Join the rover team as they head to the Bitter Root Valley to visit the Wind River Bear Institute. Wind River breeds Karelian Bear Dogs to be placed on conservation teams around the world to help reduce human-wildlife conflict.
For more information, check out beardogs.org and our blog post on Wind River Bear Institute at rover.com/blog/karelian-bear-d...
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- My name is Nils Pedersen and I'm from Fairbanks, AK. I'm the director of the Wind River Bear Institute. Karelian Bear dogs are a hunting breed of dog from eastern Finland and western Russia. These are dogs that are very primitive and used for hunting big game, moose, as well as some lines are known to be able to hunt brown bear, and we're taking that innate ability that they have and applying it for conservation, so, for using them both for detection but also for conflict scenarios with large and potentially dangerous wildlife.
- I'm Carrie Hunt and I'm the founder of the Wind River Bear Institute and Wind River Karelian Bear dogs. I'm a bear biologist with a heart and a specialization in reducing and preventing conflicts between wildlife and humans. Our canine partners are the Wind River Karelian Bear dogs, this is Akaela, he is my lead dog that I use when I'm working. He's 13-and-a-half, so he's beginning to be the mentor and teacher for the younger dogs. But, he's still the dog I put my life behind.
- You know, you get the question a lot, like, how do the dogs work? How are they used? And the answer is, what do you want to do with them, right? These dogs are the right dog for the job in particular, because they work alone or in pairs, generally, so they're good, kinda, one-handler, one-dog, teams.
- And we teach bears how to be wild again when they've forgotten how to be wild, and we teach people how to help theirs remain wild. And this dog is an ambassador for teaching the public about how to get along better with bears and also teaching bears that they have to move away from humans.
- They're very intelligent dogs, very primitively intelligent dogs. They have strong self-preservation instincts, they're not gonna get themselves hurt, not gonna get themselves killed, in a situation like that, these dogs are able to work with brown bear, grizzly bear, on the ground, which is pretty different than black bears or cougars, for that matter, that'll go up trees. So, these dogs have the drive and the aggression to pursue them. They bark at them, but also to dance with them on the ground and not get themselves hurt.
-So, we are pushing the bear out, shepherding the bear out of places with dogs that are dying to be off-leash and actually biting them, and the bear feels that, senses it, these dogs mean business. But we really are often letting the dogs loose, we push the bear and that way the bear has the chance to do the right thing, which is to leave. We'll hit the bear with rubber bullets, bean-bag grounds, that's the bite. We don't ask our dogs to bite the bear, we don't want wounds, and honestly, over the past 25 years of work where we do about 800 bear-shepherding actions annually, we've never had a bear hurt, never had a dog hurt, and never had a person hurt.
-And, so, we encourage people, as much as these are our family members, to think of these dogs as kinda like tools in the management toolbox. So, its like, what do you need to do today? How can the dog be used for that? In some cases it won't be appropriate to use the dog, but in many cases, it is. They're a very versatile tool, and I think, kind of as a goal of ours, since we've been doing this since 1996, the past 24 or 25 years of work we're looking to expand our programs, have the use of these dogs be something that people understand, what the application is, how to do it. Develop the techniques, train people so that they can be empowered, locally, with the right tools and techniques to reduce human-wildlife conflict.
- If an agency wants to buy the dog, that dog is still only, under contract, allowed to be with a lifetime handler. We want the dogs, and the men or women, to know that is their dog. So that the love is there. It's a process, but it's a great, fun, rewarding process, and all of us in over the world, from Japan, to Canada, to the U.S., that have dogs from our program are related by KBD.