Podcast Episode - Fat Bear Week 2022
By now you’ve hopefully heard of Fat Bear Week
It’s probably almost as famous as Shark Week.
About two years ago the GPS team was brainstorming ideas for podcast and interesting people and David mentioned in passing that his brother, Carl Ramm, does bear management. The concept of bear management was pretty intriguing, so of course the team had lots of questions for David and brought Carl on as a guest to the podcast.
The original concept for the first podcast was that Carl would talk about Bear Management and we’d tie that kind of “management” to leadership. Surely managing bears had similar leadership lessons or concepts and managing humans?
Brown bear seated along the lakeshore enjoying the view
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Bear Management and Leadership
It turned out that the bear management podcast became one of our most listened to podcasts. And we’ll confess: there isn’t any overlap with leadership and bear management. It’s just plain interesting. This is our third podcast with Carl at this point and we don’t even pretend to tie managing bears to leadership .
In his bear management role, Carl spends time in Brooks Camp Alaska at the Katmai National Park trying to keep bears away from people and vice versa. He learns their personalities and habits. There is something majestic and captivating about bears and, like all the people who travel to Brooks Camp in the hopes of catching site ofa bear fish for salmon in a creek, our team is fascinated with the tales of adventure.
In a previous episode, we learned about Holly and how she took another bear’s cub into her wings and this season we talk about the stars of the season and the triplet cubs who have a great shot at winning Fat Bear Week Junior this year (mostly due to their cuteness). We learn from Carl how bears parent their cubs differently just like humans, they take care of their cubs for varying amounts of time and give them different size leashes. It reminds me of parenting my own cubs and wondering if all the young ones of the bunch get the longest leash because well, momma bears get tired and more relaxed.
Voting for Fat Bear Junior Week starts today and ends tomorrow. Fat Bear Week proper runs from October 5 to October 11. Make sure to check out both of them and place your votes!
Carl gives us some insider secrets this episode so make sure to listen before you vote and let us know what you think!
Anyone else want to sign up for a trip to Brooks Camp next season?
From Carl: I want to pass along a video that Melissa Freels took of me hazing 910, her cub, and her sister from the cabin closest to the back of the lodge. Toward the end of the late shift this area can be a conveyor belt for bears wanting to sneak in a bite of freshly cut grass before moving on to sleep near the beach, and it says something that I only have a vague memory of this hazing. It’s interesting how cautious 909 is in approaching her sister and her sister’s cub. The light was bad enough and the breeze strong enough that misidentification was possible for either, and with a cub in the mix caution is essential even between sisters.