It’s One of North America’s Quietest Places. Along Came a Bear.

Is there a time stamp on this equipment? If so this destruction may have happened around hibernation time. Your keeping us up. Be quiet.

I used to pick blueberries on a hill near Soldotna, Alaska. One day as I left my vehicle, I encountered two bear hunters coming down to the place where I had parked. "Any signs of bears up there?" "No. We didn't see any sign of bears at all." I headed up the hill with my bucket. One berry in the bucket, two berries in the bucket. For about 30 minutes. Pure solitude. But then I decided to stand and stretch. And what did I see at the far end of MY berry patch? A black bear. Since I had the element of surprise, I loudly cleared my throat...and the bear left. However on other hike, it had just rained lightly that morning as I started out. I hiked for about 10 miles and turned around to go back to the car. When I was almost back at the parking area, I saw fresh grizzly bear tracks, that were moving in the same direction as I had been walking in, which had not been there when I left my car. The bear may have been walking behind me. Still, the Alaskan bears were nothing compared to the Alaskan women I knew. I am reminded of the story of the white man who was captured by the Natives. In order to prove his manhood to the Natives, the white man had to pass a couple of tests. After the first test, the white man returned to the Native camp cut up with his clothes ripped up. Proudly the white man told the Natives, "Okay. I slept with the bear. Now where's the woman you want me to wrestle?"

So I go to what I think is the most solitude place on the planet and I am being filmed. All in the name of science. Hmmmmmm

Great story. Although, to be honest, I've managed to destroy my cell phone in less time.

We met this researcher when we traveled to Denali last summer and I was intrigued by his research. Thanks for sharing this incredible recording.

Many years ago I lived in a cabin in the mountains. At the same time I decided to take a course in B & W photography (with film). For one assignment, I decided to photograph the Stellar's jays that came to my porch to a water dish I had put out. I put the camera outside on the window ledge but had a cable release inside so that I could photograph with the jay knowing I was there. I waited. And waited. The jay, who had once come every day, did not return to the water dish for two full weeks. I got one photo.

I cannot tell you how many trail cameras of mine have been chewed, clawed, and even water shaken on by bears. That's just what bears do. And last spring I got a mom clawing and clawing, and when she quit, her cub imitated her and batted at it. That little one was learning from her mom to destroy cameras!

Too bad they didn’t have these recorders when I was a kid so maybe I could have gotten that unanswered question about a tree falling in the forest alone making noise out of my head.

Clearly this one was smarter than the average bear.

I'm originally from Alaska, when I was much younger, I worked for Fish and Game, as a technician, I worked with biologists. I took scale samples from salmon from the different fisheries. Trolling, gill net, and purse seining, you can age salmon by counting the growth rings on the back of the scales. We were attempting to understand what happens to fish when they leave the relative safety of their home stream. The state spend hundreds of millions of dollars augmenting the natural fish runs, by raising salmon in a hatchery until they can be code wire tagged, and released into a stream they will return to. Sadly, the very thing we were trying to protect sometimes at the risk of our lives, fishermen don't like to be told how much they can make. All for nothing, the warming ocean is killing the krill, the very thing that keeps the biggest mammals on the planet alive. But it's also the thing the small fish eats and the bigger fish eats the lift,e fish etc. that's what global warming is doing killing the food chain we need as human beings to survive.

"Karupa Lake is perhaps the premier place for solitude, pure wilderness and intact nature in the whole national park system." And a thousand adventurers just added it to their itineraries. There's a beautiful little spot in Utah, actually about the size of Delaware, with no paved roads in it. A few years ago a tourist photographed some ancient petroglyphs there and posted the GPS coordinates to his blog. The glyphs were hacked off about a week later. I wish we could talk about these places without turning them into trophies.

“There are people in this room who think they can destroy other people's property and get away with it. Well, let me tell you something about those people. They weren't counting on this brain! And this tape recorder …That's all there was. And yet, it speaks volumes. A low rumple. A metallic 'squink.' A 'glonk.' Someone crying out..."Dear God.” [Citation omitted for emphasis, see, e.g. Seinfeld "The Soul Mate" etc. etc. etc.- George Bearstanza"]

My area has seen an up tick in bear activity recently. The acorn crop is small. It is fall. Our black bears are trying to fatten up so they are moving into backyards looking for food. The local orchard has peaches, apples, and Yogis. Climate change and human alteration of the land scape will make life harder for all wild life.

When I first bought my house many years ago, it was incredibly quiet and still. Then they put in a four lane highway about three miles away, and a number of my neighbors also cut down many trees that acted as a natural sound barrier. Visitors still think it's quiet, but I know better. I long for electric cars to replace combustion engines.

thanks for reporting on the wonderful people who want to protect silence and a night sky undiminished by artificial light

Apparently pumpkin spice has made it even into our plastics.

I know of a place in northern Minnesota like this that's perfectly silent. It's about a half-hour hike to get there. No sound at all. And, no, I'm not telling.

Good to know there are activist bears out there, willing to make the extra effort to keep human interference at bay. Heed the warning. Let them have their solitude.

