The Agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners

The Bears Are Calling: How the County and City Are Becoming Bear Smart

• Missoula County Commissioners • Season 2 • Episode 18

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Jamie Jonkel, a bear manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, has nearly 30 years of experience working with black bears, grizzly bears and mountain lions. His phone rings off the hook each day with reports of bears in both Missoula County and the city.

In this week's episode, the commissioners sit down with Jamie to discuss what other areas in Montana are doing to address the bear issue and how Missoula is taking steps to become a safer place for both animals and people. Jamie gives insight on who to call when you see a bear (hint: it’s not 911) and where to find resources about how to manage attractants around your home.

Links mentioned in this episode:

  1. Bear Smart Missoula 
  2. Missoula Bears Website & Facebook Page
  3. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Bear Managers
  4. "Virginia City: The model Bear Smart Community," Missoulian, Jan. 9, 2022


Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for  podcast recording support!

Text us your thoughts and comments on this episode!


Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Dave Strohmaier:

Welcome back, everyone, to tip of the spear I'm Commissioner Dave Strohmaier. I am joined by Commissioner Juanita Vero today. Unfortunately, our colleague, Josh Slotnick, is unable to make it-- his loss because we have a great show for you today, a great guest with us today! We are joined by bear manager at Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Jamie Jonkel. And Jamie is here to talk with us a little bit about the Bear Smart Community program that we are working on here in Missoula County, and how other partners are also joined in this effort to try to make this a community that is both safe and healthier for bears and people in this county. So welcome to the show, Jamie.

Jamie Jonkel:

Yeah, well, thank you very much for having

Juanita Vero:

We're so delighted you're here. So yeah, give some background on yourself, and who you are, because our listeners might not know your long and storied okay résumé.

Jamie Jonkel:

I've been with the department, I think for I started out just as a wildlife management area fence mender, and then luckily I had a good background with grizzly bears and black bears and lions. And as we our population of grizzlies increased, you know, I was able to just sort of slide in. So I've been like the official bear manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks for about 24 years. I say, wow, and I've seen a lot of changes over that time.

Juanita Vero:

Yeah. What are some of those trends?

Jamie Jonkel:

Well, with the grizzlies, you know, we went in the Blackfoot Valley to today where we have probably in that Ovando, Helmville Valley, 15 to 25 resident females that are pumping out young every three or four years. When I first showed up, I probably only knew of about two different females. And these are females living in the valley floor. They're not our mountain bears. So we've been seeing a tremendous upsurge of grizzly bear activity all over Region II. In fact, let's see, I guess it was Friday, we had two little grizzlies show up here in the Missoula Valley. Again, different than our family group, you know, the North Hills female. These two little bears, I think, came over from Potomac. We had video and photos of two little kind of skinny whiffets that had very distinctive features that showed up then by Chumrau Loop, Turah trying to cross Interstate 90. That was Friday. And then they were seen a couple other times earlier that Saturday morning. But now we just got a report of two grizzlies matching their description way over, kind of down by the MPG ranch.

Dave Strohmaier:

So what sort of range do these things have?

Jamie Jonkel:

Well, they will travel just like us, when to California. I think Mom probably just cast them off and they're on a walkabout. Hopefully they'll stick together and stay out of trouble, but they explore. But the biggest barrier is I-90 and it looks like they did get across. So I'll keep everyone up to speed on that. But here in Missoula, you know, we've been beating the drum for years about all our black bear issues. We've tried a lot of different things over time. We got our garbage ordinance years ago and the Missoula Bear Buffer Zone Working Group in place. You know, it had a good impact. It solved some of the problems, but it was only on city territory. So you'd have one neighbor that lived within the city limits, but right across the way you'd have a county person. They didn't have to do anything with their garbage. You know, really our garbage issues and bear tracking issues have just increased in Missoula year after year tenfold. It's gotten to the point now where I'm kind of worried. We just got way too many bears wandering around, you know, the perimeters, the Missoula area, getting into garbage nightly, pulling bird feeders down, up on porches, that kind of thing. So lucky for us, a lot of citizens are feeling the same way and I know they just lobbied the commissioners to death the last two years. I know you guys have been getting letters and phone calls, so it's the city council. And then this winter, I believe it was, you guys actually asked us to look at it through our Missoula Bear Buffer Zone workgroup. And so we met. That's how we came up with the concept of maybe trying the Bear Smart approach, which is a provincial, government approach used in Canada that just tries to encourage communities to become savvy, you know, common sense type behavior in bear country. It seems to be working here in Missoula. I mean, we've got a lot of folks really interested in trying something different.

