Wood River Middle School Sixth Graders Spurred To Action
By WRW Staff
While they are sleeping away winter, Wood River Middle Schoolers are making sure our valley’s black bears have a safer world to wake up to.
The Hailey school sixth graders were spurred to action when they heard about orphaned cubs roaming the valley this past fall.
The students had bears on the brain because they were reading the novel “Touching Spirit Bear,” a story about a juvenile delinquent banished to an Alaskan island to see if he can change his ways. An encounter with a bear changed his life.
In Hailey, in October, a cub was found in a backyard eating apples and relocated to eastern Idaho. In August, an adult bear was seen near Alturas Elementary School, prompting a shelter in place for the school. It was darted and released near Galena Summit. In November, a young bear was euthanized after breaking into a garage multiple times. There were multiple sightings called in from both ends of the valley.
Several students came to school with stories of bear sightings of their own, and they wanted to know what they could do to help them. Initial reports said that some of the bears were too young to know how to be proper bears and that they would likely starve.
The kids were made aware of possible scenarios: a bear rescue (there is only one licensed in the state) or relocation by Idaho Fish and Game (costly) or let nature take its course.
With the help of their English teacher, Jennifer Peterson, they took initial action in the form of a letter writing campaign. They sent 83 letters to Idaho Fish and Game pleading for a solution, most selecting relocation or rehabilitation.They felt Mother Nature-due to a drought last summer resulting in a lack of food sources-had already dealt them a bad hand and they were not going to let her be in charge any more.
“My name is Ryder Buxton. I think that we should get the bears and have them stay with a trained professional so that they can get the help they need, like how to hunt and climb trees. And when they are ready, they will let them go.”
“My opinion is that we can put the bears back to the forest because I don’t like it how we are wasting bears,” Aliah Baeza wrote, “They need their wilderness.”
Michael Chavolla-Diaz wanted them paired with adoptive parents and Alexandra Sanchez said that life without their mothers would be “devastating” and that they should be reunited with other bears.
Longtime F&G spokesman, Terry Thompson, got the letters and called Peterson, explaining “I want to meet the kids behind these passionate letters.”
Thompson came as a guest speaker, and as uncle of sixth grader Duncan Montgomery, providing information, and a lot of motivation.
After learning that bears have to consume 20,000 calories a day-926 Big Macs-in preparation for hibernation, and how one bear traveled from the Montana border to Hailey, twice, just to dine in valley garbage cans, the kids’ got mad.
They peppered Thompson with questions, and learned that if people would just put their trash in a garage until the morning of pick-up, that would solve a lot of the issues. Bears don’t tend to forage early in the morning, but once they draw a bead on a bounty of easy prey in an easy to open dispenser, they don’t forget it.
The students are still doing research to make an appearance at Hailey City Hall in the spring, but they invited Hailey City Council President Kaz Thea to brief them on how to properly prepare for speaking to council members.
As a biologist, she is particularly interested in the bear issue, and praised the kids for their efforts.
She told them that several attempts to bring bear proof containers to the valley have failed in the past, but the recent activity—a record 100 calls to Fish and Game—could be a game changer.
“As an English teacher, I don’t just teach grammar, I teach kids how to find their voices and use critical thinking to make an educated argument,” Peterson said. “I was amazed by their depth of emotion around the subject. When they realized that the bears were just victims of opportunity by humans, they were determined to prove there was a solution. I’m very proud of them.”
