Oh Give Me a Home: A 'Creaturefuge' for Grizzlies
The New York Times
By: Neil Genzlinger
August 20, 2000
Chris and Martin Kratt have been beaming their pro-wildlife message to young PBS viewers for several years now, but lately they have been working on taking the next step: turning interest into action. With the help of their fans, they have recently established the first Kratt Creaturefuge, as they call it, a 1,200-acre grizzly bear preserve in Montana.
The miracle of corporate sponsorship made it possible. The Old Navy retail chain has been kicking in money in correlation with children’s interest — for instance, $2 for each person who turned out for this summer’s Kratt Brothers Zoo Tour and the parallel autograph sessions with the Kratts at Old Navy stores.
The idea itself, though, came from the Kratts’ pint-sized viewers, the brothers said. Money started showing up in the fan mail, a few dollars here and there from a child’s lemonade stand or bake sale. ”Please use this money to help creatures,” the youngsters would write.
”We got so many letters from kids saying, ‘Hey, I know I’m just a kid, but I really want to help animals; what can I do?’ ” Martin Kratt said. ”Kids felt powerless. They felt like they couldn’t do anything. What we’re trying to do is give them a chance, give them a project that they can rally around and be a part of.”
The children also chose which animal to help, from a list of several in North America that are in jeopardy. This year is the 25th anniversary of the placement of grizzlies on the threatened-species list in the lower 48 states. Biologists say 50,000 or more grizzlies may have inhabited the region west of the Mississippi at the dawn of the 19th century; by 1975, the figure was down to 600. The number has crept up, to perhaps 1,200 now, but the animal’s slow reproduction rate works against it.
”If you were God creating a mammal that would be tough to recover, the grizzly bear is it,” Louisa Wilcox of the Sierra Club told The Associated Press recently.
So the Kratts have preserved what they call Grizzly Gulch, a chunk of largely lower-elevation land particularly appealing to female grizzlies with cubs. Their live stage show on this summer’s zoo tour was the story of how they found the site.
The parcel is not, they said, the type of majestic mountain land that most people conjure up when they think of a wildlife preserve, but that makes it all the more important, not only to grizzly bears, but also to elk, deer and many other species.
”Most people don’t know it, but the most endangered habitat in North America is prairie,” Chris Kratt said.
”It was our Serengeti,” Martin added.
Jamie Williams, state director for the Nature Conservancy of Montana, which helped the brothers select the spot and will provide advice on managing it, said his group was eager to see the land protected because it had recently come on the market and was in danger of being subdivided. The property, he said, is on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, where the high country quickly drops away and merges into prairie.
”It’s really the last place in the country that bears are still wandering out in the prairie the way they did in the days of Lewis and Clark,” Mr. Williams said. The Kratts’ preserve, he said, will complement what private landowners and local communities have been doing for years, using easements and other techniques to help create a significant swath of land that is protected in one way or another.
Mr. Williams said the Nature Conservancy was pleased to see someone working to convey the importance of conservation to children. ”I think they’ve gotten a whole generation of kids excited about wildlife,” he said, ”and now they’re trying to channel that, and that’s very important to us.”
One reason animals like the grizzly bear remain in jeopardy is the Internet/ telecommunications revolution, which has enabled people to build get-away-from-it-all homes in what were once inaccessible areas and still stay in touch with the office. The resulting man-versus-beast clashes are something the Kratts know well from their childhoods in Somerset County, where their parents still live.
Lately the resurgence of a grizzly cousin, the black bear, has been causing concern in the Garden State. And deer, geese and other plentiful animals have long been a source of friction.
The Kratt brothers are not naive; they know that the needs of animals and humans are often at odds. They try to be diplomatic when talking about the two extremes of opinion on such matters.
”I think it’s up to adults to be creative, to figure out solutions that allow creatures to exist in our lives and our children’s lives,” Martin said. ”It really doesn’t have to be black and white. The best solution is never black and white.”
Their visits home only underscore the need for such creativity.
”Our mother is very much in conflict,” Martin said. ”She loves her plants. It drives her crazy when the deer eat her plants. But then you’ll catch her with a deer on the porch, and she’s talking to the deer. She loves them; she thinks they’re beautiful.”
The Kratts have begun talking about using their kiddie clout to establish other Creaturefuges, perhaps in North America, perhaps elsewhere in the world. What about one back in their home state?
Worth considering, they agreed. But, added Martin, who has apparently stayed abreast of New Jersey real estate prices, ”We’d only be able to raise enough money for one acre.”