The Grizzly 399 ‘Miraculously Lives,’ Photographer Tells Goodall

The 350-pound grand dame of the Yellowstone region grizzly bear population — known by a number, 399, instead of a name, and also by reputation — made her appearance after a long winter sleep in mid-May.

“Miraculously, she still lives!” photographer Thomas Mangelsen said in an excited text message to the famed British primatologist Jane Goodall, who helped energize the fight to save the Yellowstone region bruins from trophy hunts.

399 not only survived the winter, she expanded her brood, leaving the den in the snowy backcountry of Grand Teton National Park with four young bears in tow. At least 22 bears in the park are known to be direct descendants of 399, and it’s possible she’s a great-grandmother living in a multi-generational sleuth in the contiguous Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks.

What makes this all the more remarkable is that at 24, 399 is no spring chicken. Grizzly bears live from 20 to 25 years in the wild. The oldest bear in the Yellowstone region known to give birth is 27, but 399 still stands out.

“Four-cub litters are rare,” Frank van Manen, a senior research biologist who oversees the Yellowstone region’s Grizzly Bear Study Team, told The Guardian. “We have documented females producing cubs well into their early- to mid- 20s, but a litter of four at that age is definitely unique.”

Mangelsen has been tracking 399 for about 15 years and has documented her life in “Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek: An Intimate Portrait of 399,” which helped to inform a federal judge’s critical 2018 decision restoring Endangered Species Act protections for the Yellowstone region’s grizzly bears.

Fewer than 150 grizzlies remained in the Yellowstone region in 1975 when the bears received federal protection. Through habitat management, crackdowns on poaching and hunting bans inside the park, the grizzly bear population in the 22,500-square-mile Yellowstone region now stands at around 700. The rebound is regarded as one of the greatest wildlife conservation triumphs in U.S. history.

In 2016, Goodall headed a coalition of about 60 renowned scientists warning the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service against stripping the Yellowstone region’s grizzly bears of their protected status.
Though their numbers have improved, the bruins “continue to be imperiled by resource declines, including habitat and dietary staple losses” due to climate change, invasive species and drought, they wrote.

“The best available science and the precautionary principle demands continued federal monitoring of this vulnerable population,” the letter reads. “Now is the time to redouble grizzly bear conservation efforts, not decrease them.”

Goodall added: “Forty years ago when the grizzlies of the Yellowstone ecosystem numbered less than 150 individuals, and their survival seemed precarious, it was thanks to protection under the Endangered Species Act that their number today has risen slowly. But their future isn’t secure yet, because they face so many threats to their survival.”

The letter did not sway the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which “delisted” grizzly bears from the Endangered Species Act in 2017 and stripped them of federal protections. Hunting has always been prohibited inside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national park, but the decision allowed the states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho to allow for hunting outside of national parks.

In 2018, Goodall teamed with Cynthia Moss, who battles elephant poachers in eastern Africa, to enter a lottery to encourage like-minded conservationists to buy grizzly bear hunting permits in Wyoming and “shoot” them with cameras instead. Ultimately, the hunt wasn’t held after the federal judge restored the endangered species listing.

But the status of Yellowstone ecosystem grizzly bear protection remains fluid, and legislation pending before Congress send grizzly bear management back to state control. Though popular with tourists, ranchers in the American West have long argued that rebounding grizzly bear numbers pose a threat to livestock.

Mangelsen has shared some of the most recent photos of 399 and her cubs on Facebook.

Through the years, Mangelsen has used his images to dispel myths that grizzly bears are aggressive and easily provoked. It’s true that mother grizzlies can be aggressive, and although 399 is generally known to be a passive bear, she mauled a Wyoming school teacher in 2007 after he walked by her cubs feeding on an elk carcass.

“I dove straight down and pulled my arms over my head,” the teacher, Dennis VanDenbos, told the Christian Science Monitor.

He braced for more.

“She came and bit me in the back as I played dead,” VanDenbos said. “I don’t know why, but I had the sense it was just a warning.”

The teacher may have saved the bear’s life that day, and sealed her destiny as the most famous grizzly bear in the world. As he was getting emergency medical treatment at the scene, he radioed to park rangers and told them to spare the bear’s life because he had inadvertently provoked the attack.

That’s among the stories that helped seal 399’s legacy. She often hangs out along the roadside, and tourists angle for a chance to see her.

Steve Franklin, a retired firefighter and arson investigator from Phoenix, has stalked 399 for years. He told The Guardian he had spotted her before anyone else.

“I dreamed of being the person who sees her first in the spring and gets the photo,” Franklin said. “Everyone who knows the legacy of 399 wants to be that person.”

Both Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park have partially reopened from coronavirus-related shutdowns.

Bears are active in both parks.

This article originally appeared on the Across America Patch