Mama bear and cubs use remote weather station as jungle gym — and knock it offline
A remote weather station in Alaska “kept going offline” and no one could figure out why — until a game camera revealed the unexpected culprit, officials said.
As it turns out, a mama bear and her cubs couldn’t resist using it as their personal jungle gym, photos show.
A technician set up the camera after the station near Tok, Alaska, repeatedly went offline, the Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service said in a March 29 post on Facebook.
In addition to the bears, the camera also captured “other wildlife such as moose and porcupine checking out these strange human contraptions set up in the middle of nowhere,” the agency said in the post. “Luckily, there haven’t been any known human and bear conflicts at these sites, but it’s always something the technicians and the helicopter pilots who fly them are keenly aware of. Typically, wildlife are scared off by the commotion a helicopter creates while circling a site before landing.”
There are 78 of the stations set up around remote areas of Alaska to monitor “temperature, precipitation, wind speed, wind direction, solar radiation, sunlight, etc.,” officials said.
“Some of the biggest fans of our Remote Automatic Weather Stations (RAWS) are wildlife!” the Bureau of Land Management Fire said in a Facebook post on March 31. “Not only do RAWS collect weather data, they can also serve as jungle gyms for bears.”
Tok is about a 320-mile drive northeast from Anchorage.
This story was originally published April 1, 2025 at 5:55 PM with the headline "Mama bear and cubs use remote weather station as jungle gym — and knock it offline."
