In Wild Trust: Larry Aumiller's Thirty Years Among the McNeil River Brown Bears

By Jeff Fair and Larry Aumiller

For thirty years, Larry Aumiller lived in close company with the world’s largest grouping of brown bears, returning by seaplane every spring to the wilderness side of Cook Inlet, two hundred and fifty miles southwest of Anchorage to work as a manager, teacher, guide, and more. Eventually—without the benefit of formal training in wildlife management or ecology—he become one of the world’s leading experts on brown bears, the product of an unprecedented experiment in peaceful coexistence.
 
This book celebrates Aumiller’s achievement, telling the story of his decades with the bears alongside his own remarkable photographs. As both professional wildlife managers and ordinary citizens alike continue to struggle to bridge the gap between humans and the wild creatures we’ve driven out, In Wild Trust is an inspiring account of what we can achieve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Alaska Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781602233249

Book preview

IN WILD TRUST

Larry Aumiller’s 30 Years Among the McNeil River Brown Bears

BY

Jeff Fair

PHOTOGRAPHS BY

Larry Aumiller

FOREWORD BY

Douglas Chadwick

UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA PRESS

FAIRBANKS

Text © 2017 Jeff Fair

Photographs © 2017 Larry Aumiller

Published by University of Alaska Press

P.O. Box 756240

Fairbanks, AK 99775-6240

All photos by Larry Aumiller, except: author photo (back flap) by Ken Wright.

Cover by UA Press.

Interior design and maps by Dixon Jones, Rasmuson Library Graphics.

Thanks to Jeff, Larry, and the Alaska Department of Fish & Game for assisting with map detail and accuracy.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fair, Jeff, author. | Aumiller, Larry, 1944-, illustrator.

Title: In wild trust : Larry Aumiller’s thirty years among the McNeil River brown bears / by Jeff Fair ; photography by Larry Aumiller ; foreword by Douglas Chadwick.

Description: Fairbanks : University of Alaska Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016031595 (print) | LCCN 2016044152 (ebook) | ISBN 9781602233232 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781602233249 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Kodiak bear--Alaska--McNeil River State Game Sanctuary. | Aumiller, Larry, 1944– | Kodiak bear--Effect of human beings on--Alaska--McNeil River State Game Sanctuary. | McNeil River State Game Sanctuary (Alaska)

Classification: LCC QL737.C27 F354 2017 (print) | LCC QL737.C27 (ebook) | DDC 599.784--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031595

Printed in Canada

This book is dedicated to my daughter, Kianna, and to young folks like her.

I hope that her generation, like mine, will be able to receive

and embrace all the joys of the natural world.

—Larry Aumiller

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

1. CONVERGENCE

2. ROMANCING THE BEARS

3. THE FACE OF DANGER

4. LIFE IN CAMP

5. LETTING THE BEARS DECIDE

6. AT THE FALLS

7. THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

8. THE McNEIL EXPERIENCE

9. BETRAYAL

10. A NEW ERA

Epilogue: A Place for Bears

Author’s Postscript

A Few Recommended Readings

Index

Acknowledgments

My friends and family and colleagues comprise the greatest wealth and treasure in my life. Their camaraderie and encouragement often inspire my writing. In no specific order, here are some of those who provided me such relief as I put together Larry’s story.

Across the decades, writers Debra McKinney, Rick Carey, Richard Nelson, Sherry Simpson, Ted Kerasote, John Harrigan, Sandy and Lucille Stott, and Christine Woodside offered advice and fuel for the fire. Christine Clifton-Thornton, Kim Heacox, and Nick Jans provided critical information regarding agents and publishing. I thank Deb McKinney also for her longtime friendship and for taking on the task, along with Michael Miller and Colleen Matt, of transcribing hours and hours of recorded interviews—an onerous task, worse than one imagines until one attempts it. And I thank the pros who took over that task; they were worth their price.

Kim Heacox, Sherry Simpson, and retired Alaska brown bear biologist Sterling Miller formally reviewed and helped improve the manuscript significantly. I am very much obliged to them for the time they took and the suggestions they provided.

Special thanks to John Hechtel, John Schoen, Ted Otis, Samantha McNearney, Joe Meehan, Jim Faro, Mo Ramsey, Ted Otis, Sterling and Suzanne Miller, Polly Hessing, and Derek Stonorov—all current or retired staff of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G)—for taking time to be interviewed and answer questions along the way. Their contributions and memorable quotes were invaluable. My conversation with Leo Keeler, former president of Friends of McNeil River, was also extremely valuable. Tom Griffin, former McNeil guide and now sanctuary manager, was there during all three of my visits to McNeil and the subject of several key interviews. Like many of the others, he has become a friend. Jim Stratton (National Parks Conservation Association, retired) provided information and perspective regarding Katmai National Park and Preserve.

