Bear Zombie-cam!
A trip to the world-famous Brooks Camp from the Lower 48 will set you back thousands. Even from Alaska, you’ve got to be lucky enough to win the bear lottery, and it still isn’t cheap. It’s almost 300 miles from Anchorage, and no roads lead there. Try to get there before 2014 at this point. You’ll be lucky if you do.
Almost anyone who likes bears will recognize the area. If you’ve seen a picture of a grizzly standing in the river grabbing a salmon in mid-air as it tries to leap up the falls, it was almost certainly taken at Brooks Camp.
And there are a few folks out there who have more than a healthy fear of our giant, adorable, furry killing machines. 2,200 of them live in Katmai National Park, and about a hundred of them frequent Brooks Camp where the cameras are set up.
But now they, and you, can enjoy all the live excitement of hungry bears, with none of the bear spray, or soiled undergarments.
As of today, four live solar and wind-powered web cams will let you watch our famous Alaska brown bears (grizzlies) as they lounge around the river, frolic, and catch those amazing and nutritious salmon to pad their ample frames so they survive the bitter cold winter. The big males usually go for the calorie and fat-rich eggs, and brains. They’re pretty much zombies for salmon, letting the rest of the carcass float downstream to waiting females and cubs. OK, so they’re more like zombie socialists.
Later in the season after the salmon spawn and die, it’s like a giant rotting Golden Corral of fish. Bears can take what they want at will without having to have perfected a technique. The whole system has worked for thousands of years.
“‘I think it’s an unparalleled opportunity for people to get that front row seat of the lives of the bears at Brooks Camp,’ said Roy Wood, chief of interpretation for Katmai National Park and Preserve.
The project is a partnership with explore.org, which set up four high-definition cameras in Katmai, spokesman Jason Damata told The Associated Press. Three of them are at existing viewing stands where bear fans come to watch the animals.
“‘It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money, and the webcams will make it accessible to anyone with access to a computer, a smartphone, a tablet device,’ Wood said.
So, why have these webcams? There’s no advertising, and seemingly no way anyone is profiting from them.
“The mission is simple. We simply want people to fall in love with the world again,”
said Charles Annenberg, creator of explore.org and vice president of the Annenberg Foundation. That right there pretty much made me fall in love with Charles Annenberg. Just saying.
You can pop some corn, and snuggle in for the best bear viewing on the planet by clicking HERE. Note that I had trouble at first, but there’s a button to the right of the viewing box that lets you watch in in a pop up window. That worked for me, and I had fun watching three grizzlies in the river – one sitting in the bubbling jacuzzi area, going with the flow; one splashing around; and one in a calm spot just staring straight down into the water, waiting for lunch to come along.
Be patient if there are technical glitches, as the cameras are very new, but do bookmark the site and come back later if you have trouble. You’ll be glad you did.
Here’s the irony of this situation….
To many, Katmai National Park and Preserve and brown bears are synonymous. Visitors come from all over the world to see Katmai’s brown bears. However, these iconic creatures could soon be in the crosshairs…again!
While some bear hunting is allowed in Katmai National Preserve, the only opportunity for the National Park Service to influence the number of bears killed is through two proposed guided hunting contracts. National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) has long been concerned about the numbers of bears harvested and the impact it could have on park visitors seeking to view bears, and on bear-viewing businesses as a whole. The proposed National Park Service contracts completely disregard this impact. Learn more here.
At risk is your chance to see large, male brown bears in the wild, the very bears that draw visitors and hunters alike to Katmai.
Take Action: Tell the National Park Service that you want to see a plan that reduces the impacts of guided bear hunting on park visitors who want to watch bears.
Here’s how you do it…
Step 1: Go to http://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?documentID=48177. The Park Service is only accepting online comments at this website. In order for your comment to count, you must carefully follow the Park Service’s form.
Step 2: Please personalize your comments by cutting and pasting the talking points below into the Park Service web form, taking the opportunity to add any personal observations or stories.
