Famous Jackson Hole Grizzly 399 Wows Again, But Now What?

399 became the antithesis of how grizzlies have been characterized, especially in hunting magazines and adventure literature as blood-thirsty monsters that terrorize humans and therefore must be harassed, chased away in order to create fear toward people, or put down to pre-empt a deadly mauling. 

“There’s been a zillion little things we’ve all witnessed that have caused us to appreciate and respect her,” Mangelsen says. “When she had the quads, we saw her cross Pilgrim Creek during high water, keeping an eye on all of the cubs. After one got caught in the current and went rushing by in rapids, she raced into the water and rescued it. There were the times when she got separated from one of her cubs and would call, and race around, and worry about it, only to exude motherly tenderness when they were reunited. There was the overt grief she expressed, the bawling and suffering after her single cub, Snowy, was struck and killed by a hit and run driver. There was the time that her daughter 610 adopted one of 399’s triplets; there’s the playfulness and stern protectiveness she has brought to her mothering. You see all of this, as so many of us have, and you want to help them stay out of harm. I know that some wildlife managers hide behind their ‘we only manage for populations’ argument because they don’t want to admit that sentience exists in non-human beings. The reason they do that is because it makes it a lot harder for them to justify a hunting season where grizzlies would be killed for sport, for fun, as trophies, or because they say there are ‘surplus bears’ so that they can be ‘harvested’ as if they were ears of corn or bushels of wheat. They know that if they allow bears like 399 into their hearts there’s no going back. A wild grizzly is different from a domestic dog in how we interact with those animals but the same kind of emotions and intelligence we admire in our dogs is there, indisputably, in grizzlies.”

What does Mangelsen worry about? He too struggles with the paradox of humans feeling drawn to 399 which brings the danger of her being loved to death. Untold thousands have seen 399 and other bears, yet it only takes one dumb or ill-informed  maneuver on the part of a single person to have fatal consequences. That’s a fear shared in many places, including Tom Miner Basin located just north of Yellowstone Park and astride of the Gallatin Mountain Range. There, conscious, tenacious efforts to achieve co-existence between grizzlies and ranchers have worked but now crowds of onlookers, some of them unruly or irresponsible, are on the verge of destroying the fragile balance and peace of the neighborhood. Urgently needed is innovative problem-solving from Park County, Montana, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, the Custer-Gallatin National Forest and respectful citizens.

399 and her four cubs complete a swim across the Snake River in 2021. Known for her attentiveness to their safety, 399 has stood at the side of a busy highway with cubs beside her, and looked both ways for oncoming traffic before guiding them across the asphalt. Photo courtesy Thomas D. Mangelsen (mangelsen.com)

In 2007, Grand Teton Superintendent Mary Gibson Scott and her staff created a special unit of interpretive rangers and civilian volunteers called the Wildlife Brigade. It plays a variety of roles, but two prime objectives are bringing order to the chaos that happens with bear and other wildlife jams and educating the public about safe and responsible wildlife viewing. Through text messaging and viral information sharing on social media, a sighting of 399 can easily trigger large crowds in which people believe they can park anywhere, leave their vehicles, surround bears, and sometimes create dangerous situations around grizzlies. 

Sue Cedarholm, longtime assistant to Tom Mangelsen, wildlife photographer and artist, is part of the cadre there from the very beginning. “Here we are, in the 17^th year since the first set of triplets and she comes out looking gorgeous. But then you realize this is her final hurrah and it’s bittersweet. I think about how many hours we’ve spent waiting for her and the cubs in spring or late fall and waiting for her to go into the den.”

It takes two and half years—three spring/summer seasons—for a mother to usher her cub from infancy to sub-adulthood where they fend for themselves. “We don’t know if she [399] will last two more years and be there for the cub. Compared to previous years, this really is the end of an era.”

Auspiciously, 399 now has solid body mass while daughter 610 with three yearling cubs appears thin, Cedarholm said. 399’s lone cub, is large for its young age, benefitting from having 399’s milk all to itself.

