It’s sometimes said that we humans have short memories. That certainly seems to be true when it comes to bear-human conflicts in the Anchorage area. How else to explain that planners with both Alaska State Parks and the municipality’s Department of Parks and Recreation have laid the groundwork for trails that could significantly increase the chance of bear-human encounters and maulings?

These plans have Rick Sinnott worried. I’m worried too. And every local resident who’s concerned about bear-human interactions should worry about plans to build new trails in areas heavily used by brown bears. As any bear-aware person knows, brown bears – the coastal cousins of grizzlies – pose a much greater danger to people than the more timid black bears that annually come into town.

Who can forget that brown bears attacked and mauled two Anchorage residents in Bicentennial Park in 2008 and charged at least a few other people on the east side of town that summer? Yet Parks and Rec has now adopted a “Far North Bicentennial Park Trail Improvement Plan” that includes two new trails near the South Fork of Campbell Creek – and the spot where the 2008 maulings occurred.

That adopted trail plan does a few things that trouble Sinnott. First, it relocates Rover’s Run – the trail along which the maulings occurred – 100 to 200 feet farther from the creek. Sinnott points out that such a move “will probably not make a significant difference in bear encounters compared with the existing location. We [wildlife managers at the Department of Fish and Game] continue to recommend a permanent or seasonal closure of Rover’s Run.” Yet city planners appear to rule out such closures, which in Sinnott’s thinking “is a very bad idea.”

The plan also establishes a nearby system of “single track trails” of the kind that mountain bikers love. To again quote Sinnott’s comments to Parks and Rec personnel: “I think this is a very bold move on someone’s part. Pick the location with the highest number of brown bear attacks and maulings in the Anchorage Bowl and build a new network of trails there. Not just any trails, but narrow trails with lots of turns that will cater to mountain bikers moving fast. I don’t need to remind you that Rover’s Run is the poster child for poor trail locations in the Anchorage Bowl. Why would anyone want to compound that bad decision?”

To make his point crystal clear, Sinnott added, “The South Fork of Campbell Creek has many of the salmon that spawn in the Anchorage Bowl and it will always attract lots of brown bears. I think the location chosen for the STA Phase II trails, near Rover’s Run, is a very bad idea. I also think that ruling out seasonal or temporary closures is a very bad idea. Finally, moving Rover’s Run a short distance from the creek is a very bad idea. . . .

“I anticipate that the three decisions will significantly increase the number of bear-human encounters, significantly increase the number of brown bear attacks, and significantly increase the number of people mauled in FNBP. Again, I strongly advise against these decisions. I hope these comments are clear enough.”

They seem pretty darn clear to me.

Given Sinnott’s strong opposition, a reasonable person has to wonder how the heck these specific trail plans were adopted. I certainly wondered. So I contacted Parks and Rec. And I got this explanation from Holly Spoth-Torres, the department’s park development and natural resource manager: “Adoption [of the FNBP Trail Improvement Plan] by the Parks and Recreation Commission is just one step in the approval process,” those steps ultimately leading to “a site plan review at the Urban Design Commission level, which would be the last step. . . . It is typical that as projects like this move through all the different steps, they are edited and changed slightly based on recommendations from the advisory and regulatory bodies."

They may be changed "slightly"? That’s not encouraging if the trails need to be dropped.

Spoth-Torres continues: “Frankly, it isn’t my style to present something to a regulatory body like the UDC until agreeable solutions are reached by stakeholders and those who have been closely involved. Until I received Rick’s comments on the day of the Parks & Recreation Commission meeting in August, I believed that consensus had been reached. Clearly that isn’t the case, we still have work to do on 2 – 3 projects included in the plan.”

It’s hard to know why Spoth-Torres or anyone else involved in the plan believed consensus had been reached, because all along Sinnott had “strongly recommended” against trails in the South Fork Campbell Creek corridor. In fact Sinnott told me that he’d essentially been blindsided by the adopted plan.

I hope and pray that the process Spoth-Torres describes will indeed allow someone in a position of authority – someone with common sense – to follow Sinnott’s recommendations concerning the proposed trails discussed here. There are plenty of places to put trails in local parks without increasing the likelihood of bear-human encounters, bear attacks, and maulings.

The second bad trail idea has already been reported in the Anchorage Daily News by Mike Campbell (“Cameras reveal fault in Eagle River trail plan”), so I needn’t go into detail here. But because Alaska State Parks is currently taking comments on its new Draft Chugach State Park Trail Management Plan, I urge DNR planners and park managers to please, please heed Sinnott’s advice and not put a trail through a known brown bear corridor. And I encourage members of the public who are submitting comments to oppose the proposed trail segment that runs through Eagle River Canyon between the Glenn Highway and Briggs Bridge. As Sinnott notes, “Overall I like the idea of new trails in the park, but not in Eagle River Canyon. Bears cannot afford to avoid the area, because it is one of the few ways to cross the Glenn without weaving through six lanes of traffic and because the king salmon in Meadow Creek will continue to attract bears . . ."

Folks who wonder if a trail here would really pose a danger should consider that the third Anchorage-area person to be attacked by a brown bear in 2008 was mauled in this very canyon, along Meadow Creek, about 100 yards from the proposed trailhead.

Like Sinnott, I wonder what the heck planners are thinking, to propose new trails in areas where brown bears are known to congregate in summer. This makes no sense at all, if the goal is to minimize bear-human conflicts and increase public safety. Again, Sinnott: “Anchorage already has two trails that are closed for part of every summer to avoid maulings [Rovers Run since 2008, and the Albert Loop Trail near the Eagle River Nature Center]. Do we want to build more trails in the few remaining areas where bear maulings are highly likely if human use is greatly increased?”