08/10/2026
This is facinating
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BkVVbUam9/
Montana wildlife managers captured two grizzly siblings in the Bitterroot Valley, GPS-collared them, and released them separately in the Sapphire Mountains. Both bears independently started walking north. Twelve days later, 76 miles from where they were released, they found each other. Seventeen days after that, they crawled into the same den.
The siblings were two-year-olds, a 230-pound male and a 172-pound female, first spotted traveling together through the lower Blackfoot Valley in August 2022. They had crossed Interstate 90 near Turah east of Missoula, moved south through the Sapphire Mountains, and turned up near Florence in the northern Bitterroot Valley. Bear manager Jamie Jonkel with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks had been tracking their progress through a string of game camera photos, resident sightings, and phone calls. The bears had not hurt anyone. They had not broken into anything. But they were spending time near garbage, fruit trees, and livestock feed, and Jonkel knew where that trajectory ended. We got them before they elevated any higher, he said. Before breaking into chicken coops or attacking a goat.
FWP trapped both bears near Lolo in early October, on different days. Each was sedated, fitted with a GPS collar, and driven to a remote area on the edge of the Welcome Creek Wilderness in the Sapphires. They were released separately. The idea was that two young bears placed individually in wild country with good habitat might settle in and establish themselves far from the Bitterroot Valley's garbage cans and fruit trees.
Neither bear settled in. Both started moving north almost immediately.
The GPS data told the story that nobody was standing in the forest to see. Two collared bears, released days apart in the same wilderness, chose the same direction without being able to see, hear, or smell each other across 76 miles of mountain terrain. They did not wander. They did not circle. They moved north with the kind of directional consistency that looks like intention on a map, even though nobody can prove what a grizzly intends.
The female walked north. The male walked north. Twelve days and 76 miles after release, their GPS points converged. Two dots on a screen that had been moving independently through the Sapphires and across the Clark Fork drainage merged into one location. The siblings had found each other in the wilderness without a trail, without a signal, and without any mechanism that science can currently explain. Whether they followed the same drainage, detected each other's scent across miles of timber, or simply walked toward the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem because that is where they came from and met by convergence is unknown.
Both crossed Interstate 90. The highway that they had first crossed heading south in August, the same highway that grizzly Lingenpolter had tried to cross 46 times before succeeding, the same highway that functions as one of the most significant barriers to grizzly connectivity in western Montana. The siblings crossed it heading north and kept going.
Seventeen days after reuniting, they entered the same den. Two bears that wildlife managers had deliberately separated crawled into the same hole in the ground and spent the winter together. Montana Outdoors, the FWP magazine, published the full account in its May/June 2023 issue under the title Together Again.
The male survived the winter. He emerged in spring 2023 and crossed Interstate 90 several more times during the year, moving between the NCDE and the landscapes to the south with the casual disregard for traffic that defines every grizzly expanding its range through western Montana. The monitoring reports from the following year dropped the word "presumed" from their description of the pair's relationship. The 2022 report called them presumed siblings. The 2023 report simply called them siblings.
Image is for illustration purposes only
Source: Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks / Montana Outdoors, May/June 2023 / Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, NCDE Monitoring Reports 2022 and 2023 / Missoulian / KPAX / KRTV.
