. It backed off a couple of feet and then growled again. Then I gave it a long blast and it started retreating, with me still yelling and trying to stand as tall as possible.

I want to point out that what I did isn’t what is advised in a charge, and it isn’t necessarily what I’d advise myself. It just seemed to be the only option at the time and it worked. The bear continued to stay close for a minute or so, giving me time to snap a blurred photo from the camera hanging around my neck. It’s my most-prized photo of all time!

I learned later that it had put two hikers in the hospital earlier after they panicked as it charged them. One ran and even though they both had spray, they had it stashed in their packs and grizzlies don’t do time-outs. It ran past the hiker that stood his ground and knocked the runner to the ground and started to maul him. Then the other hiker drew its attention and it turned to him, mauling him while giving the first guy time to get the spray out of his pack. Once sprayed, the griz immediately retreated without further injury to them.

Spray works and it’s by far the most effective defense that you can carry in grizzly country, despite what the gun fetishists claim. There is no way that I could have made an accurate shot under the circumstances of the charge, and I would have probably been badly mauled or even killed if I’d tried to use a gun. The spray worked great, just like it’s supposed to and more importantly, both the grizzly and I walked away.

[Meanderthals] Your nickname is Griztrax. How did that come about?

[Dave Landreth] I found the tracks of a 700+ lb. grizzly near Togwotee Pass in Wyoming, perfectly preserved in a muddy trail leading into the Mount Leidy Highlands region. I didn’t have any casting material with me, something that I still regret. It was by far the most detailed and huge track that I’ve found in all of my years of rambling through grizzly country.

I’ve started carrying plaster with me on all of my trips to the Yellowstone/Teton region, and over the years I’ve cast hundreds of grizzly and wolf tracks. Most have been given away, but I’ve saved a few that I really like. One has a grizzly, a wolf, a coyote and a raven in a single cast. I got it near a worn-out bison carcass by the Lamar River in Yellowstone after the scavengers had moved on. I have favorite locations with good mud that I return to over and over when I’m in the Yellowstone and Teton region, hoping to find another track like the one at Togwotee Pass. My nickname came from the hobby.

Combo Trax – Photo by Dave Landreth
The cast on the left is one of my favorites. It has a grizzly, a coyote and a wolf in one cast. That one was a beast to carry out of the backcountry, but it was well worth the effort. The cast on the right is from a large female member of the Druid Peak pack of wolves in Yellowstone.

[Meanderthals] You are significantly involved in conservation matters. What are some of your pet projects and greatest successes. Particularly in Western North Carolina, what are the conservation issues still needing the most attention?

[Dave Landreth] Something that I was really passionate about in the early 90s was a drive to do away with grazing on Forest Service land near Grand Teton National Park. The area, known as the Blackrock/Spread Creek region, had some of the best potential grizzly habitat in the Yellowstone ecosystem. However, the grazing of thousands of cattle on the allotment meant that it was treated like a giant subsidized feed lot.

A lot of grizzly died there after getting into conflicts with the grazing interests. One giant bear in particular, #209, was trapped and killed after getting two strikes because of his taste for prime rib. I think that #209 was the grizzly that left the huge track that I found near Togwotee Pass. After being trapped for killing a beef in the Spread Creek region, he was moved to northern Yellowstone in hopes of keeping him out of trouble. He was moved to the south side of Specimen Ridge, my favorite Yellowstone backcountry destination. It only took him a few days to work his way back to Spread Creek and the easy prey that was grazing there. For that sin, he was again trapped and euthanized.

A movement was started to end the grazing in the region and a lot of us worked to publicize the problems that grazing was causing in Blackrock and Spread Creek. The cattle were finally removed. Now the land is one of the prettiest and most wildlife rich regions anywhere in the Northern Rockies; with elk, bison, grizzly, black bear, cougar, wolverine, lynx and many other species roaming over its vast wild lands. I’m really proud of the efforts we made to get the cattle off the land. I spent a lot of time up there last fall. It’s amazing how quickly the land recovered once the trampling and fencing was out of the picture.

Locally in WNC, we had a battle royal when we were fighting to protect the North Shore of Lake Jocassee, the North Shore of Fontana Lake and what is now the DuPont State Forest. Publicizing opportunities for conservation like that is the best way to protect them. If they remain secret, being visited by only a handful of people that know of their existence, they’re as good as lost.

A big coalition of people came together to protect and save the DuPont State Forest — hikers, photographers, mountain bikers, hunters and horsemen — without which it would now be lost forever to a chock-a-block maze of roads and trophy homes. It was a textbook example of groups with different interests working together to achieve a common goal for the benefit of us all. For my part, I’m not much of a mover and shaker in those efforts — I just take photos and do everything that I can to make people aware of how important saving places like that can be for our future.

Triple Falls at DuPont State Forest – Photo by Jeff Clark

Today, the work of groups like the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy is invaluable because of their goal of helping landowners build a legacy of public access that celebrates the love of their land. Some of the most important successes in conservation in Western North Carolina have come through the efforts of partnerships between landowners and conservation organizations like CMLC.

