Wrangell students help bring Anan bear cams online for third summer

Andrei Bardin-Siekawitch (left) and Ander Edens work on the lower deck camera at the Anan Wildlife Observatory in late May, preparing the equipment for the start of livestream bear watching this week. (Photo by Anika Herman)

By Leilani Combs

For the Wrangell Sentinel

The Anan Wildlife Observatory bear cameras are online for a third summer, bringing the lives of Tongass bears like Scuba Sue and Tatonka to viewers around the world. It’s thanks to the hard work of students participating in the Teaching Through Technology program.

Wrangell T3 students returned earlier this month from their third year of field work to set up the cameras to livestream the black and brown bears of Anan Creek. With support from the international nonprofit online portal explore.org, which hosts the livestream, and the U.S. Forest Service Wrangell Ranger District, these T3 students designed and installed the camera systems that provide four different views of the creek.

Now, with the success of the technical work, they’re turning their energy to communicating the bear’s stories.

“If you had asked me before if this is something students could do, I probably would have said, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ It might be too complicated,” said Candice Rusch, director of new media at explore.org, “But they really have proven me wrong.”

The cams at Anan are the only student-run cameras of all of the livestreams hosted on explore.org, which shares a variety of wildlife livestreams and documentaries to foster connection and stewardship for the animals. Among the most notable is the Katmai National Park and Preserve bear livestream, famous around the world for the annual Fat Bear Week competition as brown bears come to feast on returning salmon.

Natalia Ashton worked under the photo blind to remove the old microphone and install a new one to record sounds for the Anan livestream feed. Ashton was among several Wrangell students at the site in late May and early June to get the cameras ready for a third summer of bear cams. (Photo by Nikolai Bardin-Siekawitch)

Anan is among Wrangell’s top visitor attractions.

Around 390,000 viewers tuned to the Anan cams throughout the first season, but that number more than doubled in its second year with 890,000 total viewers. Rusch said she believes that number will only continue to grow as viewers become more familiar with the individual bears.

Andrei Bardin-Siekawitch, a high school senior who has been a part of the Wrangell team since the beginning, designed the computer-aided system for the solar panels and electrical boxes that power the cameras. He joined the program after seeing the stuff his brother was getting to do. When the Anan project came up, he jumped at the opportunity.

“I knew that it was kind of like the biggest thing that T3 had done yet,” Bardin-Siekawitch said, “Not just in Wrangell, but across the whole state.”

The first year, the students designed and installed the system from scratch, with two cameras. They then added two more cameras the second year to add more views of the bears. This year, the students focused on making things look more professional after cleaning up wire debris and other damage caused by winter storms. 

“It’s always a small miracle when the cameras come back online,” T3 student coordinator Brian Reggiani said. “That is always cool.”

A pair of black bear cubs popped up near the Anan cabin while Wrangell students were in the area installing equipment for this summer’s live bear cam feed. (Photo by Nikolai Bardin-Siekawitch)

There are four cameras streaming at Anan currently, with plans to add a fifth at the top of the waterfall in the future. This angle would allow viewers into an area inaccessible to those visiting in person and for observation of some of Anan’s shyer bears who hide when visitors arrive in force during prime viewing season July 5 to Aug. 25. 

The team has also been working to set up an underwater salmon camera to give a different view of the bear’s fishing behavior and the salmon that sustain them, but the installation has proven to be tricky. 

“We were standing in a raging river with the pole in our hands, you know. Trying to keep our balance, line it up,” Bardin-Siekawitch said. “Then we realized the bolts didn't fit through the holes on the pole, so we had to go all the way back up to the platform and start again.”

He said that when they got back down to the river, the concrete drill just stopped working. Thwarted again. 

Reggiani said they plan to go back soon to complete the salmon cam installation that has eluded them the past two seasons. 

In addition to his role at T3, Reggiani also serves on the board of the Friends of Anan nonprofit, formed after the installation of the first cameras. The goal of the organization is to raise money to support the project, with hopes of expanding it to make Anan accessible to even more students in the future.

This year, the Friends of Anan received a $100,000 grant from the Annenberg Foundation, which underwrites explore.org to support that goal. The funds will help cover the cost of the Starlink wireless connection used to access the cameras, staffing, trail maintenance and general operations.

“Our founder will always say that people will protect what they love,” said Rusch, from explore.org.

Paid internships have been provided for all of the students on the team who want to continue their work through the summer. While there will be videocam maintenance, the students are now turning their attention to interpreting Anan’s story and its bears for in-person visitors and international viewers. 

This work will allow students to tap more into their creative side through sharing photos of the site and the students’ work, social media coverage and longer videos, as well as some in-person interpretation at the observatory and in town. 

“I think the communication side is probably the more important of the two sides (of the work), to be completely honest,” said Ander Edens, a photographer, Wrangell High School graduate and rising sophomore at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“I’m excited to expand as a photographer … and also learn how to properly manage and run a social media platform.”

The internships are being supported by several organizations including the Friends of Anan, Sealaska Heritage Institute and the Forest Service. 

In addition to Edens and Andrei Bardin-Siekawitch, this year’s student team included Anika Herman, Nikolai Bardin-Siekawitch, Natalia Ashton, Lennex Gurule, Turner Garrett and Ava Garrett.

All of the work at the observatory was done in cooperation with the Forest Service.

The agency’s Tongass National Forest public affairs office did not make anyone available for an interview in time for this story. 

• This article originally appeared in the Wrangell Sentinel.