This was Biscuit as we found her sleeping on the snow ledge. She did not move until after we took these first couple of photos.







When Maureen took this photo Biscuit still had not moved.









Biscuit grazing on the first
spring plants.

(Click on any Image to see a higher resolution version)

We got out of Petropavlovsk in a record five days this year. The big difference was that we were not asking to take grizzly cubs to our cabin this year. Every year, except the first (1996), we have tried to get permission and every year we have been refused. We got Chico, Biscuit and Rosie because that year we did not take no for an answer but we have known since that another maneuver like that would not work again. There were two cubs in the zoo when we came though this year. A third had died a week before. We had some difficulty leaving the others to their inevitable doom.

The up side to giving up on reintroducing cubs is being able to side step the scientist of Krontskiy Preserve and work directly with the Director of the preserve system who we have always had a more trusting relationship with. We were able to quickly lay out a plan for a more meaningful anti-poaching program in the South Kamchatka Sanctuary, where our cabin is located. This is something we started slowly several years ago to feel out the various problems. We have provided funds to rebuild old cabins, hire rangers, buy equipment, etc. This year our experiment is to pay the rangers of the Sanctuary more than the going rate of US $25 a month so that they will have more incentive to stay with the job once they are trained. We have a wonderful Russian representative who will keep track of and apply the funding we have raised to the right places.

Before we started this program, this sanctuary was more of a place where poachers felt safe than it was a protected place for the wildlife. The hunting areas in Kamchatka have been better protected than the parks because a poacher knows that his own life is on the line in the hunting concessions where bears bring to the owner of the concession, about US $2000 each. In this sanctuary at least, we are slowly changing the idea of Preserves from being poaching havens.

I know the reader of this web site is anxious to hear about who was waiting for us when we got here a couple days ago. It took us a while to get organized enough to feel free to hike and look. It is a strange snow year. Generally, there is less snow for early June due to some very hot weather in May. However, there are huge snow drifts everywhere with one placed near the cabin that we estimate is still fifty feet deep. We have been watching two females, one with two cubs of this year and the other with three. They are high on one side of Chico Basin and the one with two cubs looks very much like Brandy who we know was bred last spring.

Last evening, we followed the edge of the lake into a bay and another mountain basin that is not visible from the cabin but which always greens up the earliest. It is here that we usually find Chico and Biscuit upon our arrival. When we got there we saw Biscuit asleep in a crevice on a snow bank far up one side of the valley. When we called she lifted her head, saw us but did not get out of her bed. There was another bear above her that we thought for a minute was Chico but was really too light in color. It turned out to be three year old Gin (one of Brandy's previous cubs).

It took us twenty minutes to climb up the snow in the bottom of the steep gully to one side of the snow ledge from which Biscuit still refused to budge. I kicked footholds into the steep side to traverse to the lip where she was resting. Eight and a half months since I had last seen her she casually watch us approach, only opening her eyes occasionally. She had her chin over the side of the ledge and in that position allowed me to within three feet from where I took a photo of her. Maureen took a few more minutes to feel secure enough to venture across in my kicked out foot holds but she made it to the ledge and got the photo of me sitting beside Biscuit. Finally Biscuit got up and sniffed us and did her usual head-rubbing in our tracks, then wondered over to the bear ground at the edge of the coulee and began eating some of the lush grass that will sustain her until the salmon come in August.

As great as it was to see Biscuit, I was disappointed not to find Chico. Of course, I suppose it was inevitable that one of them would choose to live else where now that they are adults. It is, after all, a big country. I worried all winter about Chico because she disappeared on August 25th 2000 and it was difficult getting used to her absence then. If she is alive, I am confident that she will come by this way, to at least say hello. Today is foggy but when it breaks we will go to see if one of the females we are watching in Chico Basin is Brandy with her new cubs.

- Charlie