Montana Grizzly Encounter A Sanctuary for Bears

Hopefully the last pass we got to do. It's pretty smooth sailing. A couple patches of ice on the road but nothing too major. Getting close to Bozeman? Yeah, another 70 some miles to Bozeman. It is so beautiful. Yeah, we just crossed the continental divide and now we're heading down the east of the east watershed of the United States. And there, when you see this video, there may not be any snow left in this area because our videos are a bit behind time, like real time. We must be catching up though. We're trying to get our videos closer. It's just hard because we film so much and we don't want you guys to miss out on all of this. It seems pointless not to bring you guys along. I agree. Welcome to the adventure closet. I'm Liz and this is Charlie. We are two 80s and 90s kids that never lost their sense of wonder. We're all over the map exploring wild and abandoned places, discovering rocks, geology, and history of different areas, all while living and traveling in our minivan Opal. I guess you can say our life is a mixtape of adventures. So hop in the van, hit the subscribe we have wanted to do for years and here we are finally making that dream come true. This was our chance to safely get up close to one of the animal kingdom's most ferocious yet cuddly creatures, the great northern grizzly bear. So just one bear's what I gather? Yeah but it's their biggest bear. We weren't exactly prepared for how intimate these encounters would be. Upon entering the viewing area, we found ourselves within 25 to 30 feet of Max, a massive 1,100 pound grizzly bear. He was born to the wilds of the Alaskan Peninsula in 2019 and our view of him was completely unobstructed and the only thing separating us from him was a moat well hidden beneath a railing. Max was calm and didn't take much notice to us as I'm sure he's used to many visitors but we hung on to every movement he made. We were in awe of what a beautiful creature he was. His healthy muscular appearance had us wondering why he was even in captivity. Apparently Max was brought to the sanctuary as a cub. Some dogs had cornered him at his home in Alaska and he got separated from his mom. Some nice people grabbed him up and waited for the mother to return but she sadly never did. Fortunately a pilot flew him from the island he was on all the way to the Anchorage Zoo in Alaska where he was nourished and brought to a good healthy weight before Amy from the Montana grizzly encounter went out to adopt him and bring him back to his forever home where he lives here at the sanctuary. Their natural habitats for them seem to be going away quickly and with their appetites needing around 90 pounds of food per day it has made life difficult to sustain out there in the wild for these big fluffy hungry bears. Even though grizzly bears are apex predators sitting at the very top of the food chain they have still made their way onto the endangered species list. In the first 125 years of European settlement it is estimated that the grizzly bear population had reduced to two percent of its original amount. That's tough to imagine us humans can make such an impact on a population of creatures that can easily hunt and kill full-grown bison and elk while running at speeds up to 30 miles per hour. Us humans red line at around eight miles per hour. We're just no match for such a powerful predator but we still have managed to put their population in danger. However since the Endangered Species Act in 1975 when we only had 175 grizzlies left here in the lower 48 states we can at least say that there's an improvement since then. Next we met Bella. The bears do not get along well so that's why they take turns playing outside their cages. Just like Max, Bella was born in the wild of Alaska and abandoned as a cub by her mother. She was rescued from a tree she had climbed up after four days of waiting for her mom to return. She was four months old and now nine years old 900 pounds and seven feet tall when standing on her hind quarters. In the wild grizzly bears are typically born during hibernation which lasts five to seven months during the cold seasons. Staying in their dens nursing off their mothers the majority of the time. The nursing doesn't stop after hibernation though. Grizzlies are known to nurse their cubs up to three years or until she decides the cubs are just done. A prominent feature grizzlies have is a large hump on their backs. This is actually a giant muscle that aids in their love of digging. They are known to spend a better part of the day tearing up the ground ripping apart rotten logs and creating dens. If you've watched our channel for a while now you've probably noticed we like to dive into some Native American history as well and see the connections and find little details lost in time. The native people of North America highly regarded the grizzly bears as medicine beings with impressive magical healing powers. Many tribes enforced a sort of hunting season where it was taboo to kill a mother that had cubs. I find these details interesting because the America we know now is so disconnected from the wild. The indigenous people instinctively knew that they had to protect these mother bears. I believe we should all take a concerted effort to go be with the wild things as often as we can so that we too never lose sight of how amazingly delicately beautiful this planet is. A place worth preserving because it is truly a sanctuary for all beings. My glasses are fogging up because it's so cold. I just want to get a closer look at it. So that was an incredible experience like I can't believe how close we got. Yeah like and how active the bears are they look happy like I'm glad they look happy. Yeah they look super happy and super like healthy and like clean looking. Yeah it's like you know when you go to a zoo and you can tell like that the animals aren't happy it just kind of ruins the experience but uh here these animals are happy I mean she said they get they get fed steak and elk and fish and all sorts of stuff. Yeah but some of them are max this big bear from Alaska of all places doesn't eat elk like it's yeah super adorable and uh it's a rescue operation so this isn't a zoo it's uh these bears were are here for a reason because they can't thrive in the wild uh for various reasons but yeah and um so it was it was 50 or 25 bucks for both of us to get in for a two-day pass yeah and you get to come back as many times as you want in those two days because the bears are out at different times she said max the big guys out first and then Bella and then I forget the other one's name the little one we didn't see so was it Sophie I don't know but we met Bella and Max and um oh what was I gonna say I forgot what I was gonna say words words yeah uh oh yeah so we don't normally pay to go do things you guys see that on our channel we do free things so uh the fact that we spent 25 dollars to do something means that it's probably something worth it or that we had hoped it was worth it and it definitely was yeah I mean if you've seen our past episodes you've seen us like miss out on something for five dollars right so but this is really it's simple like this is kind of the style we like if we're gonna see animals we've seen them in kind of a natural habitat there's no frills here it's just like straight up you're right there with a bear yeah but there's a moat and safety wire that you don't even see because they covered it up with information boards yes okay I think that's enough rambling yeah let's go uh hump wabbits okay it's the hat that's the vibe on that it's the Elmer Cudd vibes I forgot to tell you guys that I got a bear bracelet in the gift shop there and it looks like it's snowing what are we doing next uh I don't know that away you guys I think there's a semi coming down the road the wrong direction it's driving backwards really fast this guy's pretty good I think I'll let him pass well that was fun that was so much fun don't forget to like and subscribe and check us out on Patreon and we'll see you next time bye now bye now