Members of the Wildlife Brigade can find themselves in tough spots, Cedarholm says. Public enthusiasm for seeing wildlife  can yield experiences remembered for a lifetime but the truth is that many visitors do not know how to behave responsibly. Sometimes, locals have portrayed the brigade as being heavy handed, but most admit that in the absence of the brigade serious incidents could easily erupt between people and people and people and animals. 

Safety is never guaranteed for mothers with cubs. Fate can be fickle. A year ago, another female bear, nicknamed Blondie, had three cubs of the year but sometime after June 11, 2022, they vanished. While bear managers have said they may have been preyed upon by a male bear, Mangelsen, Cedarholm and others believe it might have something to do with bear trapping and tagging operations.

The fragility of survival: a photo of the Jackson Hole mother grizzly, nicknamed “Blondie” with her triplet cubs of the year in Grand Teton National Park. This picture of Blondie, no relation to 399, was taken by Sue Cedarholm on the evening of June 11, 2022. The next day, the cubs had disappeared and Blondie was observed frantically searching for them. No one knows that happened. Bear biologists say they might have been killed by a male grizzly. Tom Mangelsen and others believe they may have gotten separated from their mother if Blondie was caught in a culvert trap set by researchers to catch, collar or tag a bear. That scenario was denied by government officials. Mangelsen has been an outspoken critic of researchers conducting trapping operations in areas known to be inhabited by mother grizzlies and young cubs. Photo courtesy Sue Cedarholm. See her photography and fine art at @suecedarholm on Instagram

If Blondie had been caught in a culvert trap, the cubs might have been left vulnerable to predators. Bear managers have rejected that theory. Still, Mangelsen has been outspoken in saying that setting culvert traps in areas known to be frequented by sows with cubs is irresponsible because the falling trap door could easily kill or injure a cub as its mother climbs inside, drawn to a bait. Researchers say compiling data on bears has been key to better bear conservation.  Servheen offers praise to his Fish and Wildlife Service colleagues who succeeded him and to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department that devoted tremendous attention in autumn 2021 to helping steer 399 and the quads away from trouble when they wandered literally through Jackson and into a maze of subdivisions and ranches south of town.  

Adds Cedarholm: “They bent over backwards to help 399 alive. No one wanted to have anything bad happen to her on their watch. Hilary Cooley [who took the job as national grizzly bear recovery coordinator after Servheen retired] spent a month in Jackson Hole in 2021 driving around all night to make sure people were looking out for her. When Felicia [another popular female grizzly] was up on Togwotee Pass with her cubs they were trying to keep the bears off the road because cars were tearing down the highway at 70 miles an hour. You can’t claim they don’t care. But there’s only so much they can do. That’s the problem.”

In autumn 2021, I reached out to Cooley and asked her about that special care. “This effort is well beyond our normal level of attention given to other bears in conflict,” she said. “We do not have the resources to spend this effort on other bears. The Service recognizes the high level of interest in Grizzly Bear 399 and therefore we are working with our partners in an intensive effort to protect her and her four yearlings and to mitigate further human-caused conflict.” 

Grizzlies are incredibly smart and never forget a food reward. A mother that teaches her cub where to find natural food is a vital survival skill. A parent who isn’t as savvy as 399 can impart habits that doom a cub to an early death in adulthood. “Over 90 percent of bear mortality is human-caused,” Cooley said. “Many of these deaths are preventable. Site-related conflicts such as bears successfully obtaining garbage, pet and livestock feed, apiaries, chickens etc, can often be addressed by securing attractants; taking actions such as bear-proof containers, moving attractants inside a solid building or using electric fence.”

Why aren’t more counties in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Northern Continental Divide Ecosystems implemented rules for bear-proof containers, particularly in wildland-urban interfaces where exurbia pushes up against public land?