Dave Strohmaier:

Talk to us a little bit more about our Who are the players in this?

Jamie Jonkel:

Well, right now, the Bear Buffer Zone concerned citizens or neighborhood council folks, NGOs, city folks, county folks that have already been working together for years, when we did the Missoula Bear Ordinance and Missoula Bear Buffer Zone. We just kind of came together, looked at what they were doing up in Canada, compared that to what they just got done doing in Virginia City and Whitefish and Jackson and Red Lodge. And we were like, Well, why don't we try to do that here in Missoula as well? And just the catch phrase was "Bear Smart," a Bear Smart community. So we're sort of adapting that and kind of probably going to make it our own. But the idea is just to get everyone to get on board with like saying, "Yeah, let's try to do the right thing". And so we put together a hazard assessment for the county and for the city that addressed all the issues that bring bears into our community. We have a nice attachment that goes with that, that goes into more detail, and then we have a fairly good rough draft on a management plan now. And so we'll be bringing that to the commissioners and in the city council and the mayor, he goes can look at it and then there's talk of kind of seeing if you think it's a good idea.

Juanita Vero:

What are some of the highlights of this plan, idea what the certification.

Jamie Jonkel:

You bet. You bet. The big one is garbage. And we've been working very nicely with Republic Services for years. There's a new garbage company in town, too, but we'd like to solidify a relationship where it's easier for the community to get bear resistant dumpsters and bear resistant garbage cans, maybe negotiate some of the prices in a lot of areas. We flat should not have non bear resistant garbage cans, you know, it makes no sense to have them. There's a huge rise in the number of folks that are doing the mini homestead thing, you know, getting chickens, getting goats, getting sheep, raising their own pigs. And we've seen a lot of conflicts rise as a result of that. And so there's some great programs, you know, where you can get free electric fence, good manuals on stewardship, just sort of like good information on how not to bring grizzlies and black bears and lions, skunks and raccoons onto your property. Because I hate to say it, there are a lot of people that are doing everything in their power to bring them in. You know, it just getting all that good stewardship in one place, get the city to endorse it, maybe strengthening some wildlife feeding laws. A lot of times we don't even have the ability to go bear resistant in a county, you know, just getting some wording in there that will even allow the concept to take place. So that's sort of what this effort is.

Dave Strohmaier:

What you've just described, is it already Whitefish?

Jamie Jonkel:

Yes. So a lot of communities just got sick Actually, one of the very first communities in Montana to go, what we call Bear Smart was Red Lodge. And the way they did it, they had so many grizzlies running around town, you know that at night on a Friday, people walking the alleys after drinking all night were stumbling into grizzlies, you know, trying to get in the garbage. They ended up getting a kind of like a resort tax. It was a beverage tax, penny a drink, and allowed them to go completely bear smart. They got their dump electrified. They got their bear resistant garbage cans in place.

Juanita Vero:

And that was just within the city of Red Or did it go throughout Carbon County.

Jamie Jonkel:

And I mean West Yellowstone was the very Oh, I bet I just misspoke.

Juanita Vero:

Okay. Okay, West Yellowstone, got it.

Jamie Jonkel:

But then Red Lodge did this about ten years

Dave Strohmaier:

A penny a drink. Keep that in mind. Yeah.

Jamie Jonkel:

Red Lodge just said, "Hey, we're sick and around getting into garbage every night. Let's sit down with Republic Services, look at our contract and just go Bear Smart." So they sat down with Republic, and Republic said, "Yup, this is what it'll take to get every homesite in Red Lodge, a bear resistant garbage can." And they went from there, I believe it was, through taxation. Jackson Hole is going through the throes of that right now. They're about the same stage we are here in Missoula where they're just sort of thinking about it, throwing ideas around. Whitefish just went through something similar. And then the town of Virginia City is actually already bear smart and and they've negotiated all their stuff and have a new contract with the disposal company. And they're way ahead of all of us. Big Sky, too.

Juanita Vero:

When you said Whitefish is already bear

Jamie Jonkel:

And no, we will probably not have any kind of That's sort of a Canadian thing. Perhaps over time we could slide that down here into the lower 48 and find some vessel to have a certification process. But right now, it's more of just the idea. And, you know, the patent, the back from other communities and everyone in town like, hey, good job, we're bear smart, you know, we're savvy. You know, we do the common sense things.

Dave Strohmaier:

Yeah, I guess the proof would be in the contacts.

Jamie Jonkel:

Yeah, it'll be easy to measure. You know, just right now, Eli and Bruce and I are in the Bitterroot, qw are probably between the three of us getting 50 calls a day and a good majority of those...

Juanita Vero:

And I'm sorry, who are Eli and Bruce?

Jamie Jonkel:

So our bear management team consists right myself. And then we have an offshoot who's under NGO that also works with us in the Blackfoot named Eric Graham. We're going to hire another guy here pretty soon or gal for the Deer Lodge Valley. So we're getting a good management team because in the old days, Bob Wiesner, my old partner in Bear Management, I mean, we were overwhelmed. We could hardly function. We had so many calls coming in. We still have a lot of calls, but at least we're divvying them up amongst us now. But this morning, I've had ten. I know Eli's had ten or 15. I know Bruce has had ten, 15. And most of them are like, Can I have a trap? I better pull my birdfeeder down the last three days. And anymore we're like, No, no, no.

Juanita Vero:

What are you talking about? Traps. What kind of traps are there?

Jamie Jonkel:

Culvert traps that we use we could snare as wheels in the old days, that's how people dealt with it, you know, it was like, "Hey, I've got a bear to his tip, my garbage can over in the backyard 40 times. Now, would you come trap him?" And that's what they used to do anymore. We're like, "Well, have you got a bird feeder? You do. We won't set a trap or even come there until the bird feeder has been down a week. Oh, you got your garbage outside. I'm sorry. We will not come in and trap until you had that garbage locked up for a week. And if the bear is still, there, will come in. Oh, you've got chickens." You know, it goes down the list. Chickens are a tough one because most folks that are getting them aren't used to raising chickens and, you know, by 30 chicks and put them in the bathtub and let them get big under heat and then just let them in the backyard, you know.

Juanita Vero:

And without fencing.

Jamie Jonkel:

Without fencing. And then all the predators

Dave Strohmaier:

Dinner is served!

Jamie Jonkel:

Yeah. So if you're going to have chickens, electric fence.

Dave Strohmaier:

So. Jamie Just a really nuts and bolts sort I'm the city slicker on the commission here. I live right down the street here in downtown Missoula.

Juanita Vero:

But you have bear scat in your yard!

Dave Strohmaier:

I do have bear scat in my yard. And I bet a lot of folks who are in the urban core of a community like Missoula are thinking, oh, this doesn't not look like the wild lands. There's not going to be any bears around here. So we get a little lackadaisical with our trash and whatnot. And and I have seen it within the last year where bears have just had a field day right down here between Spruce and Pine Street downtown. If someone notices that happening and either theirs or their neighbors or the entire alleys worth of garbage cans tipped over and obviously ransacked by bears, what should they do? Who should they call? Next steps.

Jamie Jonkel:

Okay. Well, the hip strip bear is who we call Missoula area along the river. He just showed up again. He was gone for about two weeks. I think he was up, you know, in some of the side hill country eating service. Very last night. I got like four or five reports and he's down somewhere along the river in the ditches in downtown Missoula right now.

Juanita Vero:

I stepped over Scout on like, Fifth and the hipster bear.

