Press
Release
Book reveals
the secrets of Yellowstone’s bears
Grizzly bears
love to play, sleep, and eat small bugs, according to a
new book about the bears of Yellowstone National Park.
Based
on the park’s latest scientific research, “Yellowstone
Bears in the Wild” by Dr. Jim Halfpenny provides
an intriguing portrait of Yellowstone’s grizzly and
black bears. From hibernation to hyperphagia, the book
describes everything about the bears: how they live and
what they eat, where they go and what they do, how they
raise their cubs and how they interact with wolves and
other animals, including people.
Like
he did in his highly acclaimed “Yellowstone Wolves
in the Wild,” Halfpenny brings the science to life
with remarkable personal stories by bear biologists and
bear watchers. In one story about curiosity and play, Kerry
Gunther, the park’s bear management biologist and
author of the book’s foreword, tells how a grizzly
bear came out of the forest to play with a beach ball it
had spotted in Gunther’s back yard. Gunther also
provides a startling series of photographs of an adult
grizzly bear climbing a tree, proving false the old adage
that grizzlies can’t climb trees.
Most
of the photographs are by Michael H. Francis, a professional
wildlife photographer. Some of his images are quite unusual,
such as a series showing a grizzly bear lying on its back
and juggling a large bone with its upraised feet, and a
black bear digging into a tree trunk so rapidly that wood
chips fly as if from a chain saw. In a testament to the
greater visibility of bears in Yellowstone today, all of
the photos show wild bears in the park; there are no photos
of captive bears.
In
recent years thousands of Yellowstone visitors came to
know female grizzly bear number 264. The book has a chapter
on her life and she is featured in several photos. In a
clever innovation that makes the book a memorable keepsake,
264’s actual footprints are imprinted on the book’s
front and back covers.
The
book provides fascinating new information on many subjects,
including bear sizes, predation, scavenging, hibernation,
and eating ants, moths, worms, and other unusual foods.
It explains “bear art,” a bear’s “personal
space,” and bear “thinking.” The book
also examines how bears are reacting to critical ecological
changes taking place in Yellowstone, such as the precipitous
decline of cutthroat trout and whitebark pine trees.
From
claws and cubs to foods and fur, “Yellowstone Bears
in the Wild” vividly presents the lives of grizzly
and black bears in the world’s first national park.
Anyone interested in bears or in Yellowstone will enjoy
this remarkably entertaining and educational book.
The
128-page hardcover sells for $29.95 and is available at
bookstores and at Yellowstone gift shops and visitor
centers, or by calling Riverbend Publishing toll-free
1-866-787-2363.
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