Bear expert talks about behind-the-scenes of tranquilizing, tracking

Bear expert talks about behind-the-scenes of tranquilizing, tracking

(Wes Larson)


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PROVO — A Brigham Young University graduate student is fulfilling his life-long passion of studying bears — and he has some interesting stories to tell.

Wesley Larson grew up in Montana with a love of animals. He said there were always bears around and he was particularly interested in grizzly bears.

"As a kid, whenever we would drive anywhere, my face would be plastered to the window, just looking for animals," Larson said. "It's just kind of always been a passion of mine. It's always been something I've been really intrigued by, I guess."

Larson initially attended BYU as a pre-medical student, but decided the field wasn't for him. In 2012, he decided to switch majors and began doing wildlife research as a graduate student with BYU professor Tom Smith studying polar bear populations in Northern Alaska and the Southern Beaufort Sea.

As part of his research, Larson and other wildlife researchers would locate and study pregnant female polar bears who were hibernating for the winter in a den.

"Once we find their dens, we set up cameras outside of the dens," Larson said. "We're just kind of gathering information on den behavior: how long they are staying in their dens, when they're leaving, how long they're staying outside the den after they leave, how many cubs they have. And we are gathering all of that information both for wildlife managers in Alaska and then the oil industry so they can avoid the bears."

Photo credit: Wes Larson
Photo credit: Wes Larson

Larson said the research team often uses dogs to track the bears in their dens — which are difficult to find because they are often buried several feet under the snow. The team is also currently developing a radar system that can be used from a plane to locate the bears.

"One of my first experiences being close to a polar bear, … we went way out in the middle of nowhere and we finally come to this den, and we couldn't really see where the den was," Larson said. "We were setting up our camera and then I look up and this mother polar bear stuck her head out and she's looking right at us."

Larson said even though he works in close proximity to bears, he's never really scared. More than the bears, he said the extreme cold was what bothered him the most in Alaska.

"You just don't realize how inhospitable it is up there in the winter until you've been there," he said. "When it's blowing 40 miles per hour and it's -60 (degrees) outside and with the windchill it's -80, you just can't believe how cold it is and how poorly suited we are for that. And then to see this animal that's completely at home in it and has absolutely no problems with the cold. … They go outside and it feels like nothing to them when it feels like absolute death to us."

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Larson spent two years studying polar bears in Alaska before he began tracking black bear populations outside Bryce Canyon National Park in 2014. Larson said the black bear project was designed to help avoid bear and camper conflicts by tracking the bears to see if they frequently eat human food from trash cans and campsites near the park.

He and his team set up bear traps in the area and would use rancid meat and other food to lure the bears inside. After they caught a black bear, they would tranquilize it and put a GPS collar on it to track its movements. Once the batteries on the GPS unit began to die, the collar would automatically unattach from the bear and the research team would go collect it and its data.

"Every day we check our traps and if you see the door is up, you realize there is no bear," Larson said. "I pulled a bear out once from a trap that hadn't been completely asleep. She woke up as I was holding her and took off. That made me a little nervous."

Larson has made quite a name for himself studying bears and was recently featured on the Men of Outdoors Instagram account and included in a Daily Mail article about "Daredevil hunks."

"My friends all gave me a really hard time about it for a few days," he said. "It was a little embarrassing, but it's fine."

Larson plans to continue studying bears and has about two years left in his graduate program. He hopes to eventually move back to Montana to study grizzly bears.

Wesley Larson inside a polar bear den in Alaska. Photo credit: Wesley Larson
Wesley Larson inside a polar bear den in Alaska. Photo credit: Wesley Larson

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