At a BearFest science symposium on July 27, wildlife researcher Shawn Crimmins explains how facial recognition software could one day be used to track the movements of individual bears.
Each season, a few thousand visitors flock to Anan Wildlife Observatory to watch bears pluck salmon out of Anan Creek. But this popular viewing spot is more than just a fun afternoon getaway - it's also an important site for research on bear populations, habitat and resource needs. In fact, observation sites like these could point the way to less invasive methods for bear research in the future.
On July 27, at one of three BearFest symposiums, Shawn Crimmins of the U.S. Geological Survey and researcher Kayleigh McCarthy, a master's student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, presented on the importance of Anan -and viewing sites like it - in bear research.
Usually, if a scientist wants to track an animal's movements over time, it might use a radio collar. However, attaching a collar can be an invasive process and it's tough for researchers to tell whether the animal's behavior will be affected by it.
Crimmins recalled radio collaring a deer with a research technician. After they drugged the deer and attached the collar, the frightened animal wedged itself under a car, then jumped off a steep embankment.
If the deer hadn't been caught in the researchers' trap, "I think its day would have gone a little bit different," said Crimmins. "I don't know what that deer's life was like before we caught it, but I know what its life was like that day. Maybe not the best. There is no way we can really assess, did what we did to that deer affects its life and behavior?"
Observation sites like Anan, he argued, provide an underutilized opportunity to observe what animals are doing while minimizing the impact on their everyday behaviors.
Crimmins' student, McCarthy, explained how she uses remote cameras to see whether human activity at the observation deck influences the bears' movements. In 2022, she placed eight cameras around the viewing site and trail and four at the upper falls, where visitors are not allowed. In 2023, she expanded to 21 cameras distributed between the two sites. Every day, she monitors which bears appear in the cameras and how many visitors are present at the observation deck.
After a year of careful recordkeeping, McCarthy learned that human activity does affect the behavior of some bears. People who are familiar with Anan are able to identify bears by sight. McCarthy caught multiple bears on camera that she had "never seen with my own two eyes before," she said, leading her to conclude that there are bears that only visit the viewing area when they know humans won't be around.
This remote monitoring approach is different than what scientists like Danielle Chi, from Utah State University, were doing at Anan in the 1990s, when research was conducted through in-person eyewitness observation.
As technology progresses, the non-invasive observational approach that's currently being used at Anan could be expanded across the nation. "There's a program called Snapshot USA which is like tens of thousands of trail cameras," said Crimmins. "Imagine if we could get to the point with facial recognition software where you could use trail cameras to identify individual animals."
He recognizes that this technology may be generations away, but "that would be massive," he said. "We're moving toward not messing with animals."
Though bear research can inform management decisions and conservation efforts, Crimmins' interest in the animals isn't purely utilitarian. "Bears are cool!" he said. "They can weigh 400 pounds and climb trees. That's nuts. They're the largest carnivores on Earth but some of them can live off berries and roots. They can run 35 miles per hour, but they'll go into dumpsters. Bears are bonkers."
"We want to have valid science reasons" for observing them, he added, "but let's be honest. Bears are just cool."
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