by Cat Urbigkit
In 1971—the year when the last park dump was closed—there were no injuries or deaths from bears in Yellowstone—the first time in fifteen years. The record was soon broken, with a human mortality the next year.
In June 1972, twenty-five-year-old Harry Walker was killed by a grizzly bear as he walked with a friend back to his illegal campsite in the Old Faithful Geyser area at around midnight. An old, mostly toothless sow grizzly was trapped and killed at the campsite the next day—bear 1792. Bear 1792 was identified as Harry Walker’s killer, but in reality, was Walker her second victim?
National Park Tragedies Continue
Four years after the bear 1792 incidents in Yellowstone, tragedy struck at Glacier National Park once again. In September 1976, Mary Pat Mahoney, who was part of a party of campers, was dragged from her tent, killed, and partially consumed by an adult male grizzly bear. Less than two hours later, two young male grizzlies that had recently been involved in numerous cases of aggressive behavior toward humans, as well as consuming human food and garbage, were destroyed by park officials. Human blood was associated with one of the bears, implicating at least one of the duo in Mahoney’s death.
The park deaths kept happening—1980, in particular, was a deadly year for grizzly encounters. A teenage couple was attacked while sleeping outside their tent one July night in Glacier National Park. Both were killed and partially consumed. They had camped a half mile from a small garbage dump that was located on land outside the park’s jurisdiction. The bear responsible for the fatalities was shot and killed nearby.
A month later in Banff National Park, three people were mauled by the same bear in separate, surprise-encounter attacks. Two had severe injuries but survived, while one man, Ernest Cohoe, died a few days later in a hospital. The adult male grizzly bear responsible for the attacks weighed more than 700 pounds. This was an aggressive bear with a history of feeding on human garbage. The attacks occurred because of the dangerous combination of a human-habituated, aggressive bear coming into close contact with humans.
BEAR HIBERNATION
Bear hibernation may last up to seven months. During hibernation, bears may not eat, drink, urinate, or defecate. They may lose 24–43 percent of their body weight during hibernation.
The same month as the attacks in Banff, Glacier was the scene of yet another fatality. A thirty-three-year-old man was killed and partially consumed while camping alone. Few details are known, but an adult male grizzly known to have shown aggression toward people was soon destroyed, and evidence linked him to the fatal attack.
Yellowstone Sees More Trouble
After a few years of relief, the mid-eighties brought a resurgence in attacks and fatalities in Yellowstone National Park. These attacks were horrendous and predatory in nature, and inflicted by grizzly bears attacking during the night. In the summer of 1983, one of two men sleeping inside a tent was dragged outside and substantially devoured by a grizzly bear. The adult male grizzly that killed the man was soon trapped and killed nearby. This bear was well known to researchers as being habituated to humans, but not aggressive.
Grizzly bears entering camp at night and methodically starting to chew on people, in contrast to grizzlies who charge and attack, are most likely acting as predators.
—Stephen Herrero,
Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance
The next summer, twenty-five-year-old Brigitta Fredenhagen of Switzerland obtained a backcountry permit for the Astringent Creek Trail in Yellowstone National Park. Fredenhagen set up a tidy camp adjacent to the hiking trail and stashed her food away from the camp, suspended between two trees. She was sleeping alone when she was pulled from her tent and killed by a grizzly bear during the night. The bear partially consumed her body. The bear responsible for her death was never found.
Every one of these bear attacks on humans took place in areas where grizzlies were granted fully protected status—in and around national parks throughout the Northern Rockies. The bears had no reason to fear humans and, in many cases, had become accustomed to human presence. Yet rather than viewing humans as benign, the bears turned to them as prey. Things would be quiet in the parks of the Rocky Mountains for a number of years, until another fatal attack occurred in 2005 in Canada.
Pushing for Changes
In June 2005, thirty-six-year-old Isabelle Dube was jogging with two of her friends on a hiking trail near a golf course at Canmore, Alberta (near the southeast boundary of Banff National Park), when they came around a bend and spotted an adult male grizzly bear on the trail in front of them. Dube decided to climb a tree, but her two jogging partners backed away and ran to the golf course clubhouse for help. The 200-pound bear pulled Dube down from the tree and killed her. When a wildlife officer arrived on the site, he shot and killed the bear.
This bear had been relocated from the area just a few weeks prior, after it had made repeated visits to the golf course and had approached a woman walking a small dog. Still, wild-life officers denied that the bear had exhibited aggressive behavior and claimed they had moved the bear simply to discourage it from approaching populated areas.
In his 2007 book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting, Frank Miniter wrote of his belief that Dube’s death was avoidable: “After all, if grizzly hunting had been allowed in the area, certainly any bear brazen enough to approach people would have been shot quickly.” Miniter also suggested his belief that, at the very least, biologists should have used aversive conditioning to reinstill a fear of humans into the bear.
