VIDEO:
The Grizzlies of ANWR
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To thrive, these majestic animals require very large areas of continuous territory with little human activity. The home range of a male grizzly can be more than a thousand square miles.
The grizzly is omnivorous, eating everything from insects to moose, although its diet is primarily vegetation. The grizzlies of ANWR are smaller than their Kodiak cousins and other coastal brown bears, subsisting principally on roots, berries, and other vegetation, occasionally supplementing their diet with carrion or small mammals, including moose calves and ground squirrels, which they dig out of ground.
Grizzly bears escape the long winters by hibernating for up to eight months each year, during which they do not eat or drink. Most den in the mountains south of the coastal plain in rock caves, as ground dens present a challenge in the land of permafrost. During this long sleep, they do not eat or drink, but females give birth and nurse their cubs.
Between 1 and 4 cubs are born to a healthy female an average of every 4 years. Cubs stay with their mother from between 1 1/2 and 4 1/2 years. Due to the harsh climate of ANWR, reproduction rates are low and growth rates are slow. Nonetheless, the grizzly population of the reserve is stable and healthy, with about 1 grizzly per every hundred square miles.