For those of us who follow the far-ranging fortunes of North America’s precarious grizzly-bear populations from afar through broadcast and print media and online there has been, generally, much cause for at least relative optimism.
Every so often, however, intervening variables interrupt that momentum such as the 2007 delisting of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem grizzly as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. More recently there was the late-July headline-grabbing bear attack at the Soda Butte campground near Cooke City, Montana, that left one camper dead and two injured.
The mechanism that provoked the attack remains a mystery, although, as a matter of course, the involved female grizzly, the mother of three reportedly malnourished cubs, was subsequently captured, identified, and euthanized. The three offspring are currently adapting to their new life at ZooMontana in Billings.
No doubt tragedies such as this — the loss of both human and grizzly — although quite rare, will occur again. Since humans began encroaching in larger numbers upon historic grizzly habitat over the past century, five such fatal encounters have been recorded in the Yellowstone area.
With only 1,500 or so grizzlies remaining in the lower-48 out of an estimated population of 50,000 to 100,000 prior to European settlement, the results of the western expansion that displaced 98 percent of the bears’ historic range are fairly obvious. Especially to those who ponder such things as planetary health.
Which brings us to another bear story, that of Doug and Lynne Seus and their 1977 adoption of a zoo-born Kodiak grizzly they would name Bart. Raised and trained on the Seus property in the Heber Valley, “Bart the Bear” would go on to worldwide fame in motion pictures such as “Legends of the Fall,” “White Fang” and “The Edge,” and as an ambassador from the earth’s wildlands to humankind as a whole.
The training went both ways, of course, with Doug and Lynne learning far more than Bart. It became immediately apparent to both that Bart’s unswerving loyalty and quick-study intellect could serve to teach youth everywhere a healthy respect for all of the planet’s diverse life forms.
What better symbol of the magnificence of the wild than a member of that most magnificent subspecies of the brown bear, Ursus arctos horribilis, the wondrous grizzly. Possibly, they thought, Bart might be able to impart wisdom sufficient to educating humans on the benefits of securing our still-somewhat-pristine private wildlands rather than utilizing them for short-term profit.
And it was from this inspiration-rich environment that Doug and Lynne established Vital Ground, a land trust bent on helping to preserve the grizzly bear along with “other animals, plants, and natural communities through the conservation of habitat and wildlife linkage areas.”
The acquisition of 240 acres of prime grizzly habitat that butted up against the protected lands of Montana’s Pine Butte Preserve along the eastern slope of the Rockies kick-started what would become a series of linkages between wild grizzly sanctuaries considered by Vital Ground to be the “crux point of grizzly survival and recovery.”
Bart grew large, both in spirit and size. He was big boned, as they say: nine-and-a-half-feet tall and 1,500 pounds dripping wet after a quick frolic in his pond with Doug. But to his family, it was his heart that was huge. His love was unconditional and when he passed away from cancer 10 years ago the void he left was too immense to comprehend.
Bart’s spirit would carry on within Vital Ground, however. And with his grizzly family — Tank and the younger sibling team of Little Bart and Honey-Bump still romping about and carrying on his legacy at the Seus compound — both the work and the vision of the foundation continue.
In conjunction with its 20th anniversary, Doug and Lynne Seus and supporters of the Vital Ground Foundation will be gathering in Deer Valley this Saturday to celebrate past successes in protecting over 600,000 acres of “habitat and landscape linkages for grizzly bears and other wildlife from Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, to British Columbia and Alaska.” I imagine they’ll be hoisting a few to Big Bart.
Through their perception of the interactive ingredients that go into making our planet operate in a relatively robust state, Doug and Lynne continue to bring high honor to our neck of the woods. As Lynne says, “Where the grizzly can walk, the earth is healthy and whole.”
For more information on Vital Ground, call 406-549-8650 or visit www.vitalground.org.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.