Editor’s Note: This is part 2 of a two-part series. Part 1 appeared in the Dec. 2008 Gazette and can be found here on our website as well
Which brings us to the Carmen Mountain black bears…. My husband and I moved in October 2001 to the Maderas del Carmen, he as manager of CEMEX El Carmen Project and I as wildlife coordinator. I began planning a bear study, enlisting Jonas Delgadillo Villalobos as my co-principal investigator. We began field work in 2003.
We reviewed historical information, and current literature, interviewed ranchers and collected information from local ejidatarios on black bears in northern Coahuila. Our research is long-term with the objectives of identifying the major dispersal corridors from the Maderas del Carmen, and determination of mortality factors during dispersal and within the resident population, reproductive rates, sex ratios of resident bears, seasonal movement in relation to food availability, cub survival, habitat use, genetic variability in mitochondrial DNA, and diet.
Part of our research also involves cooperative work with ranchers and ejidos – to develop safe travel corridors during dispersal, and developing educational materials, and providing technical guidance to area landowners to minimize conflict with bears.
Studying the bears in this Mexican mountain ecosystem is a researcher’s dream come true. Bears are at all elevations, in all habitats, and can endear themselves to you or make you want to pull your hair out at their latest escapade.
A typical scenario for a bear-trapping day in the Maderas del Carmen goes something like this: we load the equipment on four-wheelers and head for the sierra. It is September, the desert country is hot, the bears are using canyons and the higher elevations, fruits are ripening and the sows have kicked their 18 month old cubs off in May and June. These yearling bears are running around everywhere, as well as the adult bears congregating in areas that have abundant acorns.
I have the non-directional antenna on the front of my four-wheeler to pick up remote locations. Soon I hear the first beep: Chica, a young sow that has one cub, is going about her daily routine, feeding in the mid elevation. The radio crackles; Hugo says we have a bear caught at the road to the Mesa los Fresnos – a small yearling, maybe a female. We turn around and head back, because of the hot temperatures we need to work this bear first, then we will head back up the mountain.
We head into Cañón Alamo and drive up the canyon; the road is covered in bear tracks of all sizes, a regular bear highway. We arrive at the trap site. The barrel trap is in the shade, the bear is comfortable, but not a happy camper. A yearling female, and she is huffing and popping her teeth and bouncing all over the inside of the barrel, making it very difficult for us to give her the immobilizing injection with the jabstick.
Finally, she decides she will just get in the middle of the trap; she rolls over on her back, sticks all four feet up in the air and does her daily aerobics while we stand by waiting on her to move to one or the other end of the trap. Finally, she makes her move and shortly she is asleep and we are working her up.
She is in good condition. As we affix her radio collar and take the last data, she begins to move around, slowly waking up. We mist her with cool water to keep her body temperature down in the stifling heat of mid-morning. Shortly thereafter, she moves off into the brush and disappears. Now she has a number and a frequency so we can monitor her, but her name is “Serena.”
We clean the equipment, load everything back in the truck, and head down the canyon, then start upward to the high sierra. We round a turn in the road at Los Cojos and see Chica and her cub of the year on the slope; she is also in good condition.
Further up we check the barrel traps we have out on the mountain: nothing so far until we get to Cuadra Pelota. There is a bear in this barrel and apparently a big one. We inject him and tug him out of the trap inch by inch; he is one of the biggest males we have caught. He is inky black, so black his coat looks blue in the rays of sunlight filtering through the pines and firs. His chest bears a large white marking; only a few of the bears have the white marks.
His head is huge. He doesn’t look that old; his teeth are relatively white and show little wear. We name him “Santana.” The work-up is easy. As he awakens, slowly, he is content to just lie in the shade and watch us. He is a new bear to this area; we haven’t seen him before, nor his tracks, which are huge.
We wait in the shade and eat a late lunch. The breeze is from the south, warm. The pine scent of warm resin fills the air. We don’t have a long wait, as Santana decides to get up, and moves off quickly. It’s amazing how within seconds a three to four hundred pound black bear can vanish without a trace. I wonder where his home range will be? Judging by the direction he is heading maybe he spends his time in the high country and over toward the east side of Centinela? Telemetry and time will tell.
We call Campo Uno on the radio and David reports that we haven’t caught any bears in the traps but that he saw two this morning, one with a collar and one without. We tell David we are headed to Uno to rebait the traps and check telemetry. The radio signal from the Campo Uno area is from another male, “Tecate.” We have a quick cup of coffee with David.