Since grizzlies started recolonizing Jackson Hole, land management agencies and the community have had to adapt. For years, domestic livestock grazing was allowed inside Grand Teton National Park, part of a deal struck when the modern boundaries of the park were established in 1950.  Ranchers believed that bears feeding on cows should not be tolerated even inside the national park.  Another controversial holdover from Grand Teton’s creation was autumn  elk hunting—indeed the only major big game hunt allowed inside a crown jewel national park in the Lower 48. 

Together with Tim Mayo, Kent Nelson and the non-profit conservation group Nelson co-founded called Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, Cedarholm, Mangelsen and other citizens, Grand Teton banned hunting in areas of the park near the Snake River to reduce risks to grizzlies. 

The controversial hunt resulted in a number of harrowing encounters  between hunters and bears that were drawn to carcasses after wapiti were shot. Concern for 399 and other grizzlies served as a catalyst. During one year, Mangelsen captured a photo of a dead male grizzly, which a hunter shot claiming self-defense, being dragged out by horses.  All of this is part of the backdrop to 399’s existence.

Another consequence of 399’s presence, precipitated by her circumnavigation of Jackson, is that city and county officials woke up to the need to mandate bear-proof trashcans for all residents, something that was pioneered in the Canadian town of Canmore, gateway to Banff National Park. “She made people here aware that grizzlies can be anywhere and it’s time to stop being lackadaisical,” Cederholm said. “If we say we want to live in wild country where wild animals live, then we need to be responsible and we need to take that duty seriously.”

Cedarholm says the vibe that characterizes bear watching today is different from the advent of 399 first taking the public stage. “We had a different kind of connection. Grizzlies were so new in Jackson Hole and we felt like guardians trying to help prevent harm from coming to 399 and the bears who re-established this valley as a home. So many people out there now feel like they own her. The volume of people out there now, for it being the middle of May in Jackson Hole well before the start of the main tourist season, is insane.”

Only hours after 399 appeared, Cedarholm watched park visitors pouring out of their cars, some even trying to scramble below the highway bridge over Pilgrim Creek where 399 and cub were in the water. “I have no qualms about yelling at people when they are being idiots,” she says. “The bears are the ones to suffer when people are ill behaved.”  

She and others have noticed subtle behavioral changes evident with 399 and 610 in recent years as crowd sizes ballooned.  “It’s true that 399 adopted the roadside to escape any danger posed by male bears, but when she had her four cubs stayed away from large massings of people. 610 even more so. She is very good at evading people.”

399 and one of her three groups of triplets headed north in front of the Tetons. Photo courtesy Thomas D. Mangelsen (mangelsen.com)

While 399 may be at the summit of her fame, Servheen says it would be a terrible mistake for humans to now hound mother and cub like paparazzi.  It’s vitally important to recognize, he notes, that she is old, and that as an elder, dealing with a slowdown in physical agility, fatigue and aches and pains from senescence, her admirers, more than anything else, need to be unselfish and cut her slack. 

“She’s demonstrated a skill to live near us. But she’s not magic or invincible. She’s been personalized in a way that people believe they know her,” he says. “Contrary to what some people might think, grizzlies are not looking to make friends with us. Heading into summer, she’ll be doing her best to raise that cub in a sea of humans.”

During the course of his career, Servheen and his colleagues with the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team have tracked hundreds of bears  and from all of that experience there are patterns. It can be a challenge for older bears to get by.

399 is not only long in the tooth but her incisors, the teeth she uses to snip grass and other wild edibles are worn down, the likely result of them grinding against rocks and dirt and bones of rodents and elk carcasses. Her sharp canids and molars, however, are still in good shape, Mangelsen says, having studied photos he has taken of her with open mouth, but time takes its toll. 

Photo of 399 courtesy of Thomas D. Mangelsen

Never in my career as a journalist have I witnessed such a devoted bunch of wildlife advocates array around an individual animal in Greater Yellowstone. People in Jackson Hole and an extended network of their friends shared information and kept tabs on 399’s whereabouts. Crowd sizes have steadily grown over the years, for good or bad. The vigilance, as much as it created hassles for government wildlife managers, and dangers for 399,  also created a gauntlet of ironic protection.

