Brown Bear with four cubs - Anan Creek, Tongass National Forest, Alaska

Anan Creek, in the Tongass National Forest, is best-known for its concentration of black bears during the pink salmon run. But brown bears are also known to frequent the area. While we were in Wrangell, Alaska, before continuing on by boat to Anan Creek, we heard about a brown bear with multiple cubs that had been in the area and we saw some photos and video. It is not uncommon for brown and black bears to have multiple cubs. Two is not unusual and even three occur on occasion. But four cubs is truly remarkable. This particular brown bear had four new cubs, also known as “cubs of the year” or COY. We were very fortunate to see and film them our first two days at Anan. All four cubs were quite small and it is unlikely more than one will survive. The adult female was very cautious and protective of her young. After our first two days, another female brown bear, this one with two considerably larger COY, appeared on the scene. We believe her presence caused the female with four COY to leave the area. In this sequence, the female with four cubs has come up Anan Creek and displaced a juvenile female brown bear, probably in its third summer and the first it has been on its own. The juvenile cautiously takes up a position higher on the steep sides of Anan Creek. The mother keeps track of the juvenile and, after she has had some success catching pink salmon for herself and her four cubs, she returns to the rainforest. The juvenile female returns to the creek and has somewhat mixed results in catching salmon. She sniffs at the other female’s scent and I can’t help but wonder if they might be related. The juvenile here is also a likely sibling of another juvenile female we observed in the Anan area. One of them, called “Phar Lap”, had recently approached groups of people on the trail on three occasions and received a dose of pepper spray each time. There were no other such occurrences after that. But even walking alone on the approximately 1¼ mile trail from the cabin to the falls, making two round-trips every day during a week-long visit, we rarely even met a bear and certainly had no negative encounters.