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PrintThe Saga of #399, a Bear Story
Grizzly 399 turns her cubs loose, while thousands of fans pray she can live another year
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For our species, it is one of the most sorrowful laments: the moment when parents bid their offspring adieu to find their own way in the big, cruel world.
This summer, a bear family in Jackson Hole is undergoing the ursine equivalent of that detachment. Tens of thousands of humans who caught enchanting glimpses of four grizzlies in Grand Teton National Park are anxiously awaiting reports of the outcome, hoping the course of apparent inevitability can be altered.
Perhaps with a Disneyesque nudge of her paw, or a gentle woof of maternal tough love, or, more likely, a simple sidelong glance of biological indifference, a grizzly sow will peel away from her brood of triplet cubs somewhere near the shores of Jackson Lake, turning them loose to fend for themselves.
But this is not the story of just any bear. Bear 399 and her tribe are part of the parable of modern wildlife conservation, testing human tolerance and the willingness of people to modify their behavior in order for grizzlies to persist in the American West without the armor of federal protection.
Today, there are said to be hundreds of grizzlies roaming the forests and mountains of northwest Wyoming. These seldom-seen bears live anonymously. Their very existence is debated, save for rare unexpected encounters with people in the woods. Then they vanish again.
“For a few years now, it has been difficult for me and my colleagues to convince park staff and local people in the community that grizzlies were here in such large numbers,” says Grand Teton’s senior wildlife biologist Steve Cain. “Nobody seems to doubt it any more.”
Unlike wolf packs, which are bestowed with endearing monikers, bears, when captured by researchers and outfitted with tracking beacons, assume numeric references.
Bear 399 was born to a mother who had no history with the legendary Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Study Team that tracks bears across the landscape. 399 gained her identity in 2001 when, as a five-year-old sow, she was caught in a research trap and fitted with a special collar that emitted signals.
During the summer of 2004, 399 had a single cub at her side, but the youngster disappeared, possibly from starvation or a deadly encounter with an adult male bear.
Whatever the cause of the loss, events since have shown that far from being a deficient parent, 399 is remarkably attentive, passing on the instincts of survival taught by her mother and necessary to survive in a crowded human world.
After shedding her collar in May 2005 and going off the air, 399 was captured and collared again. In late November of that year, she crawled into her den in the northern hinters of Jackson Hole for a long slumber. Around the third week of March the following spring, she emerged with three cubs the size of housecats at her side. The
roadsides and natural areas encompassing Jackson Lake would be their high-profile home.
Almost immediately, the four-hundred-pound mother and cubs drew large crowds. They became a sensation, unlike any Jackson Hole grizzly in modern memory. “I don’t like to anthropomorphize, but bears like her don’t come around very often,” says Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance. A former wildlife documentary cinematographer for television, Camenzind says that the bears’ popularity could actually prove to be their undoing, akin to celebrities hounded by paparazzi.
“399 represents Jackson Hole’s wildlife mascot. But I’ll be honest with you—I don’t know how the cubs will survive this year having been so habituated to people, because of the way their mother very skillfully made her living.”
