Author Interview: Kevin Grange on Grizzly Confidential
Grizzly Confidential: An Astounding Journey into the Secret Life of North America’s Most Fearsome Predator, Kevin Grange, Harper Horizon, 2024, 288 pages
Kevin Grange is an award-winning freelance writer with an emphasis on the medical field, adventure, and travel. In addition to writing, Kevin works as a firefighter/paramedic with Jackson Hole Fire/EMS and Grand Teton National Park in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Nature Book Guide’s founder/editor, Beth Nobles, interviewed him for this issue.
Kevin, we’re honored to feature your latest book, Grizzly Confidential for the readers of Nature Book Guide. We love your sense of adventure, beautiful storytelling, and deep concern for these animals. Why this book and why now?
I’ve always been fascinated with bears but when Bear 399 took her four cubs on a walkabout around my home in Jackson Hole in 2021, I realized I was also terrified by them. As a firefighter/paramedic and former Park Ranger, I’ve been trained to go into those places that might frighten me—that “the best way out is through”—so I decided to explore my fascination and fear of brown bears by venturing into the wild with biologists, naturalists, and wildlife guides to meet grizzlies face-to-face. I wanted to learn as much as I could, see if I could understand brown bears, and answer the important question of how we can coexist.
Grizzly bear recovery in the Lower 48 is a modern success story and now bears are pushing out beyond the boundaries of national parks. The forefront of grizzly bear conservation is now in local communities like Jackson Hole, Missoula, Big Sky, Bozeman, and other areas where bears are reoccupying after hundreds of years. Coexistence is a complex issue, but I feel we are up for the task. It’d be a real shame if the bears did their part to recover the population and we humans couldn’t do our part to coexist with them.
When brown bears aren’t food stressed, their big goofy and charismatic personalities appear. It’s really fun and entertaining to watch and it always lifts my spirits. However, I also realize bears live in a harsh world with a high cub mortality so I am also inspired by their resilience and ability to adapt and overcome. Lastly, there is nothing more endearing than a sow’s love and protection for her cubs.
Bear 399 and her cubs Photo: Peter Mangolds
Several bears in your book have benefited from seasonal management closures in parks, no-stopping zones, and other wildlife brigade strategies to manage humans in an attempt to keep everyone protected. Is there a story about wildlife brigade volunteers you'd like to share?
The time a young grizzly bear ran through a crowd of hundreds of people at the same time Old Faithful geyser was about to erupt was memorable…and stressful. The subadult bear was more scared than aggressive and sought safety by immediately climbing a tree, at which point he was surrounded by a mob of people snapping photos. The wildlife brigade and other rangers were instrumental in not letting the public cause more stress to the bear. However, that moment taught me that, in many ways, humans are often the aggressor in the human-bear relationship by displacing grizzlies through our activities, fragmenting habitat with roads, and distracting wild bears from natural food sources by leaving unsecured food, compost, and trash at our houses.
Photo: Peter Mangolds
What are we still getting wrong about bears, and what are we getting right?
We are evolving from the point of view that believed “bears are the problem, so we relocate or kill them” to “humans are the often the problem, so we educate them.” My wife and I have found that having the discipline to secure attractants like food, trash, and compost around our house has made us feel more connected to the landscape and wildlife, so it’s a win-win for both bears and people.
You write about the Leopold Report (a 1963 report on wildlife management in national parks) being pivotal in the public's perception of the bear--from generations of viewing them as violent and dangerous predators to understanding conflict as a product of human interactions. What would you like the public to understand about the value and vulnerability of bears?
Apex predators like grizzly bears, great white sharks, and wolves elicit an emotional “fight or flight” response in many people—sometimes even by just hearing the name of the species, let alone encountering one in the wild. This leads to a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about apex predators. I tried to use science, humor, and my own initial prejudice to debunk myths about bears, primarily that they are “ferocious, blood-thirsty carnivores who are only out to get people,” which is often how they’re portrayed in the news.
