Courtesy Idaho Public Radio
One grizzly bear’s incredible 5,000-mile journey across Montana and Idaho has scientists re-thinking what they know about the animals.

Ethyl the grizzly bear was 19 years old when she started out on her epic journey over 5,000 miles in two years.CREDIT U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
Ethyl the grizzly bear walked from Kalispell, Mont. west toward Coeur d’Alene and back east toward Missoula. She covered thousands of miles of mountainous terrain in just two years, and scientists are still trying to figure out why.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator Chris Servheen says Ethyl’s story began when she was first captured in 2006 east of Kalispell, Mont.
“She was eating apples near somebody’s house,” Servheen says. “To keep her out of trouble, we captured her and moved her. She basically stayed right in that same area, she stayed out of trouble.”ListenListening…5:03Click play to hear Samantha Wright’s conversation with Chris Servheen.
They captured her again in 2012 along with her cub, close to the first site, again eating apples. She was moved again, this time about 30 miles away, and biologists put a tracking collar on Ethyl. Servheen says that’s when 19-year-old Ethyl’s epic journey began.
“She started traveling all through the northern continental divide grizzly bear ecosystem.” Her collar recorded a distance of about 2,800 miles between the individual locations, which are recorded every six hours. Servheen says, “she certainly went a lot farther than that, because those are just straight line distances, so she probably went well over 5,000 miles in two years. She sure covered a lot of ground.”

Here’s a map of Ethyl’s movements over the last two years, as tracked by her radio collar.CREDIT U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
Servheen has been studying bears for 34 years. He says Ethyl’s is the longest journey he’s ever seen undertaken by a grizzly bear. “She was in really remote country quite a bit of the time, and then sometimes she was very close to people,” says Servheen. But he says Ethyl never had a run in with humans, and she crossed several roads and highways without incident.
The big question is why was she traveling so far from her home range. Servheen says scientists don’t have a clue. “She was minding her own business, just looking around. Why she did this and what she was looking for, we don’t know, it’s a mystery. She’s a traveling bear, that’s for sure.”
He says Ethyl took a strange route, too. “It’s almost like she was looking for something, but I have no idea what she would be looking for,” Servheen says. “I just can’t explain it. It’s a new one on us.”
Ethyl’s remarkable journey is teaching scientists new things about bears. Servheen says she’s taught him “that we need to know more about how bears move across the landscape.”

He says biologists learn something new every time they collar a bear. But “Ethyl’s movements really don’t fit into any previous pattern we’ve seen before,” says Servheen. “Whether this is something that happens more often than we think, I suspect not. I think what Ethyl was doing was something unique to her and why she was doing it, there’s no real rational reason that we can understand why she did this.” But, he says, “it’s good to have a little mystery out there.”
Servheen says Ethyl’s collar fell off this year, so they’re not sure where she is now. But he hopes she’s sound asleep in some warm den “somewhere up in the mountains under the snow. I hope that when she comes out next spring she settles down and continues to live successfully, and has cubs.”
Do you have an opinion on what caused this bear to travel so far? Leave your comment below.
leaving her normal route and trying to find a place where wolves were not so plentiful. bears have been seen out of their normal area because of wolves which have displaced a lot of wildlife. Grizzlies are now found around southwest Wyoming. They have left their normal home range.
possible as time goes and wolves are expanding their range she learns to avoid their presence. my guess would as bears have left the greater Yellowstone area because if too many wolves they adapt to less harassment. Securing a place for their new cubs and live in peace
Bears normally have good homing instincts, commonly returning to familiar territory after being relocated. Perhaps Ethyl was moved far enough that she was unable to get her bearings and continued roaming to try to find some place familiar. It was not mentioned if Ethyl’s cub was relocated with her. I assume it was, but, if it wasn’t, her wanderlust could have been prompted by her search for her cub.
that is pretty amazing
That is very interesting that she would travel that far she was definitely searching for something? MY dad and Mom live up the North Fork Rd. on the west side of Glacier Park ,
almost to Canada and they see the same sows and cubs quite often coming thru so assuming they do not have that huge of a home range. But this blows that out of the water. Not sure why she would of traveled so far. Great place to visit though Glacier Park area go there every year for past 20 years or so. Vast beauty, but you need to be on the alert at all times for these majestic creatures roaming around.
DJMoris Wisconsin
More evidence of the need to preserve the northern continental divide grizzly bear ecosystem.
Most interesting story. Thanks for the effort to post it. Well done.
Hershey
I’m not sure about the wolf idea. I know bears in Yellowstone steal wolf kills so wolves aren’t all bad for them. A mother bear might try to avoid them but a 5000 mile trip sounds like something else.
OTOH you might recall a grizzly killed in Colorado in 1979. Might have been the last one or maybe a roamer from Wyoming.