In 1989, my daughter and I flew into a small lake on the Continental Divide at the headwaters of the north fork of the Koyokuk River in Gates of the Arctic and spent the next two weeks hiking and canoeing back south to the small village of Bettles. In that two weeks we never saw another human being until the last day. However, in the course of our hiking we happened to spot a mayonnaise-sized jar, up to its neck in pine needles and duff that someone had dropped there, and from its status, obviously years ago. The fact that we stumbled across it was purely circumstance in a Park that has no trails, signs, campgrounds or structures. Perhaps it was left back in the late 20s or 30s when naturalist Bob Marshall and friends were exploring the region on summer packing trips into this incredible wilderness region. His book Alaska Wilderness is a great read for anyone who loves wilderness and the outdoors. I read it after we returned from our trip and in it he describes a very small area that looked like the bottom of a drained pond and was filled with round rocks, nestled together like a layer of bowling balls. We had walked right through that exact formation...again circumstance, but a fascinating connection. We were blessed to have had the experience.

Bears will bite into just about anything. They are very curious creatures. It is within their nature to use their teeth and mouth to explore and if it tastes good to them, they will eat it. If you take a look on You Tube you will find 'things bears have bitten' videos. They also have a habit of breaking into remote cabins to find stored food when they're hungry. They can smell the peanut butter from outside.

I wish a bear would destroy some of the cellphones on a typical subway ride.

I can't think of any reason an animal would be attracted to an inconspicuous, inanimate object like this and then go on to explore it to the extent that this bear did. My best guess would be that it detected traces of human odors on it and figured that it might somehow represent something to eat.

My father did the same thing with the little tape recorder with the 3 inch reels that he got me for Christmas, when I was trying to tape him at the dinner table a week later.

Although I think this is a worthwhile study and am not normally in favor of destruction of public property, I find myself on the bear's side on this one.

Had the bear not crunched the recorder, they would have heard the very unnatural sound of a plane arriving to pick up the device. Surround sound of silence - sounds glorious to me but would not mind a few breaks with a concerto grosso or two by Handel to bracket the silence every now and then.

After the Bear smashed the Audio Equipment, he stood up, wiped off his paws, and- strolling away, sang out; "I did it myyyyyyy way".

The recording put a smile on my face.

The wilderness holds a special, restorative kind of silence. There are sounds, but their the same sounds our ancestors have heard for countless generations. I haven't found any way of replicating the invigorating calm that comes from a few days in the woods. We should also remember that humans are not the only ones affected by human noise. That noise interferes with animals natural means of finding food and avoiding becoming food. It disturbs their calm and, I suspect, affects their health. We need to maintain earth's quiet places.

How do they know the bear wasn't hurt by that hardware? I always find the cavlier tone of these stories upsetting.

A bear needs his privacy!

A bit of a misinterpretation, I think. The bear is saying “Leave us alone!” “This is our Valley!” “We don’t want your danged microphones here!”

There being no forested area nearby, it seems the bear may have knocked out the sound system in an effort to achieve privacy in fulfilling what he normally does in the woods.

To call Karupa Lake, or any other pace in Alaska the "premier place for solitude, pure wilderness and intact nature in the whole national park system" reveals a naivete so stunning as to be laughable. Alaska has over over 80 million acres of incredibly remote federal land. There are various levels of protection from development and commercial activity (even motorized vehicles - no snow machines). It may take a bit of effort to get there but "solitude" and "pure wilderness" is abundantly available in Alaska with no particular location having any claim to a higher level of "purity". These researchers may claim this a subject worthy of study. We in Alaska simply choose to live in it's midst and enjoy it.

This is interesting to me because about 2 weeks ago I ran into some deer hunters on a nearby property. They routinely set up motion-sensor cameras to see what kind of deer are out and about, but every now and then they find one of their cameras torn to shreds. This time, the little sim card was still intact. The guy put it in his laptop and we looked through the pictures. Sure enough, just before the camera was destroyed, it captured a black bear approaching, sniffing around, and then the last pic is a bear paw. True story. These cameras are very small and hardly noticeable. But they do make a little clicking sound. All we can figure is the bears hate that sound, but it's still interesting that they regularly notice the devices and attack them.

Having spent a week at Karupa Lake in August 1996, I can attest to its silence. My recollection was that the only human sounds, other than those from our own camp, was a single airplane flyover at about 20,000 feet. I was there as a volunteer for the Park Service, cleaning up trash left from oil exploration in the late 1940s--mostly abandoned 55 gallon drums, which we crushed and stacked for later pickup--and burning the disintegrating remains of a small plywood cabin someone had built decades before, as a small hunting camp. It seemed that our job was to restore the illusion of an untouched wilderness, even though the place had been, decades before, the site of a moderately large scale oil exploration effort. But when we were there, it was silent.

Having stood many times where the sound of humans is absent, I know how many people do not realize just how noisy we are. We certainly make a racket but apparently, so can bears. Great story.

The biggest threat to the natural resource of the beautiful sounds of nature is small private aircraft. To reduce their numbers in the sky the FAA needs to give far fewer licenses to recreational pilots. Another solution is very high luxury taxes on the purchase of recreational aircraft and an end to the massive government subsidies at small aircraft airports which keeps usage fees extremely low. The hobby of a very small number of people has a very negative impact on a very large number of people who want to enjoy nature without noise pollution.

Listening for unexpected wilderness sounds must be like NORAD operators looking for Russian missiles. Very boring!!!