Page 56 - Flathead Beacon // 12.14.16

OUT OF BOUNDS 57 EXPLORE 58 Outdoors
GRIZZLIES OF THE GOBI
White sh author Doug Chadwick releases new book about rare bear on the other side of the world
Doug Chadwick. COURTESY JOE RIIS
IBY TRISTAN SCOTT OF THE BEACON
T WASN’T UNTIL WHITEFISH author Doug Chadwick spotted his rst Gobi grizzly bear that it occurred
to him how spoiled his hometown bruins had grown living in the well-endowed wilds of Glacier National Park.
The contrast between the wind- scoured, sun-scorched, food-scarce moonscape that de nes the Gobi Desert and the wildlife-rich reserve in Chad- wick’s backyard couldn’t be starker, and yet each ecosystem supports individual populations of grizzlies.
Chadwick learned of the mythic Gobi grizzly bear while reporting a story about snow leopards for National Geographic, which has been publishing his conser- vation writing for nearly four decades. The mere mention of bears persist- ing on a desert landscape stoked Chad- wick’s curiosity, but when he learned of their extreme rarity and the Mongolian government’s burgeoning e ort to save them, his background as a trained wild- life biologist and dedicated conservation- ist was invigorated.
It didn’t take long for him to become a devoted Gobi groupie.
A week after Chadwick spied his rst Gobi grizzly — a shaggy, torpid old male that had paused to drink and rest at a desert oasis on the other side of the world from Glacier Park — the writer learned that the creature had died, having suc- cumbed to an inhospitable environment that sustains a tiny population of the rar- e ed bear.
The experience drove home the notion that the beleaguered bear needed help.
“I knew then that I couldn’t turn my back on these bears,” Chadwick, who recently published a book drawing attention to the species, said in a recent interview.
Fewer than three-dozen Gobi bears survive in one of the harshest expanses on the planet, the Gobi Desert, a sprawl- ing, mountain-bound landscape spread over half-a-million square miles of southern Mongolia and northern China. A “rain shadow” desert, the Gobi receives negligible moisture because the Hima- layan mountain range blocks rain-carry- ing clouds, while temperatures uctuate between extremes of minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter and 120 degrees in the summer.
With little water, the requirements
for wildlife to survive there are sti , and particularly so for charismatic mega- fauna like the grizzly bear, which shares intimate quarters with Montanans, but largely keeps its own counsel in the sparsely populated region of Mongolia.
Today, the Gobi bear’s sole refuge lies within the Greater Gobi Strictly Pro- tected Area, a nature preserve estab- lished in 1976 and declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1990.
In 2011, Chadwick joined the Gobi Bear Initiative, providing nancial support for the project through his role as a board
trustee for Vital Ground, a nonpro t environmental land trust dedicated to restoring grizzly bear populations.
The program raises funds to supple- ment food for the bears, as well as provide fuel for rangers to patrol the refuge, mon- itor wildlife and distribute grain pellets to desert oases. The Gobi Bear Fund also provides money for research and moni- toring using GPS satellite collars.
Since the Gobi Bear Initiative began in 2005, the bears have held their own, Chadwick said, and evidence of breeding emerged when researchers
documented the addition of ve bears to the population.
“It is a tribute to the species that they can eke out a living in this extreme, remote place that looks like the surface of Mars to the uninitiated,” Chadwick said. “It is just way cool to discover that a bear can successfully survive in an environment like this. Anyone with that kind of crazy determination to live has my attention.”
Since his rst encounter with a Gobi grizzly ve years ago, Chadwick has made annual expeditions to Mongolia to help draw attention to the beleaguered ani- mal’s plight, which is exacerbated by the pressures of silver and gold mining and a legacy of overgrazing by livestock.
Now, with the publication of his lat- est book, “Tracking Gobi Grizzlies,” Chadwick shines the brightest light yet on a bear that wasn’t even known to exist prior to 1943.
“That was the rst time the world even knew that Gobi bears existed — that is how remote and how big and unknown the Gobi Desert is,” Chadwick said.
Having teamed up with photographer Joe Riis to document the tenacious bears in their natural environment, Chadwick o ers the rst de nitive account of the bear’s past, present and uncertain future.
Part adventure memoir and part envi- ronmental parable, the book, published by Patagonia, o ers a portrait of a myste- rious but critical species living in a seem- ingly desolate but actually widely diverse and threatened ecosystem.
For advocates working to protect the grizzlies of the Gobi, they represent an umbrella species — what’s good for the bear is good for wide swaths of habi- tat, as well as for wild species pushed to the fringes, such as wild asses and dou- ble-humped Bactrian camels.
“Our challenge is to keep one of the great wild places on the Earth. If you can save a bear this rare in a place this tough, it’s sort of a symbol,” Chadwick said. “Maybe we can pull o all kinds of things.”
White sh Review will host Chadwick at Casey’s on Friday, Dec. 16 at 8 p.m. for the premiere of “Tracking Gobi Grizzlies,” which will include a reading and slide- show featuring Chadwick’s adventures in the land of the world’s rarest bears.
The book is available at www.patago- nia.com. To learn more, visit www.vital-
ground.org.
Gobi Bear Project. COURTESY JOE RIIS
tscott@ atheadbeacon.com
56
DECEMBER 14, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM