{"id":115574,"date":"2017-09-02T03:57:18","date_gmt":"2017-09-02T07:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=115574"},"modified":"2017-09-02T03:57:18","modified_gmt":"2017-09-02T07:57:18","slug":"car-was-undrivable-grizzly-comes-out-on-top-after-hit-by-car-on-trans-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/09\/02\/car-was-undrivable-grizzly-comes-out-on-top-after-hit-by-car-on-trans-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Car was undrivable:’ Grizzly comes out on top after hit by car on Trans Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Trans<\/a>
Trans Canada Highway, as overlaid on Canada map (Photo By Qyd (talk \u2022 contribs) – GIS data, Public Domain<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CANMORE, Alta. — It wasn’t the best call Bear 164 has ever made, but this time the hefty grizzly just out of his teenage years got lucky.<\/p>\n

Traffic was whizzing along the Trans-Canada Highway east of Banff National Park around suppertime on July 28 when 164 decided he needed to cross.<\/p>\n

A car believed to have been going 100 km\/h slammed into the bear so hard it was no longer drivable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was fairly significant damage to the front end of the vehicle. We were assuming we were going to have a dead bear on our hands and we’d have to go and recover the body,\u201d John Paczkowski, an ecologist for Alberta Environment and Parks, recounted Friday.<\/p>\n

But then, as if some grizzly guardian angel was on duty, Bear 164 picked himself up and ran off into the trees.<\/p>\n

The bear had been captured a little more than a year before, so parks staff waited for a mortality sensor on its collar to tell them of the bear’s fate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that collar stops moving for several hours … the pulse rate and the beep that we hear changes … which means the collar has fallen off or the animal has died.\u201d<\/p>\n

But 164 was still moving the next morning and a conservation officer spotted him walking with just a bit of limp, but no signs of significant injury.<\/p>\n

A wildlife veterinarian advised parks staff to give the bear some distance for a couple of weeks, Paczkowski said. If the bruin was injured, he needed time to heal.<\/p>\n

The survivor grizzly continued to roam past the mountain town of Canmore, Alta., and into Banff National Park.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 16, it was time to see how he was doing. Parks staff located him, darted him and replaced his old collar with a new GPS unit.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was really in good shape when we had a look at him,\u201d Paczkowski said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had really put on a lot of weight. He had grown in girth and in length and in all different ways. He was a really nice, healthy-looking bear.\u201d<\/p>\n

The grizzly, who’s about seven years old, had almost doubled his weight to about 135 kilograms from when he was first collared 14 months earlier.<\/p>\n

Paczkowski attributes that to a \u201creally abundant berry crop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s just in those thick berry patches gorging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paczkowski said male grizzlies can live to 20 or more years if they avoid traffic, but 164 lives a bit of a \u201chigh-risk\u00a0lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n

He spends most of his time away from humans, but has made secretive and swift forays into Banff’s Bow Valley around highways and railways.<\/p>\n

It’s quite possible this bear, just into adulthood, will have learned to retreat once more into the silence of the back country, Paczkowski suggested.<\/p>\n

\u201cA traumatic experience like that would probably wisen him up to trying to cross the highway,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs he matures into an adult male his roam range will increase and he’ll move further and wider afield and hopefully he has a productive life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CANMORE, Alta. — It wasn’t the best call Bear 164 has ever made, but this time the hefty grizzly just …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":115575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,9095,3,16],"tags":[22634,22635,1780,5284],"class_list":["post-115574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-human-interest-lifestyle","category-lifestyle","category-news","tag-22634","tag-banff-national-park","tag-grizzly-bear","tag-trans-canada-highway","mauthors-sylvia-strojek","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}