This story is part of a series following people who get up close to grizzly bears, as the debate rages on about whether they should remain protected by the Endangered Species Act.
It was a big day for Kari Kingery, her husband and their toddler, Henry. It was the two-year-old’s first time picking apples.
“You ready to pick apples, Henry?” Kingery asked, as the family hopped in their car.
“Ya,” Henry replied, shyly.
Kingery parked their car on the side of a relatively busy road right outside Ronan on the Flathead Indian Reservation, about an hour and a half south of Glacier National Park in Northwest Montana.
The Mission Mountains towered over fields of dry grass.
“We’ll unpack here,” Kingery said, closing the car door. “And the trees that we'll be picking today are just along the road.”
Kingery is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and leads the tribes’ wildlife program. She and her family were out to pick enough apples to make a few jars of cider.
But the effort solves another problem. Across the West, wildlife managers are looking for ways to reduce conflict between bears and humans. Homesteaders brought apple trees to the region in the early 1900s, and they spread wildly from there. And bears love apples.
“You’ll find random apple trees that will draw them in and then have them be right next to homes,” Kingery explained.
For about five years, Kingery has helped run a program that connects landowners with hundreds of people who want to harvest excess apples and other fruit, something known as “fruit gleaning.”
“ We get calls every fall. If we don't get our fruit gleaning equipment out fast enough, we get people asking when we're gonna set 'em out 'cause their trees are ready,” Kingery said.
Her husband, Hugh, picked up the apple picker, a long red stick with a little cage at the end, and started plucking fruit from a tree.
“They're just ready to pop right off,” he said.
The family dropped the apples into a laundry basket, creating a big thud. Henry waddled around, holding apples in both hands.
They filled their basket in 20 minutes and picked from a couple more trees on their way back to the car. Then they head into the center of Ronan to use the cider press at the town’s annual fall festival.
“Henry, can you say bye-bye?” Hugh asked.
“Bye-bye big apple,” Henry said.
Compared to other parts of the region, people are more tolerant of grizzlies here, because Indigenous people and bears have coexisted in the area for a long time, said Kingery. The tribes’ program is designed to ensure that healthy relationship continues.
“We know that this has always been the bear's home,” Kingery said. “They created this area for us to live and flourish, and so there's that respect there.”
She said that respect is the basis for how the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes manage wildlife. Hunting grizzlies isn’t allowed in the lower 48 and the tribes want it to stay that way.
“The grizzly bear is a species that is highly revered spiritually and culturally by the tribes,” Kingery said. “And so they have never harvested or hunted them.”
But Montana, and neighboring states Wyoming and Idaho, are pushing to take grizzlies off the Endangered Species list, and allow some hunting.
At the fall festival, residents greeted farm animals like ducks and goats, jumped in bouncy castles and gathered around wooden cider presses.
“So right now we are loading apples into the top of the cider press,” Kingery explained, before turning a wheel to grind the apples, which ended up in a bucket below.
Next, she cranked a wooden block to compress them, and juice flowed into mason jars and milk jugs.
“Would you like to go first, love?” Hugh asked as he handed Kingery the apple cider.
She lifted the jar to her mouth and took a big gulp to taste the fruits of their labor.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio, KJZZ in Arizona and NPR, with additional support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