Under certain conditions, National Park Service officials will initiate programs of hazing and aversive conditioning to correct inappropriate behavior of grizzly bears rather than remove the animals from the population due to conflicts. According to Yellowstone’s bear management plan, “Early intervention may prevent bears from becoming conditioned, thus minimizing the need for relocation or removal, minimizing the risk of accidental or illegal mortality, and minimizing the risk of human injury.”
The hazing techniques can vary—from using sirens, horns, cracker shells, or “bear bangers/screamers” to the use of trained bear dogs to harass bears away from developed areas or areas of human use. Other techniques include shooting bears with nonlethal rubber bullets or other “thumper” devices, as well as capsicum spray.
In addition to reducing the rate of bear-caused human injury and property damage, aversive conditioning (defined as a specialized form of learning imposed upon an animal to punish it for behavior that is deemed undesirable) helps to establish a fear of humans in bears that might otherwise become dangerous due to their habituation to humans. Ideal candidates for aversive conditioning are often young bears (yearlings to subadults) when they first encounter humans or situations involving a potential food reward. Adult bears that have repeatedly received food rewards and have lost their fear of humans are not good candidates. Wildlife managers decide on the use of these techniques on a case-by-case basis.
In 2009, Glacier National Park officials were faced with the need to remove a grizzly bear family from the population due to the danger it posed to the public. The incident reports involving this adult female grizzly and two litters of her offspring dated back a decade, but the first incidents of concern were recorded in 2004, when park managers received reports of a female and her two cubs approaching campers. The reports indicate the bears were “comfortable near humans and would not defer to humans.” Reports in 2004 and 2005 indicated the bear family was unresponsive to groups of people when they tried to scare the bears away from campsites and food preparation areas in developed portions of the park. The reports came in: a bear sniffing a tent zipper in the middle of the night; a horse party of six people being approached by a sow bear at very close range.
These behaviors led federal park managers to initiate a program of intensive aversive conditioning aimed at the bear family. The program was apparently successful, as reports from the 2006 season indicated that the bears displayed either desired or neutral behavior when
encountering humans.
But in July 2009, the reports started to come in again: the bear family approaching campsites, sniffing tents, and not showing any deference to human presence. In one case, the sow behaved in an irritated manner, while her cubs were curious and unafraid as they explored an occupied campsite. When rangers began to intensively monitor this family group, they found the sow “purposely approaching” rangers, even after the rangers had given up ground to the bear.
According to the findings of a National Park Service board of review, “Managers deemed the group to be conditioned to humans and that the continued behavior exhibited by the family group following years of aversive conditioning represented a threat to park visitors.” The female grizzly was killed in August 2009 as the bears moved toward an occupied campground, and her yearling cubs were shot with tranquilizer darts with the intention of placing the two into captivity, but one died from the darting operation. The remaining cub was eventually placed in the Bronx Zoo.
The board of review concluded that the decision to remove the grizzly bear family group was appropriate under the park’s bear management plan and guidelines.
Frank Miniter asserts, “Grizzly and black bear attacks on humans are at all-time highs in North America partly because bears are growing bold in areas where hunting is deemed politically incorrect.”
Herrero wrote about this lack of hunting issue to a limited extent in his comprehensive book on bear attacks, Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance: “Hunting most species results in animals that avoid people, at least during the hunting season. Unhunted populations usually accept people at closer distances before fleeing. Hunting is one potential means of changing grizzly bear behavior so that surviving bears avoid people.”
Others interested in the management of large predators take a different view. Former Banff park superintendent Kevin Van Tighem advocates that people need to stop being afraid of grizzly bears, and instead need to learn to live with them. He disagrees with the management philosophy of keeping bears afraid of humans and all that comes with that—hazing, aversive conditioning, the use of bear dogs, and relocating bears from conflict areas.
He told the Calgary Herald: “If we really want bears to have a future, we need to manage them without fear. The dominant management paradigm, certainly in Canada right through the 20th century, was that we could keep bears and people safe by keeping them scared of each other. We always have those messages, ‘You are in bear country, all bears are potentially dangerous.’ The whole idea was that if you avoid them, you will be OK.”
He continued: “The day we have a calm mother grizzly bear hanging around Canmore—not getting into food and not harassing people—will be the day I know we have arrived.” Van Tighem’s view is counter to that offered by most bear managers and seems to have a low potential for becoming reality. The adoption of such a philosophy could result in more human injury and death since it fails to acknowledge that these are top-of-the-food-chain predators.
Paul Schullery, in The Bears of Yellowstone, wrote that bears in Yellowstone are safe from hunting, “but for generations the most aggressive ones, the ones most likely to attack humans or go after human food, have been the ones most likely to be removed from the population and given no opportunity to contribute to the gene pool.” Schullery admits that the notion that hunting will make bears more wary of people is true, but is more complicated than most believe, involving a process of culling the most aggressive animals from the population.
Regulated harvesting through hunting is a management option bear managers are now preparing for in the Northern Rockies, but would, of course, be allowed only outside national parks. Park bear managers now put much of their focus on managing humans as they come into contact with grizzlies along national park roadsides.
