The Grizzly in the Driveway: The Return of Bears to a Crowded American West

by Robert Chaney

Overview

Confronts the unintended consequences of a conservation success story

Four decades ago, the areas around Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks sheltered the last few hundred surviving grizzlies in the Lower 48 states. Protected by the Endangered Species Act, their population has surged to more than 1,500, and this burgeoning number of grizzlies now collides with the increasingly populated landscape of the twenty-first-century American West. While humans and bears have long shared space, today’s grizzlies navigate a shrinking amount of wilderness: cars whiz like bullets through their habitats, tourists check Facebook to pinpoint locations for a quick selfie with a grizzly, and hunters seek trophy prey. People, too, must learn to live and work within a potential predator’s territory they have chosen to call home.

Mixing fast-paced storytelling with rich details about the hidden lives of grizzly bears, Montana journalist Robert Chaney chronicles the resurgence of this charismatic species against the backdrop of the country’s long history with the bear. Chaney captures the clash between groups with radically different visions: ranchers frustrated at losing livestock, environmental advocates, hunters, and conservation and historic preservation officers of tribal nations. Underneath, he probes the balance between our demands on nature and our tolerance for risk.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295747941
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	01/01/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	8 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert Chaney is a reporter for the Missoulian. A lifelong Montanan, he covers science and the environment.

Table of Contents

Preface: Fear the Bear ix

1 Entering Grizzly Country 3

2 Ursus horribilis Facebookii 22

3 The Only Good Bear 45

4 Spirit Animal 67

5 From a Single Hair 91

6 Ethyl's Ramble 114

7 The Bear on the Bicycle 134

8 Roadkill 156

9 Grisly Hunting 169

10 Grizzly at Law 192

11 Bears of the World 209

12 No Going Back 231

Acknowledgments 245

Selected References 247

Index 259

What People are Saying About This

Joel Berger

"Chaney writes with pith and pizazz, and goes deep into understanding nature's difficult relationship with people. This book is an incisive and motivating look into the future. It asks whether these brown bruins can be tolerated at levels reflecting their biological needs, meeting shifting ecological landscapes and our diverse American cultural pathways."

Doug Chadwick

"What kind of future is there for supremely wild bears amid Western landscapes increasingly filling with people? I heartily recommend joining Robert Chaney on his comprehensive and refreshingly fair-minded quest for answers. Combining his insights as a reporter with the voices of Native Americans, hikers, trophy hunters, government officials, ranching families, and wildlife biologists, Chaney offers a wide-angle look at the continuing controversies surrounding efforts to recover this species."

Frank Van Nuys

"Humorous, engaging, and filled with important insights about sustaining grizzly populations in the face of a multitude of pressures."

Editorial Reviews

"[A] timely, important read about much more than how humans are trying to co-exist with such a formidable wild mammal. Chaney’s book raises moral questions about what kind of West we want to live in."

Billings Gazette

"A well-written and thought-provoking analysis of this pressing issue."

The Literary West

"Meticulous new research methods reveal fascinating insights into bear behavior. Author Robert Chaney has spent decades observing human-grizzly encounters and challenges traditional thinking about conservation and preserving the wild."

NPR Books

"Robert Chaney tells the story of grizzly bear as an icon and apredator. The book reads like a who’s who of scientists, authors, photographers, and Department of Interior battles that have focused on the grizzly for the past four decades."

The Missoulian

"Illustrated with stories and fortified with facts, Chaney reveals layers of complexity providing a multitude of perspectives in his thorough account."

Outside Bozeman

"A sobering but modestly optimistic tale of a wilderness icon that refuses to stay in the wilderness set aside for it."

Choice

2020-09-02
A well-written, learned exploration of the world of a charismatic and sometimes troublesome animal.

Montana native and journalist Chaney has been around grizzly bears for decades and, unlike most folks, has encountered them “outside the safety of a zoo enclosure or a car window.” Encounters of just about any sort evoke fear and/or reverence, and any closer knowledge of Ursus arctos horribilisrequires a heady degree of risk. Early on, the author marvels at the skill and luck of a backwoods explorer in Glacier National Park who managed to bring down a charging grizzly with a .22 pistol, far less firepower than the .45s and .357s that other backwoods types typically pack. Those real-life encounters are ever more likely for humans who live in the New Hampshire–sized grizzly heartland, taking in portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. As Chaney notes, when the bear was first listed as endangered, “the Cray 1 Supercomputer set world records with a memory of eight megabytes,” a fraction of the computing power that we carry in our pockets. Just so, things change in the natural world, and the grizzly now turns up on porches and in driveways, not as afraid of us as it should be even as we prove ourselves to be its most dangerous foe. “The grizzly bear needs space: Hundreds of square miles per animal,” writes the author. “It needs food: Forty thousand calories a day. It needs tolerance, for the days it decides to take what we think rightfully belongs to us. It needs to be left alone.” Can we do so? Chaney is a writer in the Peter Matthiessen school, deftly weaving anecdotes and human history with ursine natural history and bringing in memorable characters. These include Doug Peacock and Chuck Jonkel, both of whom have done much to prove, as does this lucid book, that grizzlies lie somewhere between the vicious creatures of legend and the cuddly critters of our imagination.

Fans of bears—and of hearty nature writing—will take pleasure in Chaney’s paean.

Kirkus Reviews