The most surprising thing I learned was grizzlies aren’t out to get us! Rather than strictly carnivores, they are “opportunistic omnivores” that feed on non-meat sources because that’s the type of food that’s most predictable for bears. Bears live by a ticking clock—they have a limited time to get the fat and nutrients they need for hibernation, so they want to be left alone and they don’t like surprises. I discovered bears aren’t naturally aggressive towards humans—they only act that way when they feel surprised, threatened, or when they’re hungry and have been taught to associate people with food.
My hope is readers will gain insight into bears, begin to understand them, and realize coexistence is possible with some discipline on our end. The rewards from that coexistence are many and worthwhile. Some of the rewards of having bears on the landscape include their regulation of prey species; they’re ecosystem engineers tilling the soil with their claws, dispersing seeds through their scat, and bringing nitrogen and phosphorous into the forests by discarding salmon carcasses. Additionally, bears have a cultural and spiritual value to many people and they are a sign of ecosystem health. As “bear whisperer” and conservationist Lynne Seus says, “Where the grizzly can walk, the earth is healthy and whole.”
Author Kevin Grange at McNeil River State Game Sanctuary
Of all the places and people you visited while working on the book, what or who would you like to visit again?
McNeil River State Game Sanctuary on the Alaska Peninsula was truly magical. McNeil protects the largest concentration of brown bears on the planet and only ten people are allowed to visit every four days. The bears there have never been hunted. They’ve never accessed human food/garbage, or even been collared for research, so they have no fear (or desire) of humans. People are just an anonymous part of the landscape, so you can observe natural bear behavior at a remarkably close range.
Since its inception, no human has been injured by a bear and no bear has ever had to be relocated or killed due to conflict. “How do you manage the bears?” I asked Beth Rosenberg, the Sanctuary manager. “We don’t,” she replied. “We just manage the humans.”
While we can’t replicate every aspect of McNeil Sanctuary in Alaska and the Lower 48, we can do things like secure human attractants and have a sensibility of sharing the landscape with other creatures versus humans always being “apex.”
Would you share a favorite scene in Grizzly Confidential?
The scenes of “drive-bys” (or close encounters) at McNeil River State Game Sanctuary are my favorites because I didn’t even know that was possible for a bear and totally rewrote the myth I was holding in my mind that bears were only out to get us. I also loved meeting Doug and Lynne Seus whose bears have acted in Hollywood Films alongside Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman, and others. I discovered a lot about the brown bear brain from Doug and Lynne and loved watching the goofy personality of their bear Honey Bumps.
You write about the nonprofit land trust, Vital Ground in Montana, as a critical tool in the long-term recovery of prime bear habitat. Are there other land trusts and conservation easements doing similar good work?
Doug and Lynne started Vital Ground and it has protected over 1 million acres for the grizzly... and all the species beneath bears. There are other great land trusts doing similar work but Vital Ground targets land that specifically might be used by grizzlies. The cool thing about Vital Ground is it appeals to both sides of the political fence. Who doesn’t want more land set aside for conservation and connected habitats?
What do you hope for the bears? What conservation or public strategies do you think will be most effective in the future?
My hope is bears continue their recovery and we find ways to coexist with them. I think a very important part of this is connecting habitats. Roads are like walls to bears. We need connected habitat to help spread genetic diversity and allow bears to roam between ecosystems like Yellowstone and Glacier National Park.
Are there books for kids--picture books for the youngest children up to middle grade chapter books or Young Adult (YA) books that complement Grizzly Confidential?
Grizzly 399 - Paperback Special, by Sylvia M. Medina. There are also some good documentaries, including Bears by Disneynature.
Grizzly 399 - Paperback Special, Sylvia M. Medina, Green Kids Club, Inc., 2018, 48 pages. Reading Ages: 5-9
It’s been a pleasure working with you and I’m thrilled you enjoyed the book!
An excerpt of this interview appears in the Autumn 2024 issue of the Nature Book Guide and as a downloadable .pdf file via our “Downloads” page.
Visit Kevin Grange’s website for more information about his work.