Jamie Jonkel:

It's a hip strip bear. I'm sure he's going to stay for about a week. You know, we'll try to capture him. But, you know, he's very savvy and he'll he'll head out again and then come back again with the bear buffer zone concept. You know, we were trying to get all the outside edges of Missoula.[Jamie's phone starts ringing]. I'm sorry about that.

Dave Strohmaier:

Maybe it's a bear call!

Jamie Jonkel:

It is bear call.

Dave Strohmaier:

The hipster bear's been spotted!

Jamie Jonkel:

So the the idea is if on the edges of Mount Sentinel, two blocks out from the base of the mountain, the mountain is a bear country, lion country. But two blocks out, everyone in there has a bear resistant dumpster. Nobody has a birdfeeder. And if you have chickens, they're electrified. So in that two block area...

Juanita Vero:

The fencing is electrified. Not not the chickens.

Jamie Jonkel:

Yeah. Yes. And and so it's like a a barrier, So the bears never learn the behavior as they go along the face of Mount Sentinel, that was the concept. It didn't work because it was the ordinances were only in the city. And so you had bears learning on county lands. Now, what we have in Missoula is, for example, in the Rattlesnake, it's taken 20 years where we probably have the majority of the residents and the rattlesnake saying do the right thing, contain your garbage and don't have bird feeders. So those are bears that have been living the gravy train for the last ten years are creeping further and further into town. And that's what, you know, when you start seeing hip strip bears, that means it's out of hand.

Dave Strohmaier:

So when someone sees something like that, The health department? There's Fish, Wildlife and Parks?

Jamie Jonkel:

Call Fish, Wildlife and Parks, or you can get Bears Facebook page and that's the best way to do it comes right to me. If it's an order of emergency, don't call 911. 911 should be a bear coming in the front door a bear stuck in your garage, not a bear up in the tree, not a bear tipping over your garbage can or pulling your birdfeeder down for all that general sort of stuff. Call FWP on weekdays or hit the website or the Facebook page.

Dave Strohmaier:

It's great advice.

Juanita Vero:

\So how does local government fit into the

Jamie Jonkel:

We need a little meat on the plate, you know, there because, you know, face it in the Rattlesnake, there were individuals that we could not get them to keep their garbage inside the garage or go bear resistant until they got three tickets. And then, you know, it was like that started hitting the checkbook and bang, they leased a bear resistant garbage can.

Juanita Vero:

So what's a ticket that would work?

Jamie Jonkel:

You know...

Juanita Vero:

What's a value that seems to work or catch

Jamie Jonkel:

It depends on the community, you know. And a lot of times we'll go to the actual judges and we'll say we need something with a little bit more meat, because if it's only a$10 ticket, you know, people pay it and wait till their next ticket. But once it gets up around $200 for your first ticket. Yes. Yes. And we've seen that with a lot of the property management places, you know, where we have a lot of the university students living. They don't realize they need to have the garbage in. And so we'll write a ticket to the management company and then they'll quickly get a bear resistant product there. It solves the problem almost overnight.

Dave Strohmaier:

In order to do any of that, will it require

Jamie Jonkel:

Yes, on everything. And then a lot of times you can't even do the simplest thing because it's not even in a write up of an ordinance or there are so many weird things with county easements. You know, we might want to put up a bear resistant cage to keep bears out of garbage that's alongside a roadway. But we can't even put it on county easement land because it's not allowed at this time, you know? So there's lots of little things to kind of work out. So it's not so difficult to solve problems.

Juanita Vero:

And what's the conversation like at the state

Jamie Jonkel:

There are people that are supportive of it. We've gotten some good feeding laws in there. But, you know, right now it's tough to get legislation that involves anything to do with

bears. You know, right now it's like:

"There are too many bears. Get rid of bears. We want the grizzly de-listed so we can hunt." But on these sort of more local levels, I think we can start doing things and then when hopefully when folks see progress, it'll even go up to a state level.

Dave Strohmaier:

As far as just where we are currently at and problem with the working group or any of the other partners, where are we at process wise? I'm assuming at some point we here in Missoula County and the city likewise will get a set of recommendations as far as what we need to do to move this initiative forward.

