McCain Sees Pork Where Scientists See Success

Video

USGS Northern Divide Bear Project

This video footage was recorded between 2005 and 2007 at a bear rub tree in Glacier National Park. This clip shows a grizzly bear vigorously rubbing on a tree regularly used by other bears.

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So she stood her ground and made a lot of noise.

The bear stopped and turned away.

Hiking back out of the woods, Kendall had a thought: Maybe she should become the kind of biologist who studies mice.

How Many Bears in the Woods?

Protecting bears is, in a sense, a way of protecting everything else around them. They're an "umbrella species," as conservationists put it.

"They are these very flexible, intelligent animals who can survive just about anywhere. There are brown bears that survive in the Gobi Desert," Kendall said.

Why count them?

"We just can't be managing in the dark for another 25 years," she said.

Bears are hard to count because they're not like buffalo grazing on open range. They live, as has been widely noted, in the woods.

They are also shy, unless they're surprised. Padding around quietly in hopes of sneaking up on grizzlies would not be a smart way for researchers to conduct a census of Ursus arctos horribilis. Kendall does not venture into bear country without shouting loudly every couple of minutes: "Hey, bear!"

The secret to counting bears is obtaining hair. One way is to pluck it off of "rub trees," which bears use for marking territory. The other trick is to use a string of barbed wire to make a pen. Place some stinking bear bait in the center, and the bear will slip under (or sometimes, if the bear is huge, over) the wire. Snagging hair that way doesn't hurt the animal.

In 2002 Kendall and her colleagues proposed using such hair traps to count bears in Glacier National Park and the nearby wilderness. Multiple state and federal agencies backed the plan. So did Montana's governor at the time, Judy Martz, a Republican, who asked the congressional delegation for support. The project found a powerful ally in Burns, who chaired the subcommittee overseeing the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey. Burns, Kendall said, added $1 million to the USGS budget in 2003 and pushed through add-ons for the next four years.

That got the attention of McCain, who every year puts out a list of what he considers egregious or laughable pork-barrel projects. He has gone after wasteful military projects and corporate tax breaks, but for rhetorical purposes he's shown a fondness for mocking money spent on dubious-sounding projects involving plants and animals.