When do you decide from being a spectator to becoming an active participant? When it comes to wildlife, my principle is never (interfere). But there are times which have come close to testing it. This was certainly one of them.
Out at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park, it was still early in the season. The salmon still hadn't started their upstream migration to their spawning grounds. They were waiting patiently in large numbers at the mouth of the river for some hidden signal that only they knew. The grizzles had just come out of their long winter hibernation, looking both famished and tired. The salmon is a key component of their summer diet, and the ursine population needed every salmon they could get their paws on; it was the only way to recover from the lost reserves.
And so, this year, the grizzlies waited at the same spot they wait every year. They were hoping to catch their break-fast, a feast of juicy salmon. However, with the slow run of the salmon, they just kept waiting in the cold waters of the river, looking sad and forlorn. 634 Popeye ( I think ) was one of them, and every spectator out on the deck felt so sorry for this guy that we all contemplated just feeding him a salmon from the store. Thankfully our better instincts (and a warning from the ranger) prevented us from doing so. So all we could do was just watch nature take its course.
Katmai National Park
AK USA