We still have a lot of battles ahead. Funding for any sort of public lands is always the first to be removed when the paper shufflers go to work. Access to what has always been legally protected streams and rivers is under attack by wingnut property rights advocates.

One of the best examples of that is the situation on the upper Horsepasture River where a wealthy owner of a rock quarry has succeeded in seizing control of the river in the area of Turtle Falls, blocking off access of the stream to paddlers, hikers and swimmers. That flies in the face of the ‘navigatible waters’ laws that have traditionally allowed public access to streams and rivers below the high water line.

The sweetheart deals between Duke Power Company and the administration of North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory have resulted in tremendous damage to the quality of our rivers and streams. Take for example the Dan River coal ash spill. The potential for catastrophic failures of other coal ash ponds is overwhelming. In spite of the recent failures, McCrory is still insisting that the best course of action is to remove all of the restrictions and regulations that now protect our water, even though that protection is poor at best. That, to me, is one of the most important environmental issues that we face in this state at present.

I try to balance my enjoyment of a good fight with my need for time in the backcountry, but it’s frustrating that people are so gullible, and that they’re incapable of recognizing the importance of clean water and clean air to our future.

[Meanderthals] If you don’t mind sharing, can you tell us the story about Grace?

[Dave Landreth] I found Grace while heading in on a backpack trip in Pisgah National Forest. She was lying at the trailhead when I first spotted her, in a pitifully emaciated condition. As I headed in, she followed. I shared some of my food with her and figured that she would head back eventually.

My guess was she had been lost by hunters, who will often leave a coat or something at a trailhead for their hounds to return to so that they can go back in a few days to retrieve them. She had no ID though, which is very unusual for a hunting dog. She had also had pups recently, but they were nowhere to be found.

She disappeared as I hiked in and I supposed she’d headed on back to the trailhead. I found her later that evening, lying in the trail too weak to walk. I cancelled any plans that I had for camping and carried her back out in my sleeping bag. Again, I was afraid that somebody would come back to look for her, so I drove to town to get her some more food and took it back to her. I left her there and headed home, thinking that surely somebody would be back to get her.

It’s been a while now and I’ve forgotten the exact timeline, but I think that I continued to drive up there with food for two days and then decided that I’d take her to the shelter in Brevard if nobody claimed her by the next morning. It got really cold that evening and started pouring down a cold rain. Somewhere around midnight, my conscience got the best of me and I drove back once more. That time I put her in the van and fed her. We spent the night there just in case somebody showed up, but by the next morning I concluded that whoever had left her to her fate didn’t deserve her.

I still didn’t intend to keep her, but I did take her to the vet to get all of her shots and to have her wormed. After a couple of days, she was family. She’s a bundle of energy now, but still the quietest dog that I’ve ever seen. She loves to hike, to eat and to sleep – in that order.

Grace before & after – Photos by Dave Landreth
The top shot is one of Grace on the day that I first saw her in a very emaciated condition, barely able to walk and in great pain. The bottom shot was taken a few weeks ago – she’s in incredible condition now.

I often told my hiking friends and neighbors that I never wanted to own another dog. My last dog was a boxer named Joker and though a really affectionate prankster, he was so high-maintenance that I felt I’d never have the patience to own another pet of any kind. I travel too much, spend so much time in National Parks where dogs aren’t permitted on trails, etc. etc. etc. My neighbor had a cocker/poodle mix that would stop by to let me pet her and to me, that was the perfect setup — a dog that I really liked but had no responsibility for. Then Grace came along and adopted me.

I think at some point in her life that she had been treated very well. She’s just too well behaved not to have had a lot of prior training. She’s perfectly house-broken, never barks or howls, never shows an ounce of aggression, never meets a stranger, doesn’t climb on furniture, behaves great on a leash (which I never let her off of outside unless we’re in a fenced in area) and is simply some of the best company that I’ve ever had around.

Despite that, when I first found her, she showed signs of having been abused. She would scurry away at any loud sound, and cower if you picked up a stick or raised your hand. She was incredibly malnourished and on the verge of death when she adopted me.

The reason that I named her Grace is that the vet told me there was a pretty good chance that she’d be unable to save her and wanted to know if I’d perhaps prefer to have her euthanized. I told the vet to do whatever it took — I’ve never had an animal grab hold of my heart the way she did. I still hadn’t given her a name but when it became evident that she would pull through, I named her Grace, as in the Amazing Grace, because of her miraculous recovery.

She’s gained 20 lbs now and is a real bundle of muscle. We rarely hike less than 50 miles a week and often hike much more. So, she’s been really good for me and has earned her keep many times over. I sometimes feel that she would be better off in a home with kids — she loves children — but she seems to thrive on the hiking life that she shares with me. She loves to travel and has assumed the role of co-pilot when we’re on the road. She has no interest at all in an open window, but instead, watches my every move as I drive, often with her nose about 2 inches from my right ear. She is, in my humble and very biased opinion, the perfect dog.

Continue to Part 2 of Meanderthals’ interview with Dave Landreth

This post was created by Jeff Clark. Please feel free to use the sharing icons below, or add your thoughts to the comments. Pack it in, pack it out. Preserve the past. Respect other hikers. Let nature prevail. Leave no trace.