Who Gives Way?

...Well, the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) of course.. It had to go off the road, followed closely by tourists with cameras (anything from point and shoot to the big glass), the stress of which didn't help the bear maximise the catch of the day in the days before winter sets in.

This is a stretch of road along the Chilkoot River near Haines in SE Alaska. Grizzlies gather here every late summer and autumn to catch salmon. Countless other animals benefit from this bounty too, like seals, gulls, bald eagles, to name but the most obvious ones. Oh... and humans of course!

We visited this place more or less by accident in 2007 and because we couldn't stay long, decided to try and go back the following year. We succeeded and now spent a week here especially for the bears ànd to see how the interaction between bears and humans was going. It was great to see the bears! But... not so great was to see what had changed in a year! Where there had just been forest in 2007, buildings seemed to have jumped up out of the ground, including a huge one (looked more like an office than a house) being built right along the Chilkoot River. Moreover, the road between Haines and Chilkoot River was being improved too so that more cars could conveniently travel over it at higher speed (good for some large roadkill..?).

How long will the bears still be there? How long before the sometimes already quite noisy and ignorant public (an Italian quartet shoved a point and shoot camera practically in a bear's face that was crossing the road no more than four meters in front of them and it was amazing to see how the bear just ignored them while it could have had free Italian that evening!) in ever greater numbers drive out the bears completely? How long before ever more new residents, moved in from the cities far away, not knowing how to co-exist with bears either, will start seeing the bears as a dangerous pest that have no right to make life in and around their expensive property any more difficult than it would be in the city? Or will the salmon numbers in the river keep dropping (probably because of things like climate change, overfishing and pollution) like they have done the past few years and will there be nothing left for the bears to gather here from all around the area at any rate?