Alaska Brown Bear
(Ursus gyas merriam)
The brown bear of Alaska is a giant relative of the grizzly and the European brown bear. It is probably the largest living carnivore reaching a maximum weight of over sixteen hundred pounds. It does not have the reputation of the grizzly for ferocity and differs from that species by shorter claws and more concave profile. The large size of the Alaska bear is probably related to the abundant and rich food supply, the hordes of salmon that run all summer, and the plentiful vegetable food available in late spring and in the late fall, supplemented by mice, marmots and carrion.
The brown bear hibernates high on the mountain slopes in the autumn, sometimes as late as November. The bears are still fat when they emerge in April or May, but they eat little the first few days. Food is relatively scarce in the early spring; these two males have just come down to the warm lowlands where more can be found.
These bears are most active in the daytime and they are usually solitary except when drawn to a common source of food. The cubs remain with the mother for almost two years and apparently take six or seven years to reach full size and weight.
Group Environment
Canube, Alaska peninsula
The volcanic mountainous background of this wonderful scene is named the Aghileen pinnacles. The cup-like cirques and the u-shaped valleys are formed by the scooping action of the snowfields and the grinding flow of glaciers or rivers of ice. Stones and pebbles in the foreground are water rounded Igneous rock brought down from the mountains.
- Pacific Land Otter, Lutra canadensis pacifica, from Oregon to Alaska. Otters swim rapidly in leaps and dives. They may spring clear of the water like porpoises. They travel long distances over land to reach new feeding places. Food consists of fish, crayfish, and sometimes birds or muskrats. Otters like to play on "slides," steep places on snow or clay banks down which they coast on their chests headfirst into water. Two or three young are born in April in dens in riverbeds.
- Red Fish (Alaska) or Sockeye (Puget Sound) or Blueback Salmon (Columbia River) Oncorhynchus nerka is the smallest of the five pacific salmon, and has the reddest meat. The most important salmon in Alaska is the first in springtime to ascend from the ocean to glacier-fed lakes six thousand-eight thousand feet above sea level. It enters the feeder streams, completes its single spawning and dies. The young spend at least a year in the lake before descending in turn to the sea.
- Scrub Alder, Alnus sinuata, is one of the thicket-forming species of alders. Masses of the shrubs choke the shallow ravines painted on the background to the right.
