A Walk Through the Forest - Grizzly 399 and Her Four Cubs

by Belinda Greb

Title

A Walk Through the Forest - Grizzly 399 and Her Four Cubs

Artist

Belinda Greb

Medium

Photograph - Photograph, Photography

Description

A Walk Through the Forest - Grizzly 399 and Her Four Cubs

The first two days in the Tetons, I felt like I was one step behind this remarkable and intelligent bear. There were a few instances where other photographers gave me incorrect information, so I missed out on her one day (on instinct I had been waiting where she later showed up but a photographer told me she had just been spotted in another area). The next day I kept surveying a couple areas where she'd been sighted in prior days and waited for hours! Finally after about 6 hours, I was giving myself 15 more minutes by the side of the road, when another photographer came by and said she's just down the road (thankful for nice fellow photographers). I saw her cutting through the woods with her cubs. Once she made it to the highway, she headed back south and I was able to get ahead of her and then wait for her to show up and was lucky to get these shots of her and the cubs. Grizzly 399 is famous worldwide due to frequent sightings and the fact that she has had so many offspring. She is now over 24 years old (born 1996), rather old for a mother, and everyone was surprised when she emerged from her den with four cubs, a rare event.

Grizzlies were removed from the endangered species act in 2017 despite the majority of 650,000 comments asking that they remain on it. So these magnificent creatures are now at the mercy of individual states and trophy hunters. 399 is a bear who often dens outside the national park and certain hunters have targeted 399 because of her fame. Please urge your representatives to reinstate protection for these bears. (Just recently, the decision to delist the grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone, including Grand Tetons, was reversed!) Even inside a national park setting, many bears are killed each year due to car accidents, and outside the park, bears are also killed by trains and cars.

Copyrighted - Belinda Greb
* * * * * * *
Nature, animals, beauty have been a source of nourishment throughout my life. Photography allows me to capture, interpret, and share that world of wonder I see about me, and sometimes use what I capture as an inspiration to create something new by incorporating other exposures, textures or brushwork.

Copyrighted - Belinda Greb
* * * * * * *
Nature, animals, beauty have been a source of nourishment throughout my life. Photography allows me to capture, interpret, and share that world of wonder I see about me, and sometimes use what I capture as an inspiration to create something new by incorporating other exposures, textures or brushwork.

Uploaded

June 20th, 2020

Colors

Embed

Share

Tags