As the first snows stretch across the alpine and long days submit to colder nights, outdoorsmen swap poles for rifles, gravity freaks cast away paddles and peddles for boards and bindings, and climbers exchange sticky rubber for sharp spikes. But recreationists are not the only ones ramping up for the waxing winter.

Grizzly bears are also adjusting to the changing season and are entering their early stages of hyperphagia – an annual period that extends from August to mid-November where bears rampantly consume calories and gain up to 2.5 pounds per day in preparation for their forthcoming five-month nap.

During summer’s peak, grizzlies are high in the hills careening across talus slopes, searching for army cutworm moths (shown below) that burrow into dark crevices to escape the intense mountain sun. Bears will excavate the talus and can hoover some 40,000 half-calorie moths as their daily ration.

But now, as summer wilts (or outright collapses) into fall, moths return to Montana’s grassy lowlands to lay their eggs and the whitebark pine seed emerges as the pièce de résistance of grizzly food sources.

Whitebark pine cone (shown below) maturation occurs from August to October, a time during which red squirrels harvest the seeds and cache them for winter. Bears use their hypersensitive noses to locate and raid these squirrel middens. Over half of the calories of corn kernel-sized seeds are derived from fat – a percentage only rivaled by the moths – and are invaluable in padding the bear’s fat reserves before hibernation.

US Geological Survey biologist, Dr. David Mattson, found that whitebark pine cones are especially critical to the Yellowstone’s female grizzly bears – and to the next generation of cubs. Sows consume roughly twice as many whitebark pine seeds as their male counterparts, and a good seed crop can produce a 7 percent grizzly population increase while (through female mortality and fewer cubs) a poor crop can result in a 5 percent decline.

In years of meager pine seed production grizzlies respond by moving from high-elevation whitebark forests to areas closer to human habitation where they are more likely to be killed. In his 1992 study, Mattson discovered that the “mortality of adult females [was] 2.3 times higher and mortality of sub-adult males [was] 3.3 times higher during years of small seed crops.” He also found that human-caused mortalities increased 1.9 times during these years. But with the outbreak of whitebark pathogens, pine bark beetle and blister rust, poor cone production is becoming the standard.

This year is no exception and on August 19, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team sent out a press release stating “the scarcity of whitebark pine cones may be driving bears to find food at lower elevations, where there is more human activity, increasing the chances of bear-human interactions.”

In a year where the Greater Yellowstone has already witnessed the tragic deaths of Erwin Evert and Kevin Kammer, three grizzly maulings, and 20 verified human-caused grizzly mortalities, an increase in human-grizzly conflicts – no matter their red or blue predilection – is the last thing Northern Rocky residents want.

This Saturday commences the big-game, archery hunting season, a time notorious for human-bear conflicts. As hunters, anglers, riders, skiers, hikers, and climbers, we need to adapt to a changing environment just as the bears do. Whether it be increasing our awareness in the hills, carrying bear spray instead of relying on a pistol, improving our camping habits, or educating ourselves on bear behavior, it is our responsibility to reduce human-bear incidents this fall.

And with that, I will step off my digital soapbox. -BM