Grizzly 399 is the most famous bear in the world. The new film, 399: Queen of the Tetons, makes its world premiere at Missoula’s Documentary Film Festival on Feb. 16
In 2020, world-famous Grizzly 399 emerged from hibernation with four cubs, astounding her fans and wildlife biologists alike. She was 25 years old. This image graces the cover of Thomas Mangelsen's new book, "Grizzly 399: The World's Most Famous Mother Bear." Photo by Thomas D. Mangelsen
by Laura
Lundquist
She’s
beautiful. She’s prolific. But most of all, she’s highly intelligent.
It’s not
surprising to hear a celebrity described in those terms. Unless that celebrity
is a grizzly bear. However, almost everyone who’s seen her agrees that 399, the
matriarch of Grand Teton National Park, is far from an ordinary bear.
No ordinary
bear would have her own documentary. She now stars in 399: Queen of the
Tetons, which will give the world a lens through which to see just how
extraordinary she is. Some, including film director-producer Elizabeth Leiter,
hope the film can raise more awareness of the strength and the vulnerability of
399 and, by extension, all grizzly bears. But a few worry that some people will
assume all bears are or can be like 399, which could put both bears and people
in danger.
“I think humans
often fight a lot about what’s the best way to do this or that, in terms of
protecting grizzlies or delisting or climate change … but we’re so
interconnected with [grizzly bears], we ought to take a few cues,” Leiter said,
referencing 399. “If she’s struggling, we’re actually struggling. If she’s
struggling to feed
Elizabeth Leiter, director of "399: Queen of the Tetons"
her young, we’re next. If we’re going to take resilience
from her story, that she’s beating the odds, then we ought to think about how
we can support her being that resilient.”
On Friday night,
February 16, Leiter’s documentary will have its world premiere at the Big Sky
Documentary Film Festival in Missoula. Rachel Gregg, the festival’s executive
director, said her staff chose 399: Queen of the Tetons for the opening
night of the festival because, with its wildlife and conservation message,
“it’s a film Missoula is particularly interested in.” That was proven two weeks
ago, when Missoulians filled the Wilma Theater to capacity, eager to see another
grizzly bear film focused on 399, Return of the Grizzly, which also
screened at the Center for the Arts in Jackson, Wyoming, on February 6.
“Some of the
stories around this particular bear are relevant to increasing concerns about
human interaction with wildlife, what that means for society, how we make
rules, and how we protect the animals while doing what we can to help people
who come in contact with animals which, of course, is helpful from a
conservation standpoint, but can also be very challenging,” Gregg said. “It’s
starting conversations in a way we think is really important, which was one
reason we thought it was super timely to open with a film like this and make
sure people come and see it.”
The documentary
is Leiter’s first foray into wildlife filmmaking, after developing her visual
chops producing television content for PBS, National Geographic, CNN and VICE.
Her directorial debut took place in 2018 with her Frontline film, The
Abortion Divide. The second film she directed highlighted the advocacy work
of Jane Goodall, from the time Goodall left her chimpanzee research in
Tanzania, Africa, through today. Released in 2020, Jane Goodall: The Hope
was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Nature Documentary.
“I think humans often fight a lot about what’s the best way to do this or that, in terms of protecting grizzlies or delisting or climate change … but we’re so interconnected with [grizzly bears], we ought to take a few cues.” – Elizabeth Leiter, Director, 399: Queen of the Tetons
But on a
fateful evening in 2019, while still filming Jane Goodall, Leiter got to
talking with one of Goodall’s friends, wildlife photographer Thomas Mangelsen.
She hadn’t thought about her next film, but by the time the evening was over,
the subject was set.
“If you’ve ever spoke with Tom for longer than five minutes, you
know about 399. She’s the love of his
life, a self-described obsession of his,” Leiter said. “The way he talks about
her is so passionate and so intense and with so much admiration of her that it
became clear there was something interesting here.”
So began almost
two years of not just filming 399 and people in the Jackson area but also
combing through an archive of millions of photos and videos taken by people who
have revered the bear for more than two decades. At first, Leiter wasn’t quite
sure what the story should be. When she first Googled Grizzly 399, Leiter was
stunned that a bear could have become such a local celebrity and developed such
a fan club. Should the documentary cover 399’s whole life? She watched video
after video, inspired by the footage but somewhat overwhelmed by having to decide
what to use in the film and what to leave out.
“The amount of effort that’s gone into keeping that bear and her young alive is extraordinary. If we had to do that with every bear, there’d be hundreds of bear managers out there.” – Chris Servheen, former Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
But 2020 was a
big year for 399. That spring, she emerged from hibernation with four cubs, an
unusually large family, especially for a 25-year-old sow. It turned out, if any
bear could keep all of them safe in a risky world made riskier by people, 399
could. So that became Leiter’s focus: two years with 399 and her quadruplets. And
those happened to be two crucial years.
“Things were
starting to happen around her. In 2021, three of her cubs were darted, caged
and collared. So it can’t just be
a sweet, little story, because dark stuff is happening to her,” Leiter said.
“So there’s this subtext of ‘this is really going to be an uphill battle.’