I’d like to express my gratitude to ADF&G for its oversight and funding of the McNeil Sanctuary and Refuge and thus the McNeil experience and its message for so many visitors. Thanks to their McNeil permit committee for the Special Access Permits (science, education, and media) granted me.

Robert Nye, a strong avuncular influence throughout my life, encouraged and vicariously enjoyed both my wildlife work and my writing, and carried great interest in Aumiller and McNeil. He escaped his earthly bonds all too soon for me, and will not see this volume.

Kathy Richardson, Joel Schmutz, Kate Taylor and Dave Evers, John Wenger, Barb Reed, and Helene Antel have offered support in various special and significant ways for my efforts to tell this story.

I greatly appreciate Tim Woody and Andy Hall at Alaska magazine and Rene Ebersole and David Seideman at Audubon magazine for publishing my stories about Larry and McNeil in 2006, and the National Press Club for seeing merit in Larry’s McNeil story and awarding me for telling it. The AMC journal Appalachia, edited by Christine Woodside, published a story I wrote about the Alaska light at McNeil. Small parts of all three show up here, and I thank these editors and publishers for their friendly permission to repeat myself.

Deep gratitude to poet Gary Snyder for his permission to close Chapter 10 with his sweet and powerful prose.

I heartfully acknowledge Amy Simpson and Krista West at the University of Alaska Press for their over-the-top kindness, attention, and professional direction toward the design and publication of this volume. Copy editor Dana Henricks caught my grammatical slipups in the final manuscript and provided many valuable suggestions; bless her.

I wrote most of this book at my desk in the loft of the B-Frame, my funky/rustic cabin on the toe of Lazy Mountain just outside Palmer, Alaska—the place I’ve now lived longest in my life. I am deeply grateful to my landlords Chris and Nicole Whittington-Evans for providing this writer’s dream and for being such great neighbors and dear friends. When I was offered a respite at a writer’s retreat down in Point Reyes, I wondered why I accepted, when I have such a perfect retreat of my own. Then I arrived at Mesa Refuge, sniffed the warm cinnamon air, walked into the library and smelled the literature and saw the sherry in crystal on a silver tray—and immediately retired to my room and began writing this book. What a gift.

There were other places of refuge. As an itinerant field biologist for half the year, I often carried chapters of this project with me. My parents, Mildred and Richard Fair, in their nineties and still at home back in Pennsylvania, put up with me ensconcing myself in the back bedroom to finish chapters during certain of my visits there. They have offered support and tolerance in many other ways as well, including an endless supply of Lebanon sweet bologna sandwiches while I was in residence.

Shearon and Kyle Murphy invited me to use Shearon’s sunlit and quiet art studio in eastern Maine for a critical period just prior to publication. Brian and Anika Hastings have sheltered me and my scribbling during several swings through New Hampshire, and BioDiversity Research Institute field crews in Maine and Wyoming tolerated my literary escapes during off hours in their various bunkhouses. I thank them all for their hospitality and support.

Last but foremost, I extend my deepest gratitude to Larry Aumiller and Colleen Matt. Where to begin? Larry honored me by inviting me into this project, shared his journals, and then spent countless hours in interviews and in fact-checking and reviewing the manuscript as it appeared (rather slowly). I thank him for his patience. Colleen provided interviews, chapter reviews and edits, and one of the most important quotes in this book, and even labored through an interview transcript and one of the publisher’s questionnaires. Together with Kianna, they opened their Montana home to me during visits for interviews, early drafting, and photo selection. Though my first discussion over this book with Larry occurred in an Anchorage coffee shop, many of our interviews were recorded in the kitchen and on the deck of their delightful abode. I remain extremely grateful for their friendship and our partnership in telling Larry’s story. I couldn’t imagine better collaborators.

—JEFF FAIR

Any project that covers over thirty years is likely to have a lengthy list of folks to acknowledge. I would like to thank the following key people that in a variety of ways have helped support me and the program over the decades. There are, of course, many others.

First, I’d like to honor the field staff that have worked at the sanctuary. This includes Walt Cunningham, Mo Ramsey, Polly Hessing, Colleen Matt, Derek Stonorov, John Sisson, Brad Josephs, Samantha McNearney, Josh Peirce, Doug Hill, Ian Gill, Missy Epping, Robin Dublin, Tony Carnahan, Drew Hamilton, Ray Pohl, Beth Rosenberg, and Tom Griffin, who spent seventeen years as a McNeil guide and now is the highly capable sanctuary manager. The program couldn’t have functioned without support from my ADF&G supervisory staff that through the years has included Jim Faro, Chris Smith, Dick Sellers, Mark McNay, Ken Pitcher, Jeff Hughes, Joe Meehan, and Ed Weiss. A special thanks to fisheries researcher Ted Otis for tackling, with solid success, the complex relationship between bears, fish, and commercial fishermen.

