Grizzlies of the Gobi: On the edge

The typical picture of a grizzly bear in Montana is of a bruin strolling through lush woods eating huckleberries, or working its way up an avalanche chute as it mows down cow parsnip.

But in Mongolia, a subspecies of grizzly dwells in the high desert, roaming from oasis to oasis eating, of all things, rhubarb.

National Geographic author and biologist Doug Chadwick has spent two seasons in the field helping track and study these unique bears. They have extra-dense fur that guards them from the rocks and cold of the unforgiving Gobi Desert and extra long claws, even for a grizzly. The claws come in handy to dig up wild rhubarb that dots the landscape.

Desert covers about half the country and the bears, which once roamed a far greater portion of the terrain, now live in an isolated protected area in the southeast corner of Mongolia. The region is dry even by desert standards.

“By the time a cloud arrives, it has traveled thousands of miles over land,” Chadwick said.

Average precipitation is just two to six inches a year. The oases are likely fed by ancient waters from a wetter climate eons ago. The area, however, supports a rich array of wildlife, including wild ass, ibex, wolves and Asiatic lynx, their migration routes written into the sand and rock.

“This region is the bare bones of the earth,” Chadwick said.

Grizzly bears there are on the brink of extinction. Maybe two or three dozen are left. Researchers have trapped and radio-collared them. There is some hope — females are reproducing, and young are being born and surviving.

There are also human threats, Chadwick noted. Mongolia was occupied by the Soviet Union until 1990 and largely left untouched. But today, the Gobi Desert has drawn corporate interest. It may be a wasteland to the naked eye, but its soils are rich with minerals and rare-earth metals. A coal mine recently started up, and illegal wildcat miners look for metals under the cover of darkness — and sometimes even in broad daylight.

The threat isn’t just from mining activity but from potential impacts to the water supply. Mining could affect the aquifer, and if the oasis go, so go the grizzlies and the other wildlife with them.

“These are the only desert-dwelling bears in the world,” Chadwick noted.