Special to the Homer Independent Press

Hello from Katmai National Park and Preserve, Homer!

I am kneeling on the cobble along the shores of Moraine Creek with eight tourists from Germany, Italy, Mexico, Israel and West Virginia alongside me. The water is high after recent rain, and we are waiting for a couple of bears to move along before we get into our river-crossing formation.

One young bear shares this beach with us, walking our direction from upstream about 80 yards away. Another subadult is fishing the riffles just downstream, so my head is on a swivel, noting the progress and proximity of both bears, then checking the bear trails in the willows behind me. My group is sitting in a tight cluster about 15 yards from the shoreline where the cobble meets the grass.

The bear upstream walks in front of us. He hugs the shore, clawing up scraps of salmon. He is within lunging distance, but his body isn’t giving aggression. He is slowly side-eyeing us — eyeing me, specifically. I’m the only one not watching him through a viewfinder or a cellphone screen. Clickclickclickclickclickclickclick. 

This is the critical moment of my responsibility. I am glancing and he is glancing, bare eyes to bear eyes, side-eyeing, and I am smiling, mouth-closed when our glimpses meet. He’s smelling me and scanning my scent against his bank of human odor-IDs, and I’d like to think he recognizes me. I’ve been out here six days a week every August for the last three years. Bears know each other by smell, and at close range like this, they surely know frequent-flyers like me.

As soon as he’s past, the bear downstream decides to drive-by as well. But this bear is bolder. He doesn’t hug the shoreline; he angles in and walks past just a few yards in front of me. I let him approach this close because his body language is saying “curiosity.” Plus, it’s the end of the day, so my tourists are all habituated. Also, being this close is thrilling. That, and I know this bear.

“Hello, Rabbit Ears,” I say as he struts past. 

He is close enough we can see the individual hairs of his waxen fur backlit against the river behind him. We watch the ripples of his powerful muscles engage in his stride. We listen to the crunch and the squish of his paws on the cobble, his claws on the carcasses of discarded fish. He picks one up, then sets it down. Continues on. He is a good bear today, and my elation at this encounter is hardly containable as we embark our plane, as we taxi and take-off.

“Guess who I saw today?!” I say to my pilot, Don.

“Let’s see…a cub?” he says through his headset.

“We saw twenty-one cubs!” the woman from Virginia crackles through.

“Twenty-one?!” says Don. The other tourists all nod ecstatically.

“Yeah, but even better, we saw Rabbit Ears! And he did a real good drive-by!”

“Rabbit Ears? That bad little cub that used to try to get ya?!” says Don.

“Yeah, but he’s not a cub anymore. He probably weighs 400 pounds! And he’s all on his own now. He’s so big. So handsome! And so well-behaved!”

My relationship with Rabbit Ears began in 2024 when he was a funny-looking yearling cub. His ears stuck straight up, and he had dark triangle eyeliner that made him look like an evil little clown. He had light blonde fur and was scrawny as a yearling. He walked straight up to my group and didn’t stop when I jumped up, nor when I yelled and clapped and stomped. I commanded my tourists to “Stand!” and with a coordinated stomp (“On the count of three!”) we scared him off, and he went running to his mother who was fishing across the creek.


 

When he was a twofer (two-and-a-half years old) and still hangin’ tough with mom, I watched Rabbit Ears do the same moves to every other group of humans, sometimes with a little hop-charge for extra effect. But never again to me. He knows me, and he respects my boundaries.

And now, as a subadult he has grown into a well-behaved young gentlebear. He doesn’t approach my group straight-on; he doesn’t do a hop-charge or make intimidating eye contact. He is calm and walks by glancing. I trust him at just a few feet. He is a good bear to me. He is habituated.

Habituation in the animal kingdom is the process of learning that a stimulus (i.e., a human) is neither harmful nor rewarding.

Bears are born wary. Most bears in most places will run away from people, assuming they are a threat. Bears who learn that humans are rewarding, through encounters with purveyors of pic-a-nic-a-baskets or garbage or other food sources, become food-conditioned. Food-conditioned bears are very dangerous because they see humans as sources of food. And if you stop supplying, they’re apt to bite the hand that withheld. And then they learn that humans are made of meat, and then the food source becomes the food itself. Yikes.

The habituated bears of Katmai National Park are not food-conditioned. The professionals out here are meticulous about how we eat. We hold our sandwiches over our open backpacks so that not one crumb falls on the ground. One crumb to a curious bear an hour later, in a spot where people have been sitting, adds taste to a banquet of human smells. If that crumb is delicious or big enough, a bear will learn that humans are a source of food, and then trouble is a-brew for the bears and the bear viewers.

  

Trouble may already be brewing. In August I saw more than 30 airplanes land at Crosswind Lake one day. A scattered group of humans were crowding several bears who were trying to fish the river. Bummer. I picked up an apple core that was left in a hummock. Double-bummer. I saw a group having a picnic in a clearing in the willows where eight bear trails converge. Scary! Then I went home and watched a viral video of a bear cub on an island in Moraine Creek nibbling on the videographer’s boot. Have you seen it? It’s so cute.

But now that little bear has learned it’s OK to bite people. To bite people! How will he behave when he is big?

And how would Rabbit Ears have behaved today, if I hadn’t set my boundary with him two years ago when he was small?

 

Habituation is a two-way street. We can get desensitized to the danger of these apex predators because for decades we’ve been going bear-viewing cautiously and ethically and largely without incident. But our habituation to the bears is contingent upon both species’ respect. When we start crowding them and being sloppy, we risk the bears’ opinion of us; we risk our lives, and we risk theirs too. And that’s bad for business.

There have been at least 18 people mauled by brown bears in North America this summer, six of whom were in Alaska. But there have been no bear-related deaths in Katmai National Park since Oct. 5, 2003, when Amie Huguenard and Timothy Treadwell were killed and eaten by a coastal Alaskan brown bear near Kaflia Lake, just south of Hallo Bay.

Treadwell crossed the line of habituation. He spent 11 summers in Hallo Bay, and his obsession with the bruins and his hubris in their midst got himself and Huguenard killed. He was trying to spread the same message that I do: that bears are not merely aggressive predators; they are intelligent, playful, emotional animals, worthy of our respect and admiration. That we should strive to protect them and their habitat from the rampant spread of civilization. That being in the presence of bears reawakens our wild natures. That bears are fascinating.

 

But that message got clouded when Treadwell was mauled. The bear that ate him was killed in response.

Ethical bear viewing is not rocket science, but it’s not common sense either. It is learned behaviors. It requires humility, patience and courage to be a bear professional. It takes training and experience and a deep respect for the bear and for wilderness.

Rabbit Ears will continue his education on the boundaries of habituation with every human encounter he has. At 400 pounds, he’s still just a growing boy. I hope he doesn’t meet an untrained guide or some lunch left behind while he’s still an unpredictable subadult. I want to greet him with side-eyes when he’s huge and old.

The bear viewing industry has been niche until recently. But now, with viral videos of cute bear cubs filling every animal-lover’s social media feed, the demand for this Alaska wilderness experience has soared. Let’s make sure our bear professionals are educated and trained before we send them out to meet that demand. Our industry and our lives depend on it.

Want more information about bear education? There are plenty of books and resources out there. For a curated reading list, you can contact the author through her website: libbybbushell.com.

Libby B Bushell is a local author and wildlife guide. She spends summers in Katmai with the bears, and winters (the austral summer) in Antarctica with the emperor penguins. She is the founder of HoWL and is passionate about helping people get outside. It’s better out there!