Jamie Jonkel:

Yes. So we've given you the assessment of why states the issues. And then the next thing that we'll be giving you will be the management plan on how to resolve the issues. [Jamie's phone rings again].

Juanita Vero:

Hip Strip bear! Another bear.

Jamie Jonkel:

Yup, yup, another bear. I'm not quite sure how they're going to do that. It hasn't been done in Missoula before, but I imagine it'll be very similar to how we did it with the Missoula bear buffer zone and the changing of the ordinance. But this time we'll be combining the county and the city together in a kind of a little experimental area. That's basically the five valleys floor.

Juanita Vero:

So it won't be county wide. We can't get...

Jamie Jonkel:

You know, this won't be county wide, but, you And if people and see, I know a lot of people in Seeley are very interested. So if it works here in Missoula and they see how the process worked and how to go about doing it, perhaps Seeley will say "Okay, we want to do that, too."

Dave Strohmaier:

So this is the low hanging fruit and maybe elsewhere.

Jamie Jonkel:

Yes. And a lot of people down in Ravalli watching us closely. I know the community of Lolo, too, is like,"well, we're not quite ready yet, Jamie, but we'll watch what you're doing there," Because if it solves the problem, it makes the community safer and you don't have bears running all over town, it's a good thing.

Juanita Vero:

What's what are the boundaries of this kind

Jamie Jonkel:

It's basically the the new management plan, It's that same area, exact same area. It's just superimposed right on top of that.

Juanita Vero:

So that would be...give us some geography.

Jamie Jonkel:

Let's see, Bonner-Milltown...it soesn't take of Miller Creek and then down into the Grass Valley to the Wye, I believe. But it doesn't go further down toward Huson.

Dave Strohmaier:

Yeah, but it sounds like our land use element

Jamie Jonkel:

Mm hmm.

Dave Strohmaier:

Well, we're excited to see how this turns I guess the the ultimate goal is safe bears and safe people.

Jamie Jonkel:

Yeah. Yeah. I don't mind seeing bears work in the face of Mount Sentinel, but they have no business being in downtown Missoula.

Juanita Vero:

So before we close, give us a nuggets of across?

Jamie Jonkel:

Oh yeah, you come across, you requested a from the Nine Mile just mailed me this and said, "Hey Jamie, I think you'd like this book," but it's called Carnivore Minds by G.A Bradshaw. It's just it's blown me away. I mean, it's like really looking at how predators think and carnivores think. I'm only about two chapters into it, but I can't put it down. And so I think it's going to be a really good read. I don't know if you have seen such books as The Hidden Life of Dogs or The Hidden. If a couch, you know, it's like that. It's going into the predator's mind. Like, how would these two little grizzlies that have showed up here in Missoula, how do they think so? I'm very much enjoying it.

Dave Strohmaier:

Have any of you read The Hidden Life of It's a page turner. Well, that's all fantastic, Jamie. Well, what again, is the website URL that you gave us? Yeah.

Jamie Jonkel:

So, Missoula Bears dot org is for our weekly Then the Missoula Bears Facebook page is like the sister communication forum, and that's where people get to banter back and forth and tell their own experiences. Then there's a Bear Smart Missoula, and it's on the Missoula Bears website. And if you're interested in getting involved, helping out, there's a signup sheet there.

Juanita Vero:

And then resources are there for electric

Jamie Jonkel:

Lots of good information. And it's all Missoula-centric.

Dave Strohmaier:

All right. Fantastic. Everything you've ever wanted to know about electrifying chickens.

Jamie Jonkel:

Yes.

Dave Strohmaier:

Thanks so much, Jamie

Jamie Jonkel:

Yeah. You bet. You bet.

Josh Slotnick:

Thanks for listening to the Tip of the Spear If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you like and if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them. The Tip of the Spear podcast is made possible with support from Matt, better known as Missoula Community Access Television and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division. If you have a question or topic you'd like us to address on a future episode, email it to communications at Missoula County US and to find other ways to stay up to date with what's happening at Missoula County, go to Missoula DOT CEO slash county updates and thanks for listening. [outro music plays]