| 1 | Kodiak bear basics |
To most people, Kodiak bears are the biggest, cuddliest and most Teddy-like bear species living on Earth. Most people know them as the stars of those viral youtube videos, with waving bears in zoos who are secretly hoping for people to throw them some salmon.
Scientifically though, Kodiak bears (ursus arctos mittendorfi) are simply one of the 5-9 subspecies of brown bear in North America. They live in Alaska, but exclusively in the isolated Kodiak archipelago of the state’s southwest. This cluster of islands includes Barren Islands, the most northerly, Afognak Island, the second largest, and Kodiak Island itself, the largest of the archipelago.
Kodiak bears have been separated from American grizzly bears (ursus arctos horribilis) for an estimated 15,000 years. There’s often confusion about the names, but both are subspecies of the overall brown bear species, just like European brown bears (ursus arctos arctos) or Syrian brown bears (ursus arctos syrianus). The rule is that all grizzlies are brown bears, but not all brown bears are grizzlies.
Unlike the Himalayan brown bear, the Kodiak isn’t at imminent risk of extinction. In 2005, there was estimated to be 3256 in existence, which has steadily increased since, with a bear density of 0.7 per square mile. A Kodiak bear’s yearly life cycle of hibernation and summer gorging is similar to most bears. So is their fur, which is normally dark to light brown, with the occasional blond bear showing up, and others having red tinges.
| 2 | They’re giants |
You don’t have to be David Attenborough or Bear Grylls to know that Kodiak bears are huge. So huge, in fact, that they’re the second largest bear on Earth after polar bears, and can sometimes outstrip them.
The average inland male grizzly weighs a respectable 500-700 pounds, with females reaching 300-400 pounds. Kodiak bears dwarf this, with an average of 800-1200 pounds for males and 450-750 for females. If a grizzly female met a Kodiak female in the wild, she’d probably mistake it for a male and rush to protect her cubs.
Consequently, Kodiak island was the site of the largest confirmed brown bear of all time, a 1656 pound mammoth shot dead by JC Tolman in 1894. The same is true for the heaviest bear in captivity, a Kodiak bear called Clyde who weighed 2160 pounds when he died in June 1987, after becoming “zoo fat”. The larger males can stand 10 feet tall on their hind legs, and 5 feet tall on all fours. It can be hard to translate internet pictures to a real world scale, but picture that the back of a large Kodiak bear (on all fours) would reach a shorter than average person’s forehead.
One year, bear biologist Vic Barnes travelled to Kodiak island to weigh some recent corpses of bears shot by hunters. The three largest males were 1245lbs, 1483lbs, and 1519lbs, while the largest sow weighed in at 757lb. According to bear experts, 17 of the 20 largest brown bear skulls ever measured came from Kodiak Island. The biggest ever measured 30.75 inches across.
| 3 | They live in a salmon paradise |
Part of the gigantic size of Kodiak bears is down to genetics, but another chunk is due to the abundant schools of salmon surrounding the island’s shores. Kodiak Island is a notorious salmon bonanza, with over two million red sockeye entering the island each year, swimming upstream to the mountain rivers where they were born in order to breed (and then die instantly). Only the Kamchatka peninsula of Russia’s far east is comparable for vast annual salmon migrations, and the bears enjoy every minute of it.
Kodiak Island has all 5 species of salmon in Alaska, with June being the peak season for Chinook, AKA king salmon, and cohos or silver salmon peaking in September. This gives the bears luxurious consistency in their diet. Unlike the famous Brooks River of central Alaska, where the salmon run peaks in late July and August, the average Kodiak bear can feed almost nonstop throughout its frenetic summer bulking season.
Consequently, adult male bears on Kodiak Island eat an average of 6146 pounds of salmon per year, compared to the impoverished bears of Denali who eat almost none. Females average at 3007 pounds, and scientists determined all this by collecting the shed fur of bears and analysing the mercury (a heavy metal found in fish) content in each hair.
If a brown bear could scan a property website and choose its own slice of wilderness to live in (although whose to say they can’t), Kodiak Island would be top of the list.
| 4 | They can’t stop eating elderberries |
The feast doesn’t end when it comes to berries either. The favourite of a Kodiak bear is undoubtedly the bright red elderberry, found in tangled clusters all over the archipelago. Like the blueberries of Denali, these berries are easy to devour in vast quantities.
