The Grizzly Guy

With square shoulders developed by throwing hay bales in his youth, Grant Hilderbrand could be called a bear of a man.

But such a designation goes beyond his frame. 

The transplanted Alaskan certainly knows the state’s iconic mammal as well as anyone. He estimates he has handled 1,400 bears in his 31 years of working with Alaska Department of Fish and Game (12 years) and the National Park Service (the last 15 years) as well as four postgraduate years.

For Hilderbrand, a figurative day at the office means flying by helicopter to a remote mountain, following bear prints, looking for the ideal moment to shoot a tranquilizing dart, and then scrambling out of the helicopter and putting a GPS collar on the Alaskan brown bear. Certainly beats ambling to the water cooler at break time. 

While physically demanding, the 53-year-old former recreational rugby player doesn’t shy away from the work. “I hope I never do” get too old for the work, said Hilderbrand, a 1993 South Dakota State University zoology graduate. “I may work a little slower; hopefully a little smarter also.” 

Hilderbrand never set out to make the 49th state his home state. 

Son of chemistry prof 

He was raised in Brookings, the son of Julie and David Hilderbrand. David Hilderbrand was an institution at SDSU, joining the chemistry department in 1974, becoming department head in 1980 and moving into university administration in 1994. He headed the graduate department for eight years and tried semiretirement. 

But he was appointed to oversee various State projects and three times agreed to serve as interim dean or department head. He finally retired as interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 2012. 

Grant Hilderbrand credits his love of science to his late father, who grew up on a central Missouri farm. He credits his love for the outdoors to time spent on that farm with his grandfather and uncle. 

At SDSU, Hilderbrand was a work study student under biology professor Mike Hildreth, who was doing biopesticide research. At that point, bears were just a football team in Chicago, as far as Hilderbrand was concerned. But he enjoyed learning the fundamentals of research and decided to apply for graduate school. 

“When I applied for grad school, I was just hoping to get in anywhere,” he said. 

Hilderbrand was accepted at Washington State and was assigned to a professor just starting bear research.  

An epiphany in Alaska 

He vividly remembers his first trip to Alaska. It was spring 1994, and he flew into the Fairbanks airport at 6 a.m. and drove to Denali National Park as the sun was just starting to rise. There he met with other researchers, including Pat Owen, a wildlife biologist with whom he still works. She shot a bear with a tranquilizing dart from a helicopter. 

Hilderbrand remained to monitor the bear while the other researchers pursued other bears. 

As this 23-year-old young man from the Northern Plains was drawing blood samples and weighing an 800-pound grizzly, “the clouds broke and there was Denali (Mount McKinley) — 20,000 feet. I was in the state about three hours, and I decided I was going to find a way to live here.” 

He did that by completing his master’s (1995) and his doctorate (1998), then joining the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Grizzly population stable 

Brown bears, which include grizzlies, aren’t the only wildlife species Hilderbrand has studied. For example, he’s done extensive research on wolves and salmon as well. However, the brown bears’ relatively limited habitat range and their rank on the predator chain do set them apart from other wildlife.

While there are small brown bear populations in the Lower 48 states, there are 30,000 in Alaska with hunters taking 1,500 to 2,000 annually. 

Hilderbrand said the brown bear population in Alaska “has not changed much at all through time. For the most part, the ecosystems are still intact, and that’s especially true in national parks.” The reason for surveying the bear population is twofold — to set hunting quotas and to minimize the impact of anticipated developments. 

A very adaptable species 

Tagging bears is a very seasonal task. “Often, we do our tagging work in the spring, when bears are coming out of dens and before vegetation starts leafing out. We’ve got about a three-week window. As soon as you get the leaves out, it’s hard to find them.” Tracking footprints in the snow is much easier, and chase time is less, which makes it less stressful on the animals, he added. 

Fall and summer captures are done to check weight changes and take blood and hair samples, which yield clues to their diet. 

“Once the salmon arrive in late July, the bears start putting on a lot of fat,” Hilderbrand said. Salmon is a brown bear’s food choice. When abundant, bears can grow to immense proportions. For example, at Katmai National Park and Kodiak Island, both in southwest Alaska, the muscle mass of a female brown bear is about 325 pounds with an additional 200 pounds of fat piled on that in preparation for denning. 

In the interior north at Gates of the Arctic National Park, that same female weighs 175 pounds, the result of a lower-calorie diet and having to roam farther to find meals. 

Hilderbrand said bears are among the most adaptable of species. “Early in my career I was trying to understand the average bear. Now I know the average bear isn’t out there. They’re more adaptable to change than we previously realized.” 

To illustrate, he shared about a small number of bears on the Katmai coast spending time on offshore islands about 200 meters long and 50 meters wide. “There is nothing but rocks and grass. For the life of me, I didn’t know what they were doing.  We found they were preying and feeding off of sea otters, which had recently returned to the islands after nearly being eliminated by Russian fur trappers.” 

One female became so adept at nabbing otters, she tipped the scale at 700 pounds. 

Now at Lake Clark National Park 

While “my favorite days are in the field,” there are plenty of days not spent with bears. He estimates he is in the field three months a year with two months spent preparing field trips — "lining up aviation contracts, buying gear, making sure everything is ready, pondering the weather. We’re combining aviation, guns and drugs — there’s a lot of paperwork.”

The remainder of his time is spent doing data analysis, writing and communicating with the public and fellow researchers. 

Earlier this year, “Brown Bears in Alaska’s National Parks” was published. Hilderbrand and three others from the National Park Service are editors of the 276-page softback that incorporates 35 writers. It seeks to offer “fresh perspectives about the complex challenges that bears and humans face as they navigate coexistence in the evolving wilderness of Alaska.” 

At the time of the writing, Hilderbrand was chief of the biological resources division for the National Park Service while based in Anchorage, Alaska.  

On July 14, he became superintendent of Lake Clark National Park, 4 million acres that stretch from the Gulf of Alaska to the interior tundra, an area in which he has done considerable research. The new post will still allow him days in the field tracking bears, which will always be a highlight of the job. 

“I never go into the field and don’t find something new and amazing. I continue to be fascinated by animals and their world,” especially bears and the landscapes they call home, he said. 

Written by Dave Graves, University Marketing & Communications