Avoiding
Grizzly Conflicts
As you hike or move around in the outdoors, generally try to be cautious, alert, and make noise. It’s also recommended that your outdoor activities be conducted in daylight hours (avoiding dawn, dusk, and night), and in groups rather than alone. Yellowstone National Park officials report that 91 percent of the people injured by bears in the park since 1970 were hiking alone or were with only one other person. If children are in your group, keep them between adults, and review with them what to do in the event of a bear encounter. Never let children fall behind the group or run ahead to explore.
Make noise when you approach or are in brushy or woody areas where visibility is limited, or where rivers, streams, or other background noise could inhibit the sound of your approach. Areas of heavy cover and limited visibility are very dangerous for encounters between predators and humans. Talking loudly, singing, or whistling are good ways to let bears learn of your presence and move away, reducing the risk of a surprise encounter. Call out “hey bear, hey bear” as you proceed.
Try to be completely aware of your surroundings. Watch for bear signs, such as claw marks on trees, tracks or scat on the ground, upturned trees or rocks, and other vegetative disturbance indicating an animal has been digging.
If you smell an animal carcass, be sure to detour around that area since it would be a natural place to encounter a large predator. The presence of magpies or ravens also provides an indication that a carcass may be present. If you do find a fresh animal carcass, retreat from the area immediately, following the path from which you arrived.
Be aware that areas of berry abundance are also prime bear spots, as bears feed on berries in preparation for winter hibernation.
Do not wear headphones to listen to music while recreating (hiking, biking, jogging, etc.) in large-carnivore country. Pay attention, frequently looking around. If out with your canine friend, keep the dog on a leash. You do not want your unrestrained dog to go out exploring and return with a bear in its wake.
Chapter 6
Greater Yellowstone Grizzlies
Erwin Evert was a happy man. A botanist, the seventy-year-old Evert had just finished publishing a 750-page book about plant life in the Yellowstone area, and he and his wife were enjoying their summer cabin, located in the Kitty Creek area just a few miles east of Yellowstone National Park. Evert took regular hikes into the nearby forest. In June 2010, a grizzly bear field research crew was working to capture and radio-collar grizzly bears in the area as part of the routine population-monitoring program for this federally protected species. Evert had a surprise encounter with an adult male bear that was recovering from sedation, and the encounter ended Evert’s life.
That day—June 17, 2010—was a cold, windy day in western Wyoming, with sputtering snow showers. The two-man grizzly bear research team of Seth Thompson and Chad Dickinson had spent nearly a month setting traps for bears in the Kitty Creek area, but hadn’t had much luck. This would be their last try, and with freshly set snares, the team headed up the trail on horseback. Thompson reported* that the team found an adult male grizzly in the first snare, and two other snares had been sprung, with no captures. The men darted the bear with a sedative and proceeded to process the bear, taking measurements and hair and blood samples, and placing a radio collar on the 430-pound, ten-year-old male. After completing their work, the men began packing up their gear and watched the bear begin to wake up and recover from the tranquilizer injection of Telazol. As the bear continued to recover, Thompson and Dickinson finished packing up, including pulling the signs that had been posted to warn the public that a bear-trapping effort was under way.
Thompson reported, “This was the final day of this trapping season and we knew we would not be returning for another trapping stint in the Kitty Creek drainage.” They had not seen any hikers in the drainage for weeks and expected that the nasty weather conditions would curtail human activities in the area.
“We loaded the horses and mounted, and continued to watch the bear and stimulate it with noise,” Thompson reported. “The bear was swaying its head laterally and tongue lolling, typical of a bear recovering from Telazol. After a while, we approached the be
ar from the relative safety of horseback. The bear could focus on us with its head up, and it was beginning to push up on its front legs. We were satisfied with the bear’s recovery process and it was prudent for us to leave the site before the bear was fully ambulatory.”
The team rode away and headed to check the last snare, which also held a grizzly bear, this one a four-year-old adult female that had been captured before. The men worked quickly, replacing the bear’s radio collar with a new one, and retrieving the needed samples. The young bear began to recover from the tranquilizer as the men loaded their gear, again clapping and yelling at the bear to stimulate her, to assess her level of recovery. After removing all evidence of their presence, the men mounted their horses and waited. As the bear took to her feet, the men left the site and headed back down the trail that would lead them from the mountains.
Erwin Evert’s wife, Yolanda, met Thompson and Dickinson near the Kitty Creek cabins. She asked if the team had seen her husband, who was late returning from his hike. They had not, but Dickinson agreed to try to find him, leaving Thompson near the road where he could call for help should Dickinson not return before dark.
Dickinson trotted his horse back to the site where the male grizzly had been captured and soon found Erwin Evert’s body. A fatal bite to the head from a grizzly bear had ended his life. The grizzly was not in sight.
According to the investigative team report on this bear mauling, Evert knew that the bear researchers were trapping bears, and had expressed an interest in going to see what they were doing. He had reportedly been cautioned by a friend to stay away from such a dangerous situation.