Step 3: Once you have completed all of the required/necessary fields on the form, make sure you click on “Submit” at the bottom of the form.
Talking Points:
–The brown bears of Katmai National Preserve belong to all Americans, not just the 1% of park visitors that visit with the sole intention of shooting them. While I understand that hunting is allowed in Katmai National Preserve by guided hunting concessions, I urge you to rethink how you will balance guided sport hunting with the desire by many to view high concentrations of bears in the wild.
–The Draft Environmental Assessment’s (EA) proposed guided concessions lack recognition of the potential impacts to a non-hunters’ ability to see a large male brown bear in Katmai National Preserve. The two alternatives you propose–maintaining the status quo and your preferred action–do not evaluate any variance in the number of guided hunters from 28 and/or set limits for the number of bears to be killed. The only difference between the two action alternatives is the map line delineating the two proposed guided hunting areas.
–My concern is not for the overall brown bear population, as I understand them to be in healthy condition, but rather the impacts that shooting large male bears in and around the Preserve’s Funnel and Moraine Creeks will have on those wishing to visit your park to see large male brown bears in the same area. I urge you to develop a more comprehensive range of alternatives.
–Your lack of a range of alternatives is exacerbated by the lack of any discussion, even for the alternatives you propose, of the impact of harvesting large male brown bears on the experience of someone who wants to visit Katmai to see these very same bears; someone like me or my children. You simply must recognize that the majority of other park users, including bear viewers and fishermen, will be impacted by guided brown bear hunting and those impacts must be identified, discussed, and evaluated in this EA. Anything short of that is not acceptable.
Thank you for taking the time to submit comments on behalf of Katmai National Preserve’s brown bears. Future generations will appreciate your action!
WAY OFF TOPIC === Can’t get into forums and can’t send a message!
The following is the message I wanted to send
The forum is messed up — it doesn’t show up correctly on the screen and whenever I click on a recent post on the side I get
The requested URL /index.php was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache Server at http://www.themudflats.org Port 80
Please fix soon!
‘Way back in 1995, WC was lucky enough to win permits for the McNeil River Bear Sanctuary, the poor man’s alternative to Brooks Falls. An absolutely amazing experience. It’s a lottery, too, but it’s less expensive to get there and stay there than Katmai. Details at http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=viewingpermits.mcneil_apply
/WC
I have not yet been able to see the bears yet for some reason, but I look forward to it
Thanks so much for this link! It is hypnotizing to say the least. We see some bears at salmon streams in Juneau but nothing like this.
Thank you, AKM.
that webcam is great. I was watching them for a bit, looks like most are waiting for a salmon just to pop into their mouths.
MUD!!!
This is AWESOME!
They have these cams linked at a station close to us down here in SoCal but getting it from you is BETTER !!!!
Thanks..W
Thank you, AKM, for this link! I brings back happy and exciting memories.
A year ago my young grandson and I were in Juneau at Mendenhall Glacier for two weeks following the antics of the much more gentle (and decidedly smaller) black bears. It was wonderful.
Now, these big guys are a totally different proposition, and I would not pretend to have the nerve to get into their territory. It is all the more appreciated to see them in real time on camera.
I got hooked on one of these bear cams a couple of years ago and it was fascinating! I think it was also at Brooks Camp and I loved watching the bears catching fish and interacting with each other. They each had a slightly different strategy and some were more successful than others. I was very sad when the season ended and the camera was turned off.
I will definitely check this one out. Thanks for the link, AKM!
Just watched the bears cooling their tootsies for a few minutes. How wonderful! The focused faces scanning the depths reminded me of our beagles when on the watch for chipmunks skittering around under our deck. The kind of focus teachers would like to see on their students’ faces from time to time.
Just what I needed after an entire day of chainsaw noise and tree-chopper-upper sounds. People in our neighborhood are obviously taking advantage of this beautiful day to cut down trees and chop them up. Bur from 8 am to 6:30 pm? I’d like to visit Brooks Falls for some relative peace and quiet right now.