When Tim Manley retired from his illustrious career as FWP’s Region 1 Grizzly Bear Manager, he left a legacy of caring for bears and the Montanans who lived among them.  Bear management specialists are the unsung heroes who do much of the difficult, essential work necessary to improve the willingness and ability of people to share the landscape with bears. His boots were going to be difficult to fill.

Well, his replacement, Justine Vallieres, has done just that. She had worked as a bear technician under Manley for four years, and worked with wolf biologists Kent Laudon and Diane Boyd prior to that. Now, as Region 1’s Wildlife Conflict Management Specialist, she has made sure that the transition was seamless. She has shown the same commitment to keeping bears and people safe while they figure out how to live together harmoniously. She’s a badass hockey player, too.

In 2024, she responded to 18 grizzly bear conflict calls just in and around Columbia Falls, almost half of the 2024 total (44) for Region 1. The year before that, which was a bad year for wild berry crops, that number was 30. Black bear numbers were even higher, with 54 conflict calls in 2022 and 31 in 2023.

The biggest problem, as always, is unsecured garbage, though pet food, chickens, and fruit trees draw bears into human settlements, and this inevitably leads to conflicts—and too often, dead bears. This is unfortunate, because solutions are generally simple and often inexpensive.

“We’re pushing preventative measures and trying to set as few traps as possible,” said Vallieres at last year’s Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC) in Choteau. “I can set trap after trap after trap, but if the unsecured attractants are still there, the problem will keep recurring.”

Recently she took her show on the virtual road to help folks in Durango, Colorado, live with bears—and thankfully it was recorded. This one-hour video is a fantastic resource for anyone who lives in Bear Country, and it is now available to all of us. Her easy-going demeanor and wonderful stories make it easy to learn about how we can do our part to ensure that bears, both grizzlies and blacks, are able to live among us.

The fall always results in a spike of human-bear conflicts, so make sure you are doing your part. Don’t forget to share it with your friends and neighbors, too.