Northwest Trek is celebrating six years since grizzly bears Hawthorne and Huckleberry first arrived at the wildlife park. To mark the occasion, our community is invited to join special keeper chats on August 3 and August 4 at 1:30 p.m., where the bears will get special enrichment items like fruit and fish cakes.
Born in the winter of 2018, our grizzly bears were orphaned in the wild: Hawthorne in Alaska and Huckleberry in Montana. Neither would have survived without their mom. Cared for by local zoos, they came to their new Northwest Trek home in August 2018.
When the bears first arrived as cubs, they were around 90 pounds. Now, Hawthorne weighs an estimated 680 pounds, and Huckleberry weighs about 600 pounds. They each eat 30 pounds of food daily as they prepare for winter 2024’s torpor season. By the fall, they will each be about 70 to 80 pounds heavier.
Carnivore keepers Haley and Carly say Hawthorne and Huckleberry are playful, energetic bears but also appreciate a long nap in the sun.
“Sometimes we’ll even find them sleeping together and snuggling in their dens,” said Haley, who has cared for the bears since they first arrived.
Hawthorne is dark chocolate-colored (grizzly bears can have blonde, brown, or even black fur) and loves to play with the enrichment toys he gets from his keepers. He’s quick to bang around anything he can carry or throw and likes to rearrange “furniture” in his den.
“Hawthorne is a curious bear and loves to investigate anything new in his habitat,” said Carly. “When it’s warm out, he enjoys playing in the water from the keeper’s hose.”
Huckleberry is a lighter brown. He’s great at balancing on logs, climbing trees, and finding food that keepers have hidden in logs and other crevices around his forested habitat.
“He is thoughtful and deliberate with his actions, especially when figuring out how to get food out of a puzzle feeder,” explained Haley. “He problem solves by laying on his back and holding the puzzle feeder with all four paws to empty it, using gravity rather than exerting energy by rolling it around on the ground.”
Keepers say Hawthorne is the more excitable of the pair, always on the go.
“Because they came to Northwest Trek as young cubs around the same time, they are incredibly bonded,” said Carly. “They are always near each other and curious about what the other one is doing.”
While they are not related, they are often referred to by staff and guests as the “grizzly bros.”
And, like many brothers, they wrestle all the time. On warmer days, look for them wrestling or looking for treats like apples or fish in their seven-foot-deep pool.
“It’s been such a joy watching them learn to swim, become more confident, and grow up over the last few years,” said Haley.
Haley says the bears continue to explore how they can use their ever-changing bodies to make meaningful changes to their environment to suit their needs, like digging a den or building rock bridges to cross the stream in their habitat.
“We’ve watched as they’ve learned about all of the seasons we experience in the Pacific Northwest, from their first 100-degree day spent soaking in the pool and playing in hose water to their first time together in a snowstorm,” said Haley.
Ambassadors for their species
The bears have brought joy and excitement to park guests and taught them important lessons about bear safety.
“They’ve demonstrated for our guests just how effective bear canisters can be and have inspired them to be more bear aware when recreating in nature,” said Carly.
The keepers agree that wild grizzly bears are lucky to have Hawthorne and Huckleberry representing them.
“I can’t think of two better ambassadors for their species,” said Haley.
Bringing wild grizzly bears back to Washington
While Northwest Trek celebrates six great years with Hawthorne and Huckleberry, there will soon be a reason to celebrate the arrival of other grizzly bears in the state.
In April, the National Park Service and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced a decision to actively restore grizzly bears to Washington’s North Cascades, where the animals once roamed for thousands of years as a key part of the ecosystem. Populations mainly declined because humans were killing them directly.
Agencies hope to translocate three to seven grizzly bears from the Rocky Mountains or interior British Columbia per year for a period of five to 10 years to establish an initial population of 25 bears in the North Cascades ecosystem.
According to the National Park Service, the U.S. portion of the North Cascades ecosystem is roughly 9,800 square miles in size, larger than the state of New Jersey, and contains some of the most intact wildlands in the contiguous U.S.
“This is the final piece for our state to have a full complement of carnivores on its landscape, which is a vital part of maintaining a balanced, thriving ecosystem,” said Marc Heinzman, Conservation Manager at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium and Northwest Trek Wildlife Park. “Grizzly bears will not recover in the North Cascades without these reintroduction efforts, and we’re thrilled to have a plan for recovery in place.”
Northwest Trek proudly supports grizzly bear restoration and works to teach its guests how to successfully coexist with bears.
Grizzly bears are currently listed as threatened in the lower 48 states.