By this time it is mid-afternoon. We check telemetry up at La Laguna, then start the long drive back to Pilares. We stop and do telemetry, pick up scats, mark their location, and see more bears without collars.
A yearling crosses the road running full tilt; he disappears into the forest in seconds. Below La Cachuchua we see another yearling, trapping will be good this month with all the yearlings running around, all are hungry and having to fend for themselves for the first time in their life.
A good day: we have captured and radio-collared two more bears for the study. Hopefully some of the radio collared bears will move north and we can track this movement and the corridors they are using to reach west Texas.
After stopping many times to do telemetry, we reach Pilares headquarters around 7 p.m. The bears are moving everywhere, it is dry and food sources are scarce this year. I call Bill on the radio and relay that I am headed up canyon to our house at San Isidro. He replies, okay – and there is a big bear below the Pila Chebo with no collar. Yet another one! I head home looking for the bear but don’t see him.
Bear trapping can be very good one day and lousy the next. For several days or even weeks bears may walk right by your traps. However, this wasn’t the case in the fall of 2005; with the dry conditions bears were moving all over the mountain and the lower country searching for food. We were capturing practically every day; on our our best day, we caught four bears.
September 24, 2005 starts out in typical fashion; gas in the truck, gather equipment, clean the equipment box, and refurbish supplies. Once we have all the “stuff” loaded, we start for the mountain to check all the traps and do telemetry. Bill and Salvador are in front of us and radio back that we have a big bear in the trap at Casa Negro. Inside the trap is dark; it is in the shade and the big male inside is very tranquil, napping in the coolness of the trap. We can see he has a radio collar and it is pretty snug. We check the collar, and while he is going under the anesthesia I check radio signals trying to determine who this is…. It’s “Villa,” whom we caught nearly two years ago when he was a yearling. He had moved up into the Jardín west area and during the past winter we had lost radio signal contact on him.
We take off his collar – the spacer is just about ready to break, held only by a couple of threads. The collar has become snug and rubbed several places bare of hair on his neck; we opt not to recollar him. We have a lot of data from his locations. We work him up and wait while he recovers completely and walks off.
We head toward the top of the mountain. Beto calls on the radio: we have a bear caught down below at Chamaceros, so back down the mountain we go. We’ll have to check the rest of the mountain traps later, since they are in the shade and the high elevation keeps the temperatures cool, whereas Chamiceros is hot; even though the barrel is in the shade, we don’t want the bear to overheat.
We make it down the mountain in record time… At Chamiceros, we find a young male, thin, but in good condition. We name him Flaco and work him up. Beto remains with him until he recovers. Now it’s 2:30 p.m. and we still have all the mountain traps to check.
We find another bear trapped at Campo Cinco; for want of a better name, he is “Cinco.” Once we have worked him up and he has recovered, we head to Uno. The next barrel contains another young male. We name him “Bravo,” because of his attitude; from his huffing and teeth popping, you would have thought there was a huge bear inside this trap.
It is getting late, and we still have five traps to check. When we’re finished with Bravo, we bounce over the rough road to Uno and La Laguna. There are no bears here but many tracks in the road. On the way back, near Divisadero we see another bear without a collar.
It is dusk, and I am checking telemetry; Frida is in her usual spot; Lupita is in Carboneras, toward the Puerta Linces. Chaco and Domingo’s signals are faint, they are in the canyon below. We pick up eight more bear signals….
Coming off the mountain, in the darkness, with the bear frequencies beeping softly in my headset, I am lost in thought. This population of bears is definitely increasing; when we moved here nearly five years ago we saw some bears, one here and one there. Now, we are seeing more and more bears. This is good; the population is expanding.
For the first time in probably 100 years, much of the Maderas del Carmen now offers a haven for all wildlife, not just the bears. Hunting pressure is gone, habitats are recovering from over-use for many years. Will we be over-populated? I don’t think so: they have room to expand. Through normal dispersal bears will continue to move in all directions.
I am waiting for the day when one of our collared study bears moves across the Rio Grande. Ground telemetry in the Maderas del Carmen is difficult; the deep canyons, ravines, mountains, cliffs and rockpiles all make telemetry less than easy. Often when a bear disperses a long distance we will lose its signal and it may be months before we locate this animal with ground telemetry.
El Carmen now has a single engine plane based at the project site which allows us to aerial track bears greater distances. Since I began work here at El Carmen, not only has the bear population grown, but the project has more than tripled in size, and is still growing.
Much of the corridor country that previously presented many perils to dispersing black bears is now under direct ownership of CEMEX and El Carmen, allowing for safer travel on both sides of the Maderas del Carmen for almost the complete distance from the Cuesta Malena to the Rio Grande.
