Their names bear repeating

If visitors read the bear-sighting sheet at Anan Wildlife Observatory, which the workers fill out every season, bear names would sound more like tax forms: 7-05-A, for the first bear spotted on the stream to fish on July 5, and 7-05-B, for the second bear spotted on July 5.

Well, humans only do so well with numbering systems before our penchant for nicknames kicks in: Casino, Crack and Scuba Sue, to name a few.

Bear naming can be a controversial issue, Dee Galla, outdoor recreation planner at the Wrangell Ranger District in the Tongass National Forest, said April 5.

"Some folks don't like anthropomorphizing the bear, because it changes the relationship with them. We understand that, but when you're out there working with the bears you need to identify them," Galla said.

To that end, Galla lets the crew pick the names but says "give it a name that describes it, not personifies it."

They try not to give the bears names until they are well-known, and until most of the people working there can identify the bear, she said.

Most of the bears that come to Anan are black bears, but Scuba Sue, a brown bear, got her name from the way she fishes underwater. "She dives deep, and it's like she's a scuba diver," Galla said.

Tatanka is a male black bear. The year he got his name his coat stood out. He was black but the fur on the very top of his spine was really brown and fluffy, like a bison or buffalo - thus his name, the Lakota word for bison.

There's a bear named Vaccinium - the genus name for shrubs that grow in the acidic soil of Southeast and yield berries like blueberries and blackberries. "It ate a bunch of berries," she said.

There's Oso, the Spanish word for bear, and Not-Oso, a bear Anan staff kept thinking was Oso. Oso also had a patch shaped like a bone, a one-letter-lacking nod to osso, or bone, in the romance languages.

There's Milton, Doobie, Pot Roast, Noodles, BlortheBlonde, Toothpaste - named for a fur patch by its maw that looked like a dribble of toothpaste.

Casino had to do with its chest patches in the shape of a pip to denote the suit of cards in a playing deck. "I want to say it's a spade," Galla said.

There was Arrow, "something to do with the foot, but I can't remember," Galla said, either a patch or an injury. She's been working at the Forest Service in Wrangell since 1993. There have been a lot of names.

There was also Pizza Face. "Some of these don't last very long."

Volverine is a bear that has produced several cubs over the years, Galla said April 6.

Her name has a strange history.

"She was a known cub from a mother bear we had named Wolverine because she had a very prominent W-shaped chest patch - very easy to distinguish when she came into the falls," she said.

Volverine was one of a pair of cubs that would come to the deck with her mother.

"The crew just started calling her Volverine because she has a prominent V-shaped chest patch, and it stuck," Galla said.

Then there's Crack, who always fishes in the same crack in the rocks across the creek from the observatory.

Every day during the July 5 to Aug. 25 viewing season, the Forest Service has the crew take pictures, "that's how we try to identify them ... whether it's when people are there, every day we have a two-hour (observation) session."

"So like this day," Galla said, reading from the sighting sheet, "Wolverine, Twerp, Wade, Arrow and Oso. White Claw, that's pretty obvious; Scraps - that would never fish for itself, just ate everybody else's scraps. Wade, he likes to wade in the water, Wolfhead, he had a wolfhead."

Since the bears come in with the salmon, the Forest Service only has monitoring from July and August.

The Forest Service has always had four workers at Anan, but Galla said, "we're lucky this year we're going to have six. That is the ideal size for a crew." The staffers answer questions and help visitors stay safe, while allowing bears the freedom to eat.

And viewing is going to be much improved with the new deck, under construction in time for the season start.

"It has to do with the way the site developed," she said. "It started with a sheltered building they stuck on a point. Then we built decks off of that building. We had a bunch of decks, but the best viewing was outside a four-sided building. The shelter part will be toward the back of the deck, so the whole front railing, which used to be taken up by a shelter, there will be a 180-degree view up and down the Anan Creek which they never had before."