Within that broader structure, we explore other parts of her life—meeting Tom
Mangelsen and the mauling incident that happened in 2007—and her behavior with
these [four cubs] as an exploration of her relationship with humans and our
relationship to her, and even more broadly, our relationship with nature.”
"Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek" was Mangelsen's first book about famed Grizzly 399. Photo courtesy Thomas D. Mangelsen
Many of the
humans in the film are bear paparazzi, photographers who spend hours, days and
weeks cruising Grand Teton National Park’s roads to get a glimpse and hopefully
a photo of the famous bear. Like Mangelsen, many are obsessed with following
399, and their stories appealed to film festival staff.
“The film
follows the work of the photographers. Actually being behind the scenes and
seeing that experience was very interesting and different,” Gregg said. “We’re
getting to follow their work and understand what inspires them, what their
challenges are, what circumstances they need to be in to capture that image.
And then, of course, the more gray areas about what they’re hoping people see
as the result of their work, what they’re hoping they understand.”
Leiter herself
got a taste of what it takes to be a 399 fan-club member, spending three weeks
in April 2021 parked along the road in Grand Teton Park waiting with everyone
else for 399 to emerge. As the late-winter days dragged on, some without a
glimpse of even a bird, her dedication began to falter.
2020 was a big year for 399. That spring, she emerged from hibernation with four cubs, an unusually large family, especially for a 25-year-old sow.
“Then, I was so
lucky to be there when she actually emerged,” Leiter said. “Glad I was still
sitting there. Not only to see her and the cubs—you know, they’re brown and
beautiful against the white snow, just stunning—but also to see the joy within
that community that day: the bear lovers and photographers. That might be one
of my favorite scenes of the film. It has a lot of heart in that moment. It was
like a grand entrance.”
But as adoring
as they are, the photographers and tourists who love 399 are unknowingly part
of her problem. They might see less of her if she wasn’t such a good mother.
But 399 hangs out near roads because it’s safer for her cubs than in the
backcountry, where they could be killed by male grizzlies. Safety, however, is
relative. The bear-jams that seethe around 399 have habituated her as well as
her cubs, made them too relaxed around people, according to Chris Servheen,
former grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. If she weren’t such an extraordinary bear, she could have gotten in
trouble with people years ago.
Servheen, who
worked for the Wildlife Service for 35 years, credits the Grand Teton Wildlife Brigade—wildlife
managers who are really people managers—with keeping people and bears separated
and safe in the park. Even outside Grand Teton, he knows it was a team of
bear managers that shepherded 399 and her cubs as they padded through the
middle of Jackson one night in November 2021. So he was dismayed when photographers
berate bear managers in the film for trapping and collaring bears. What speaks
to film reviewers doesn’t
necessarily play well to biologists.
“The bear managers are trying to keep these bears alive, and they’re trying to deal with this situation where they’ve got with this super-habituated bear walking in and
around people,” Servheen said. “The amount of effort that’s
gone into keeping that bear and her young alive is extraordinary. If we had to
do that with every bear, there’d be
hundreds of bear managers out there.”
Servheen makes
a brief appearance in the documentary but said he spent six hours talking to
Leiter and her crew as they drove around Jackson. Most of that apparently
landed on the cutting-room floor.
The grizzly
bear expert told Leiter then that other bears, including some of 399’s
offspring, become food conditioned if they get food rewards from human trash
bins, pet food dishes or bird feeders. Then they start looking for human-use
areas because they think they’ll find
food, and if they’re used to being around people, they become even bolder. It
can be worse if it’s a young bear, because just like human teenagers, they
explore things they shouldn’t and maybe have learned some bad habits without
the benefit of experience. They pose a threat to human safety so repeat
offenders are often euthanized. A fed bear is a dead bear, as they say. But not
399.
“I’ll give her
credit,” Servheen said. “She was fed on a person’s deck but she didn’t continue
to come back to that deck or any of the decks nearby. She never really broke
through that point of hanging around people all the time. We see that regularly
with other bears. In that way, she’s unique. She’s been successful at getting
human foods and then not continually camping on top of humans.”
It’s never easy
to tell a complicated story. Difficult choices must be made of what to keep and
what to leave out, and some will question those decisions. But Leiter said she
learned from Yale University ecologist Susan Clark that 399 doesn’t have a
story; she has a life. So Leiter chose scenes that provide an intimate look into
the life of 399.
“The story is
more about what humans create around her,” Leiter said. “She required me to
think deeper and harder about almost every element that touches her life. So I
hope I’ve done her justice by trying to respect her lived life and explore what
her story means to humans, and why that matters.”
399: Queen of
the Tetons debuts in its world premiere at the Big Sky Documentary Film
Festival in Missoula, Montana, at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 16. Visit bigskyfilmfest.org for more
information.
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About Laura Lundquist
Laura Lundquist earned a journalism degree from the University of Montana in 2010, and has since covered the environmental beat for newspapers in Twin Falls, Idaho and Bozeman, in addition to a year of court reporting in Hamilton. She's now a freelance environmental reporter with the daily news magazine Missoula Current.
