Road to Recovery

Mighty grizzly bears weigh up to 800 pounds. When they stand on their hind legs, they tower nearly 10 feet tall. The massive mammals once roamed most of the western half of North America (see Grizzly Bear Range map). It would seem that nothing could harm these powerful animals. But as people began settling in these regions in the mid-1800s, grizzlies were driven out.

Today scientists are helping grizzly populations bounce back. Clayton Lamb is a scientist at the University of Alberta in Canada. He’s studying  grizzly bears in the Monashee Mountains in British Columbia.

In 1997, conservationists shut roads that were no longer being used by logging companies in the area. They hoped it would help grizzlies thrive.

Nearly 20 years later, Lamb and his team decided to find out if that work paid off. They followed these steps of the scientific process to find out.

To answer his question, Lamb had to get creative. It’s not easy to identify individual bears. To count the bears, he and his team hiked into the forest. At different sites, they created a fence made of barbed wire. Behind the fence, they dumped rotten cow blood. Since bears often eat dead animals, Lamb hoped they would come to investigate. “It was nasty, but it worked!” says Lamb.

As the bears ducked under the barbed wire, tufts of hair would get caught. The scientists collected the hair and sent the samples to a lab. The lab checked the DNA of each sample to find out how many individual bears had visited.