There have also been a number of friends who have in a variety of ways kept me on track when the going got rough. These include Ken and Chris Day, Bill and Barbara de Creeft, Jose de Creeft, John Hechtel, Mishio Hoshino, Kirk and Leslie Johnson, Tony Knowles, Sue Matthews, Suzanne and Sterling Miller, Mary Ann Oberhaus, Mia Oxley, Marina Richie, Susan Rose, Dick Russell, John Schoen, and Tom Walker.

Friends of McNeil River, a private group that was formed in the early 1990s to support the bears and the sanctuary and is still going strong, has been effectively led by Tony Dawson, Leo and Dorothy Keeler, and most recently by Mike Adams.

My wife Colleen Matt has not only worked at the sanctuary, but for several years helped guide its management. She has supported me, my efforts, and McNeil in many ways through our decades together.

—LARRY AUMILLER

Foreword

For three decades, Larry Aumiller worked as the camp manager, host, guide, and doer of whatever else needed doing at Alaska’s McNeil River State Game Sanctuary. This remote and powerfully wild setting happens to be the best place in the world for observing brown bears. BIG brown bears, by the dozens. No more than ten people per day are permitted at the cascade where the giants gather to catch salmon during summer spawning runs. Over the years of Aumiller’s tenure, the visitor total added up into the thousands. Those folks departed thrilled, astonished, enchanted, and sometimes deeply transformed. Aumiller contributed to their experiences in many ways, always while carrying out what was, for him, job number one—keeping everybody safe.

This man has spent more time closely observing giant carnivores stuck with the scientific label Ursus arctos horribilis than anyone before or since. Aumiller would be too modest to tell you himself, so I’ll say it for him here: he broke through the longstanding wall of myths and misconceptions to reach a new level of understanding these creatures. In the pages that follow, author Jeff Fair reveals how that came about, one encounter and one insight at a time. It’s a fascinating bear tale and an especially important one to tell, for the way we think about brown bears is the single strongest force shaping their chances of survival in a world ever-more-crowded with humans.

Some quick taxonomy: biologists use the common name brown bear to refer to the entire species Ursus arctos, which inhabits landscapes around the northern hemisphere. North America has two subspecies. One, Ursus arctos middendorffi, the Kodiak bear, dwells only on Alaska’s Kodiak Island. The second subspecies, horribilis, includes all the other brown bears on the continent—not only those along the mainland coast of Alaska and British Columbia but also the lighter-colored, silver-tipped variety found farther inland and traditionally called grizzlies.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, brown bears scavenged whale carcasses on the beaches of California, roamed the Great Plains among tens of millions of bison, and may have numbered between 50,000 and 100,000 in what would become the contiguous forty-eight states. Through the frontier era and beyond, people were too busy shooting, trapping, and poisoning the big bruins to learn much at all about their actual nature. Ursus arctos wound up listed as a threatened species south of Canada in 1975. The great bears of the U.S. West continued to decline to perhaps as few as 600 to 700 before better protection finally allowed them to begin a modest comeback limited to western Montana, northwestern Wyoming, and small portions of Idaho.

For this improvement to lead to a real recovery in the American West’s last wildlands, and to sustain healthy populations as the future unfolds, it would help a great deal if more people were able to see grizzly bears in the Lower 48 the way it’s possible to see brown bears at McNeil River in Alaska. During my second visit to that preserve, a male bear walked by so closely that its fur touched my clothing. I was standing in one of two small patches of gravel that the bears had learned to recognize as human territory. They were careful to not intrude. That didn’t mean a mother bear might not lie down just beyond the boundary and nurse her cubs. The male that brushed my arm was simply so preoccupied with glancing over his shoulder at a bigger male bear in the vicinity that he didn’t notice how near he had veered toward me.

There were close to sixty bears in and around the cascade that day, walking the shores, play-wrestling, wading through the tumble of whitewater, leaping into eddies, and occasionally fighting over a fishing spot or a fresh catch. If standing in the open close to a growly commotion of that order doesn’t set your nerves ajangle at first, you’re much braver than I. Yet as the hours pass at McNeil and the fog of fear lifts, you begin to see what you’re really looking at: not hulking brown threats on every side, but an array of smart fellow mammals. Yes, they can move with almost unimaginable force, yet they prove equally capable of very subtle, finely tuned behavior and seem perfectly willing to tolerate you as long as you predictably keep to the small human zone off to one side. Watched long enough, they become recognizable as individuals, almost as different from one another in appearance and temperament as individual people.

Alas, there is no bear-viewing site anything like the McNeil River preserve in the American West. Although I don’t want to say there never will be, the contiguous states have become so extensively roaded, developed, and crowded with Homo sapiens that grizzlies occupy less than 2 percent of their former range. It’s hard to even envision a time when throngs of them congregated to dine on salmon spawning in the heart of the Rockies—before dam after dam blocked fish runs up the mighty Columbia River and its tributaries.

These days, the southernmost site I know of where people can go to observe big bears congregating for a salmon banquet is at Knight Inlet, a fjord on the coast of British Columbia,