If elderberries are plentiful, then Kodiak bears will actually abandon their salmon spots, which happened in 2014 during an usually warm summer which forced the berries to ripen early. Scientists have calculated that the optimal protein intake for a pre-hibernation bear is 23%, and this happens to be the exact level in elderberries, compared to 80% in salmon. Kodiak bears instinctively sense this.
With such vast quantities of berries and salmon, relations with the local deer and mountain goats are particularly peaceful on Kodiak Island. Bears will prey on them occasionally, but their food sources are trusty and well-established, compared to the inland grizzlies of Alberta or central Canada, who sometimes become thin, desperate and unpredictable.
Like anywhere, some of the bears on Kodiak Island are laser eyed hunting professionals, while others are clumsy amateurs who drop fish initially, but gradually improve over time. The Ayakulik river is one of the island’s main salmon channels, but unfortunately for bears, it’s usually far too deep to fish in. However, one of its tributaries called Red Lake Creek is very shallow, lined with loose gravel. Consequently, this tributary is one of Kodiak Island’s main bear hotspots.
| 5 | Scientists are worried about inbreeding |
Kodiak bears might have the most mass of any brown bear subspecies, but there’s one quality they lack – genetic diversity.
When scientists examined an immune system pathway controlling the response to infections in Kodiak bears in 2007, the nuclear genetics showed close to zero diversity. It’s all down to being trapped on an island, and this poor diversity could hurt the bears badly if a mutant animal virus or freak parasite swept through the island one day.
Right now, the population is perfectly healthy, and there are no signs of inbreeding. Nature knows best, as like other bears, female Kodiaks are less adventurous, and normally establish their territory close to their mother’s. Males, meanwhile, establish their range hundreds of miles away and breed with the females nearby, which keeps the genetic diversity healthy. That said, Kodiak bears aren’t super adventurous by bear standards, and according to scientists, they’re swimming between the main two islands (Kodiak and Afognak) much less than previously believed.
Overall, the bears on Afognak Island (the second largest in the Kodiak archipelago) are significantly less genetic diverse. Mitochondrial DNA, which only examines the maternal genetic line, reveals only two separate female lineages on Afognak compared to 7 female lineages on Kodiak island, a similar amount to Katmai National Park of Alaska.
Speaking of the two islands, they’re two very different bear habitats. Kodiak is more mountainous, while Afognak is covered with forests which the bears can vanish into, making aerial surveillance almost possible.
| 6 | Ancient bear history |
According to archaeological evidence, Kodiak Island has been inhabited by human beings for 7500 years. It started with the Ocean Bay people, who were displaced by the Kachemak 4000 years ago. It’s believed that these early cultures hunted Kodiak bears with bows and arrows, but viewed them as spirit animals with similar souls to humans, who were nevertheless closer to God. As a sign of respect, the hunters would leave their heads in the fields where they were shot. 900 years ago was when the Alutiiq natives arrived, and at this point, the amount of Kodiak bears in the archaeological record suddenly increases, as through their numbers were swelling and bear-man conflict had rapidly spiked. The bears was were called “takuna-aq” in the Alutiiq language.
By 1789, Russian colonist Grigori Shelikhov had become convinced that Kodiak Island was chock full of natural resources to exploit, particularly the plentiful local sea otters. The Alutiiq resisted at first, but their wooden bows and arrows were no match for the high tech machinery of modern warfare. While Kodiak bears weren’t as coveted as sea otter fur, an average of 2668 bears hides were exported from the Russian Alaskan colonies each year during the 19th century. Russians moving to Kodiak were encouraged to bring large dogs to scare the Kodiak bears away, who were frequently shot to protect cattle.
| 7 | Ancient bear history part 2 |
By 1867, the once plentiful sea otter colonies had plummeted, and Russia got cold feet about its new colony. They flogged Alaska off to the United States for $7.2 million, and bear killings immediately skyrocketed, with 568 hides exported each year from 1867 to 1880. The Lacey Act of 1900 provided the first legal protection for Kodiak bears, but as the march of technology made travelling easier, big game hunters flocked to Kodiak to take on the ultimate prize. Kodiak bears fell to their lowest ebb, and in 1925, the Alaska Game Commission declared that all non-Alaskan bear hunters now had to be accompanied by guides. The subspecies gradually turned the corner, and in 1941, Franklin D Roosevelt rode to the rescue: he signed an executive order creating the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, which covered Uganik Island and the entire southwest of Kodiak Island.
