{"id":42933,"date":"2019-02-10T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-10T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/since-a-young-age-this-bear-has-lived-with-an-audience\/"},"modified":"2019-02-10T22:03:20","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T07:03:20","slug":"since-a-young-age-this-bear-has-lived-with-an-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/since-a-young-age-this-bear-has-lived-with-an-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"Since a young age, this bear has lived with an audience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t

There’s a soap opera star living in Juneau, and she’s a 12-year-old black bear.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Bear 153’s existence has been thoroughly documented since she was tagged as a cub. Her life, which has included dramatic gender reveals, births, deaths and unusual family drama, was the subject of a Fireside Lecture on Friday night.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“This is all in our backyards, folks,” said Laurie Craig, former lead naturalist at Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, who gave the talk about Bear 153 at Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

[Traveling to the Gobi desert to study the world’s rarest bear<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Craig began the free, public lecture by explaining who Bear 153 is and who she isn’t.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Bear 153 is not Nicky, the popular bear with cinnamon fur and namesake nick in her <\/a>ear<\/a>. Bear 153 is identifiable by a two-piece blue tag on her ear and a white heart-shaped patch on her chest that is visible when she stands up.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“When you see a bear stand, it’s not because they’re becoming aggressive, but because they’re curious and want to see what’s going on,” Craig said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Bear 153 was tagged as a cub in 2007 when her mother was collared after the family was found going through trash in a neighborhood near the glacier.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“That’s not a good way to start a life,” Craig said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Craig said the bears were collared and tagged by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game and bears are tagged so there is a better understanding of urban bear and wild bear interaction, food conditioning and coexisting with bears.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Despite starting off toward developing bad habits, Bear 153 did not become a problem. She spent the summer months around Mendenhall Glacier, fishing in Steep Creek and climbing trees to eat seed pods.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Craig said the area provides an important environment for Juneau’s bears.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“This forest has so much for them to eat, they don’t need to go through our garbage,” Craig said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

At the time of her tagging, Bear 153 was identified as a male, which Craig said made the birth of her first cubs in 2013 a surprise during an already fun time of year.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“Every spring, we’re so excited when the bears show up again,” Craig said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

[Traffic could be improving for Mendenhall Valley motorists<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Among that first first litter was a bear with a distinct white V-shaped mark on her chest that’s come to be known as Chevron or Luna. Chevron has since matured and had a cub of her own.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A hand-drawn family tree for Bear 153 details the cubs the sow has had so far. (Courtesy Photo | Laurie Craig)<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t

In 2015, Bear 153 and Chevron did something Craig said she hadn’t previously seen in her 14 years at the glacier and has not seen happen again.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“153 allowed her 2013 cub to come back and hang out,” Craig said. “So we have a 2-and-a-half-year-old hanging out with the cub of the year. In essence 153 had a nanny. It was teaching [the cub] some bad habits, but they were having a great time together.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

She said the nanny-reared cub is going to have an interesting life, and she’s excited to see how it plays out.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“Will he be swaggering through as an adult because he was swaggering as a cub?” Craig asked.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Craig said that since Chevron would mind the new cub, Bear 153 spent the summer foraging.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“She spent a lot of time eating that summer because she had the babysitter,” Craig said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

In 2017, Bear 153 had a litter of four — three of the cubs survived. They appeared on an internationally televised special that came to Juneau that year.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“This family’s become quite the star of BBC’s ‘Wild Alaska Live<\/a>,” Craig said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Craig said she’s hoping Bear 153 is in a den somewhere with the newest branch of her family tree.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“She is an amazing bear and an amazing mother,” Craig said. “It is such a privilege because of that little piece of blue plastic in her ear that we’ve been able to follow her life practically since she was born.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

\u2022 Contact arts and culture reporter Ben Hohenstatt at (907)523-2243 or bhohenstatt@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter @BenHohenstatt.<\/b><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

<\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Think Nicky is too mainstream? Here’s your bear. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":474,"featured_media":42934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[261,253],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-42933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-bears","tag-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/474"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42933"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=42933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}