As long as tweeters is on the bear topic...

I was at a conference in Olympia Thursday ("Landscape Management of
Pacific Northwest Forests"). There was a way-kewl poster presentation
given by Darcy McNamara, Julie Hayes, and Jon Young. I'm working from
memory here, so someone please correct me if I get the details wrong.

This group did a tracking study of big mammals on Tiger Mountain WDNR
(WA Dept. of Nat. Resource) property. Tiger Mountain is east of Seattle
in the Cascades foothills. This property is bordered by Interstate-90 on
the north and a suburban area of Issaquah to the west. There are
numerous hiking trails. Most hikers head for the summit and a view.
The section near I-90 is noisy (from car traffic) and marshy. There is
an illegal de facto off-leash area south of the marshy area, but away
from the main hiking trials leading to the summit.

The Black Bears on the property avoided all contact with hikers and dogs.
There were about 6 bears, and they mostly hung out in the marshy area
near I-90.

The trackers found a single resident Mountain Lion. The lion didn't mind
proximity to hikers, but avoided the bear area and the off-leash area.The
bears would chase the lion off deer kills if they got the chance. The
lion had a little "safe" area about 20 feet off a hiking trail where it
would drag deer it had killed. It's spot couldn't be seen by hikers, but
the hikers could be heard walking by. The lion didn't catch many deer,
though. It lived mostly on Raccoons. It had an east-west foraging route
that cut across numerous streams. Raccoon population overflow from
neighboring suburbia would move up the streams...and almost immediately
become lion entrees. The trackers found only a single Raccoon track, but
lots of Raccoon remains. The Raccoons evidently didn't last very long
after leaving Issaquah.

At first, the trackers thought there were no Coyotes, since they found no
Coyote sign on power line trials and other habitat where one would expect
Coyotes. They finally found the Coyotes, who were avoiding bears, lion,
and dogs, at the forest/suburb boundary. The proximity to a residential
area kept the Coyotes safe from the bigger carnivores, and they entered
surburbia at night to forage. (Here kitty, kitty!)

The deer prefered the off-leash area, especially during foaling season.
During foaling season, there was virtually no sign of deer outside the
off-leash area, and the deer signs that did occur were only of bucks. The
does sought sanctuary for their foals (or is it calves?) from bears,
lions, and Coyotes among the dogs. Odd, since dogs certainly like to
chase deer. The deer seemed to be making the critical distinction between
being chased and being caught.

It was a great study of how all these big animals are interacting,
adapting to people, and even learning to take advantage of people in some
way.

Kelly Cassidy -- Washington Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
Box 357980, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98195
206-268-8076 ****** 206-685-4195 ******** kelly at u.washington.edu
Visit the WAGAP home page at http://salmo.cqs.washington.edu/~wagap