Still, salmon farmers and cattle ranchers campaigned vigorously for a cull. In the 1960s, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game secretly hired a couple of ex-WW2 pilots to fly over the archipelago and shoot the bears down from the comfort of their cockpits. These guys used an M1-Garland rifle mounted on a Piper Super Cub, a white-coloured, old-timey 2 seater aircraft first produced in 1949. Local bear enthusiasts caught onto the shadowy scheme and informed Outside Life magazine, who ran with it and published a sensational exposé called “The Kodiak Bear War”. The 1970s saw the modern hunting regulations laid down, and since then, the Kodiak bear subspecies has been in rude health.
| 8 | The hunting industry |
Are Kodiak bears as brutal in temperament as their massive size suggests? Apparently not. Kodiak bears are far from cuddly wild teddy bears, but unlike the East Siberian brown bear of Russia, they’re not notorious for being particularly aggressive.
According to fishermen, the bears of Kodiak Island seem more frightened of each other than interloping humans. One weapon that guides carry is a blunt bow and arrow, designed not to kill the bear, but to warn it. Injuries happen every other year, but Kodiak bears have only killed 1 human being over the past 75 years, compared to 10 deaths in Glacier National Park, which is a miniscule number itself.
Naturally, there’s a legal hunting industry as well. As of 2021, 180 Kodiak bears are legally shot dead every year. 496 permits are up for grabs, with 5000 Alaskans typically applying. Hunters from outside of Alaska must pay between $10,000 and $21,000 for a professional guide. Because it’s illegal to shoot dead a mother bear with cubs, 70% of hunting victims are males.
The end result is that 3300 Kodiak bears were shot dead between 1961 and 1986, shepherded by Kodiak Island’s 15 licensed bear guides. Opponents call this cruel, while supporters argue that the bear population is thriving. One of the biggest controversies erupted in 1996, when the Make A Wish foundation granted a dying 17 year old boy’s request to shoot dead a Kodiak bear with his dad. Actor Pierce Brosnan said that he would entertain the boy on the set of Dante’s Peak if he gave up his long held ambition.
| 9 | Kodiak bears and hibernation |
One of the unique aspects of Kodiak Island is that roughly 25% of its bears don’t bother to hibernate. Local fisherman regularly observe fresh pawprints in the snow during winter, and in January 2020, three marauding bears were shot dead on the streets of Kodiak city after rummaging through trash cans. Mothers with cubs will always hibernate, but food is so abundant on Kodiak island that the dominant males can hunt all year round.
Being surrounded by the ocean, the climate of Kodiak is surprisingly mild. The average January high is 2 degrees Celsius, and the all time record low was only -27C, which is warm and toasty compared to inner Alaska. Even Scotland fell to -27.2C in January 1982.
Kodiak bears also have the smallest home range of any American bear, at around 250 square kilometres for males and 130sq/km for females. They den at similar sites every year, digging a fresh hole into the same mountainside. One of their favourite spots is the alder thickets of Kodiak’s southwest, where the thick network of roots below stabilises the soil and prevents the den from collapsing onto the unsuspecting bear’s head. In the north, they prefer frozen mountainsides, where ice does the stabilising job.
Another fun fact is that Kodiak Island has very few natural rock caves, meaning that most of a bear’s dens must be dug with its long, sharp claws. You’ll never take refuge in a cave only to get a 1500 pound surprise on this island.
| 10 | Scientists are still debating them |
The Latin name of the Kodiak bear came from H.B. Marriam, who visited Kodiak in 1896 and confirmed their status as the largest brown bear subspecies in the world. He dubbed them ursus arctos middendorfi after the prestigious Russian naturalist Dr. A. Th. Von Middendorff.
Back then, biologists believed that the brown bear had 86 different subspecies in America, before this was narrowed down massively to the modern 5-9. Kodiaks made it through the filter, although today, a minority of scientists still argue that Kodiak bears aren’t a distinct subspecies, but an extremely fat, salmon-gorging version of normal grizzlies. However, ignoring their massive size, Kodiak bears have a proportionally broader skull than inland grizzlies.
When did the subspecies diverge? The truth is that nobody is 100% sure. The accepted theory is that Kodiak bears broke off when the ice sheets that acted as a bridge to mainland Alaska melted 10-12,000 years ago, but another theory is that they were part of separate migrations from Russia altogether. The grizzly bear may have come from the East Siberian subspecies, with Kodiak bears evolving from a separate wave of Kamchatka brown bears. This would mean that technically, grizzlies and Kodiak bears diverged much longer ago. It may be no coincidence that the Kamchatka brown bear is the most massive subspecies in the whole of Eurasia (despite being relatively peaceful).
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