More eyeballs kept on 399 served as a disincentive for individuals who want to do her harm—people who hate carnivores, hate the federal government, hate environmental laws, and hate environmentalists concerned about the future of bears and want to keep them federally protected and not hunted. Their attitudes may sound Draconian to some, yes, but they are real. 

In those early years, I was once with Mangelsen who, just for fun, had bumper stickers designed that read, “I Saw Grizzly 399.” At an overlook near Jackson Lake Lodge, with Willow Flats in the foreground, Jackson Lake in midground and the Tetons rising behind, a crowd gathered to watch 399 teaching her first three cubs how to stalk elk calves. 

Several families with young kids were present. Mangelsen offered several of them a chance to peer through his long camera lens set up on a tripod and watch the matriarch in action. The parents offered profuse praise to Mangelsen and said, “Thank you. They’ll never forget this for the rest of their lives.” Mangelsen handed them stickers and they immediately put them on the family vehicles. Mangelsen, who does not have children of his own, got choked up, seeing how passionate those young park visitors became. “This is how interest in wildlife conservation begins,” he said. “Every single one of us who care about wildlife have had formative experiences in our lives. Those experiences are what lit the spark of interest and it’s why so many of us grow up and become advocates. It’s amazing and hits you right here [he pointed to his heart] to see the impact that this bear has on those kids.”

A bumper sticker Mangelsen gives to kids who see Grizzly 399

That was a decade and a half ago. 399 still lives. What’s one gauge of how she affected public interest in grizzly conservation? in the months leading up to 2017, the Fish and Wildlife Service received 650,000 comments, the vast majority opposing delisting and most of those also expressing opposition to bringing back a sport hunt of grizzlies. Public comments are not referenda and issues are not decided that way, as if voters were showing up an election booth, but the volume sent a signal to those in charge of the Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, US Forest Service and US Interior Department that people were and still are closely watching the politics of grizzly bear conservation. 

Puzzling is how seldom, if ever, the two successive governors of Wyoming—Matt Mead who was succeed by Mark Gordon—touted the presence of 399 being a resident of their state. In many other states, governors would have proudly boasted they had 399 as a mascot.

Instead, hostility toward grizzlies and wolves has been palpable. It’s almost as if conservatives can’t allow themselves to admit that the popularity of 399 has been a very good thing for the state, giving huge numbers of people a positive association with Wyoming. In 2017, Mangelsen says, the state seemed almost tone deaf to outrage generated when it announced it would allow the killing of up to 20 bears in the first trophy season targeting grizzlies in 42 years. The hunting season never commenced because a lawsuit brought by Earthjustice resulted in grizzlies being placed back under protection of the ESA before hunting began. 

Society, Servheen says, ought to have an honest conversation about what recovery means. He says numbers provide only a snapshot at a moment in time. More important is understanding trendlines pertaining to quality habitat that can support a viable population and withstand a growing gauntlet of pressures. When he looks at the trendlines they don’t align with the optimism he once had.

Nearly half a century after grizzlies were given federal protection, does conservation mean allowing states to manage so-called “recovered populations” at minimal numbers? Hundreds of grizzlies have died in Greater Yellowstone from a variety of human causes in the last decade alone. Some proponents of delisting assert that the reasons we recover and save a species like the grizzly is so hunting opportunities can be provided again. 

Today elected officials from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho are hardly veiled in their reasoning for wanting to get grizzlies delisted. They portray grizzly recovery as a burden that was foisted upon them, and they want to reward citizens whom they say have been inconvenienced by grizzly bear conservation measures. Efforts are underway on Capitol Hill to override the Fish and Wildlife Service, which is currently conducting a biological review of the status of grizzlies, and force delisting politically.

Servheen says that’s a bad move. It is a myth, he notes, that saving the grizzly has been a major economic imposition on those states. Rather than cursing wildness, they ought to realize their good fortunate in having bears. Wyoming being able to say it is the home of famous Grizzly 399 ought to be embraced as a blessing, a thing of honor. Who in the world would not want that? 

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