Each post in this series will cover a sow and the independent children she has that still visit the Brooks River area. This means that all current cubs are excluded, until they are emancipated -- at which point i may go back and add them. I leave grandcubs out of these posts as much as possible, though i may include them in rare instances.
All family tree speculation is just speculation. Unless I mention DNA evidence, do not take anything here as hard-and-true fact. Bears are sometimes misidentified, especially in the period when they are moving from cub to subadult. These posts represent the best knowledge I have as of the time of writing.
708 Amelia's Fan Wiki Page
official NPS photo from the 2018 Bears of Brooks River ebook
708 Amelia is a small, compact sow, with a light brown coat in June & July, but a darker, evenly brown coat in the autumn months. Her name is a reference to Amelia Earhart, due to 708's tendency to disappear -- she does not always return to the Brooks River area, despite her relative habituation to humans.
708 Amelia, as well as many of her children and grandchildren, are known for their high-perched, triangular ears and standing on their hind legs, especially in the lower river -- seemingly scanning the area for fish from a higher vantage point. Personally, I think this combination of traits makes many of them resemble rabbits, especially when they are young.
708 Amelia was born in 2001, and last seen in 2023, at the age of 22. Brown bears at KNP&P generally live to their mid 20s, with 30 years old being a rough maximum. Given her age and the fact that we have not seen her in two years, she may have passed away -- or she may just be on one of her various disappearances.
708 Amelia's Mother: 468 Reggie
468 Reggie's Fan Wiki Page
official NPS photo from the 2010 Bears of Brooks River book
708 Amelia was one of two cubs that 468 Reggie had in 2001, though when 468 returned in 2002, she only had 708 Amelia with her. 468 Reggie was very easy to recognize -- to quote the 2010 Bears of Brooks River book: "She has a drooping lower lip, a long muzzle, and a prominent brow ridge". Though 468 Reggie is known to have had at least 3 litters, the only one of her cubs that is believed to have stayed in the Brooks River area after emancipation is 708 Amelia. 468 Reggie was last seen in 2009.
Note: I could not locate a free-to-use photo of this litter, but here is a link to Ranger Jeanne's photo of 708 Amelia with baby 284 Electra on flickr!
708 Amelia's first known litter had only one cub, a female now known as 284 Electra. 284 Electra was emancipated when she was 3.5 years old, meaning she got an "extra year" of care and protection from 708 Amelia than most cubs in KNP&P.
284 Electra's Fan Wiki Page
explore.org capture by me, August 19 2025
284 Electra looks a lot like her mother, although it should be noted that she has a more prominent shoulder hump. She is known for her many antics when she was a young bear, such as bouncing on fallen trees, balancing rocks on her snout, and sliding down the cutbank. Though she grew up around humans, she is known to need some extra space, as she has hop-charged people on more than one occasion. She has had two known litters of cubs: 901 in 2016 and 383 & 384 Bun Bun in 2020.
Her name comes from the Lockheed Electra, which is the plane that Amelia Earhart flew.
708 Amelia was not officially monitored in 2015, so although she did likely appear on the bear cams briefly, we do not have any official photos of her and her cubs from this year. But she returned for real in 2016, and with two adorable yearling cubs in tow!
official NPS photo from the 2017 Bears of Brooks River book
These two cubs grew up to be 907 and his sister 908. Like 284 Electra, these two also got an "extra year" with mom -- being emancipated at 3.5 years old, rather than the standard of 2.5 years old.
Official NPS Photo, taken September 2021
907 looks like many bears along the river -- he is medium-brown, with blonde ears and a straight snout. When he is just walking around, I am constantly confusing him for other bears in the 900 series, like 903 Gully or 909. But once he gets up on the lip to fish, he becomes very easy for me to identify, because this guy is Constantly Swiveling!
Gif by me, footage from this youtube video
He also does cute little stomps sometimes, as you can see in the gif above. He's one of my favorite bears to watch fish the lip!
official NPS photo, taken September 2021.
I'll be honest, I don't know very much about this young lady! She wasn't seen at all in 2024 as far as I am aware, though was spotted a few times in 2025. She is a medium-sized sow, with light colored claws and blonde ears. She tends to fish in the same places that 708 Amelia fished, and like many of the sows in her family, she is small and compact.
official NPS photograph by Naomi Boak, taken September 16, 2019
Amelia's last known litter was born in 2019 and emancipated in 2022. The darker cub is a male known as 307, and the lighter cub is his sister 308. They, like their siblings, got an "extra year" with 708 Amelia.
explore.org capture by me, October 1 2024
When he was a cub, 307 was the slow one of the group -- he frequently lagged behind his family. Even though it is a cub's job to keep up with their mother, 708 Amelia often slowed down to make sure he could keep up. In 2021, he appeared to develop neurological symptoms -- many cam viewers were concerned that he had contracted Canine Adenovirus 1, which is endemic to the Brooks River area -- and he became separated from his family. However, after a week or so his symptoms had passed and he was with his family again! So whatever it was that happened, he thankfully managed to recover from it.
307 is, in many ways, a normal subadult bear: he loves playing bitey face! He is also, however, a very strange bear: in the evenings during the fall, he tends to stand in one particular spot in the lower river and just...stare, into the distance, sometimes for hours. We aren't sure why, exactly, he does this -- maybe he just thinks it's pretty?
explore.org capture by me, taken July 27 2025
308, like her mother 708, is a very pretty lady. She is blonde in the early summer, and by fall her coat turns mostly reddish-brown, with the exception of her legs, which become solid dark-brown instead. She is shyer than her brother is, though she does seem to enjoy playing with 354, who is also a young female, when she can. Like many in her family tree, she tends to stand for prolonged periods of time when she is in the lower river, perhaps to get a higher vantage point to see fish from. And like many of the sows in her family, she is small, with a compact and well-proportioned body.