Ranchers and ejidos all know about the bear project, and have been extremely hospitable in allowing us to access their properties to pick up radio collars that fell off bears when the spacers broke. They have allowed us to conduct telemetry, use their roads, told us some great stories, and shared their coffee. We appreciate all their hospitality and their willingness to work with us on black bear conservation in Mexico.
There will probably always be people on both sides of the border that will kill black bears, whether out of fear of the bears as killers of livestock, or just for the thrill of hunting. But fortunately, there are lands in both countries that afford the black bear protection. There are biologist and managers in both countries willing to work with landowners so they can coexist with black bears.
I am not ignorant. I know the bears can cause problems at times. Especially during years when natural foods are in low supply and on lands that are overgrazed, bears will kill livestock. And some conflicts with bears are man-made: landowners who put out feed for deer and other wildlife literally habituate bears to their cattle operations and to their houses and outbuildings. Bears love deer feeders, and are genius on emptying them. The landowner gets mad at the bear, while the bear gets mad because the deer feeder is empty, his free meals are gone. The landowner goes for his rifle, the bear goes for the dog food or the horse feed in the barn, and all hell breaks loose.
Rule number one: don’t feed the bears! A fed bear is a dead bear. Common sense in dealing with bears goes a long way. Bears and man coexist in many places in the United States with few problems. I grew up in bear country in Virginia and can never remember having problem bears; sure, they were there, but they were well-mannered forest bears, not junkies looking for a free meal.
Bears are an integral part of the Mexican and west Texas landscape. They belong here, and if landowners give them a chance and learn how to prevent conflicts, the bear can once again roam historic range in both countries.
I feel very privileged to have been able to conduct research on a species that was absent from its historic range in western Texas for close to 50 years then returned on its own and began to reestablish a small population.
I feel even more privileged to live in the Maderas del Carmen of Coahuila and be able to go out on my patio in late April and have my morning coffee and watch a sow with her three tiny cubs moving up the slope across the arroyo from my house, or see a fat bear sit down in a pool of cool mountain water with an expression of pure pleasure as the water cools him off.
I turn a corner in the road going down the canyon from Casa San Isidro and see a very large old sow with four tiny cubs following her down the road. She crosses the road, grunting to the cubs to hurry along, they scamper after her, short tails tucked. They are part of the future bear populations for this mountain, and adjacent mountains in México and western Texas.
I am insignificant in the grand plan; the bears are the big players. It is up to many people in both countries to see that there are places left for a sow to den up in December, have her tiny cubs and bring them forth into the outdoors in late April.
In September 2008, myself, Dr. Patricia Harveson, Sul Ross State University, Mike Pittman, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Jonas Delgadillo Villalobos and Beto Martinez, El Carmen, Mexico began another black bear research project to study transboundary movement of black bears in both Texas and Mexico. The El Carmen, Coahuila bear trappers Jonas and Beto began trapping up near the Texas border in the area known as Canyon Diablo in Coahuila, and the rest of the research team began trapping efforts on the Black Gap WMA and the adjacent El Carmen Land and Conservation Company, LLC (formerlyAdams Ranch) along the Rio Grande in west Texas.
We hope through our efforts the next several years to identify the major travel corridors bears are using between the two countries, map habitats, and provide management information for black bears on an international level.
I have been encouraged greatly by the number of phone calls and emails I have recently received from landowners in west Texas sharing bear sightings and reports of bears on their ranches north of the study area. The Carmen Mountains in Mexico is a source population for bears dispersing into western Texas.
The dispersal process is slow because bears are slow producers. Females normally don’t breed until they are four years old, a high percentage of cubs do not survive to adulthood, and female dispersal is much slower than male dispersal. A male may be in west Texas one day and back across the Rio Grande in Mexico the next.
Prior to the 1940s black bear were found in many areas of the Trans-Pecos and people coexisted with them, even to the point where there were enough bears to allow for sport hunting. The grizzly bear is gone from Texas and northern Mexico, but the black bear has persisted. The black bear was an icon of the great Texas fauna, Black bears are returning slowly, and it is up to United States and Mexico landowners to ensure they survive and once again become part of the transboundary fauna, not an endangered bumper sticker or an animal of controversy.
Anyone interested in more information on black bears and coexisting with black bears can contact Bonnie McKinney at brmckinney@hotmail.com, Dr. Patricia Harveson at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, or Mike Pittman or Dave Holdermann at Texas Parks and Wildlife in Alpine.
