Bear watchers at Anan Wildlife Observatory view the new live streams on July 24. The cameras are solar powered and were installed by a team of students who joined up with the U.S. Forest Service and Explore.org. Visitors to Anan can watch the live feeds on the monitors at the observation deck, while anyone can watch the show online.
A male black bear strides into the river to catch a fish at Anan Creek on July 24. The bear struggled for quite some time, but eventually caught a couple of salmon after multiple unsuccessful lunges.
So, you want to see bears at the Anan Wildlife Observatory. But maybe you couldn't get one of the limited number of permits, or you live out of town and can't make the trip, or maybe you are a little more afraid of them than you care to admit.
But now, thanks to the U.S. Forest Service, explore.org and 14 Wrangell high school students in the T3 Program, anyone worldwide can view Anan's fish-crazed black and brown bears.
Last week, after months of preparation, planning and prototyping, the two live-stream cameras went online at explore.org's website. The cameras allow viewers 24-hour access to the lower falls of Anan Creek, a popular feeding location for bears.
The video is fed to a large monitor at the Anan viewing platform, in addition to being available online.
While the video feed had only been online for five days as of July 28, it was already explore.org's third-most visited live stream in the world, boasting nearly 300 views per day, according to Brian Reggiani, who coordinated the effort between the students and the Forest Service. The nonprofit organization is the world's largest live nature cam network.
Recently, much of the Anan activity has revolved around several black bears, notably including two bear cubs seemingly always looking to get into trouble.
Tory Houser, the Forest Service Wrangell district ranger, explained just how important it was to allow the world to view what happens at Anan, especially considering that the prime bear-viewing season is limited to just 52 days, July 5 to Aug. 25.
"We only allow 60 people a day," Houser said. "We want to be able to show these wonderful resources to the world because many people will never be able to make it to this very remote place."
And while the end product has generated a lot of buzz around town, the process of getting to online streaming was a long time in the making.
Late last year, the Forest Service reached out to Reggiani, director of student engagement for the Alaska T3 Alliance, to see if Wrangell students might be willing to help install a live camera feed at Anan.
The Forest Service previously worked with Reggiani and T3 students for cabin condition reports, drone mapping projects, and even uploading a "street view" of Wrangell's downtown on Google Maps - the latter of which has generated over one million online views.
T3 stands for teaching through technology and is a federally funded teaching nonprofit looking to engage rural Alaska middle and high school students with technology in their respective communities, according to Reggiani.
Reggiani spoke to Wrangell's T3 students soon after the Forest Service asked for help, and immediately the plan was underway. The official process began last December when students wrote a grant proposal to the Forest Service.
At this point, explore.org heard about the project and reached out to the Forest Service to get involved. While the agency was thrilled that a global organization wanted to help launch the live stream, it insisted that it would only be possible if they worked with the T3 students, something explore.org embraced, Houser said.
The proposed plan, a five-year, $200,000 commitment from the Forest Service, was approved, and students began working to design cameras right away.
They made trips to Anan to scout out prospective camera locations and identify the best way to wire the cameras to the solar panels they also needed to install.
By June, the students were ready for the first of two "installation weeks." They slept on a boat for a week and lugged all the equipment up the trail. The team began to install the cameras, four lithium batteries, and even climbed onto the observatory's roof to install solar panels.
While most of the operation ran smoothly, The Forest Service and students encountered a couple of problems. One day, the installation team realized it did not have the necessary brackets required for installing the solar panels. Mike Lane from Sunrise Aviation flew his seaplane to deliver the parts out to the remote work site.
After a second installation week at the end of the month, the cameras were ready to go. After a couple weeks of testing and monitoring, the stream officially went live on explore.org at 11 a.m. July 24.
On both the bear and the technology side of things, everything is going well. There have even been some positive surprises.
Initially, the team was unsure how much power the solar panels would generate. But, according to the team, the numbers from the past seven days show the panels generate nearly three times as much power as the cameras use daily, a feat made even more impressive given Wrangell's recent cloudy weather.
According to Reggiani, the next step is to install a live-stream camera and remote power system at the upper falls, another bear viewing site more inland on Anan Creek.
Additionally, students are also currently exploring how to possibly deploy an underwater camera at the lower falls site.
The team hopes to install six cameras between lower and upper falls.
To view the live streams, visit explore.org and navigate to the Tongass National Forest tab.
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