Re-Visiting the Night of the Grizzlies

I've had a tendency in the past to be a bit skeptical about bear attack books, unless they offer solid and clear explanations for why those attacks may have occurred. Mind you, I'm not in denial about bear attacks, I just feel that presenting and analyzing possible causes is more beneficial than serving up a bloody dish of horror stories, which is what most books on the subject do. One exception is Jack Olsen's Night of the Grizzlies, the true account of one of the most horrific and unexplained attacks in recorded history.

One does not need to read very many bear books before hearing of Julie Helgeson and Michele Koons and the violent deaths they suffered on the same night in August 1967. Separated by nine miles of 9,000 foot mountain peaks in Glacier National Park, both teenage girls were mauled by ravenous grizzlies in the middle of the night. Helgeson was attacked at midnight, spent more than two hours lying mutilated and alone in the dark before a search party found her. She was taken back to Granite Park Chalet where she died from her wounds shortly after 4 A.M. - almost two more hours later. Fifteen minutes later and nine miles away, Michele Koons was attacked by a grizzly. Mercifully, her death was swift.

The bear responsible for Michele's death was found and killed. It had been quite active in the area and appeared to be exhibiting signs of mental illness. At Granite Park Chalet, the four or five bears that frequented the garbage dump every night were destroyed. Each bear was closely examined, including stomach contents and dried blood caked between claws. Investigators were forced to come to a grim conclusion - none of the bears were responsible for Julie's death. These were the first recorded deaths in the history of Glacier Park and the attacks there have continued to this day, prompting the great mystery as to what set these two bears off that night. Speculation abounds and theories are tossed about left and right, but we may never know for a certainty.

Olsen's book is as thorough an account as one could hope to find. Several chapters are devoted to the events that preceded the attack, including all persons involved in the incident, from the biggest key players to the smallest bit parts, the whole thing moving like a predator in the night toward the dreaded events that the reader is doomed to repeat. Something about this particular incident has always sucked me in, something about the two girls involved that has stirred deep feelings of empathy and sorrow for the plight they suffered, and I can't quite put my finger on what it is. As disturbing as it can be, I highly recommend the book as one of the most thorough and well-written accounts of non-fiction history that I've read.

I find it interesting that the summer in which I got to work with bears and talk to people about how docile and non-aggressive they really are, is the same summer that bear attacks were reported seemingly every other day. Grizzlies got a few in Yellowstone, a captive grizzly killed his keeper in Ohio, and a man in Seattle was attacked by a black bear right outside the door of his own house....and I'm sure I'm missing a few more. To me, it just drives home how complex these animals are. Human beings are just as complicated. Some of us are kind and friendly, while some are mean and nasty. Bears are much the same way. Nowhere is this complexity more brilliantly captured than in Doug and Andrea Peacock's The Essential Grizzly (recently re-printed as In the Presence of Grizzlies), a look at the relationship between man and bear, from the good, to the bad, to the downright ugly.

To me, as bear advocates, we should never lose sight of the fact that bear attacks do happen. They always have and they always will. They should not be swept aside and disregarded in some state of denial. Rather they should be analyzed and explained. We should look at those situations and try to determine what went wrong and think of ways to prevent it from happening again, ways that are a bit more enlightened than shooting every bear in sight for weeks afterward. The problem is that we expect these animals to behave as simply as possible and we don't know what to think when they don't. As with all things, time and education are the key. Nowadays I usually advocate several attack books to anyone interested in the subject of bears, because once you've learned about that complexity, 90% of the time you can step back, look at the dark side of the issue, and pinpoint exactly where it all went wrong.

Saying Goodbye

Today marks the end of my summer stint at Fortress of the Bear and I'm caught in a swirl of emotions right now. I was able to squeeze in one last training session with Chaik and Killisnoo and said my goodbyes while feeding them grapes. While Toby (who we recently discovered is actually a female - oops!), Baloo, and Lucky have been a lot of fun, I didn't bond with them in the way that I did the big boys (and little Seek months ago) and now I must face the emptiness of daily life without them. Of the many lessons that I have learned from these bears - and those will be discussed in greater detail later - perhaps the most valuable is that friendship and love are universal concepts that truly know no bounds. Thank you, boys, for showing me what I had previously only imagined. You will be deeply missed!!

The Three Amigos, Here To Stay

Only a few days after our successful capture of the three orphaned cubs who, amazingly, came back to Fortress of the Bear after the death of their mother, two Fish and Game officials (one the new executive director and the other the head of the permit department in Juneau, who initially wanted to euthanize Seek) accompanied biologist Phil Mooney to the Fortress to spend the day discussing the future of the cubs with us. The new director had been there once before, was very impressed with the facility, and wanted to help us move forward. Now it was just a matter of impressing the permit department, especially after our less than cordial confrontation a few months ago.

Tom Schumacher, the head of that department, was happy with what he saw. It turns out that he knew nothing about what we were trying to do and that all of the information he had gotten about our project was misinformation. By the end of the three-or-four-hour long meeting, it was decided that Fortress was the best place for the cubs to reside. We don't know if they will be permanent residents or not, but they will remain throughout the winter and possibly be transferred in the spring if a zoo somewhere is seeking new cubs.

Meanwhile, the Three Amigos - named Lucky, Toby, and Baloo - have adjusted extremely well to their new home. It only took two or three days for them to adapt to the presence of people and remain out in the open and now they are fully socialized to our presence. Toby, in particular, is performer and a show-off - much like Killisnoo - who displays a noticeably high level of intelligence. The way he works his paws when he stands on his hind legs is fascinating. It often seems that he's mimicking a catching motion, as if to say "throw me a treat and I'll catch it." This is behavior that was not taught to him. I have to remember to keep my video camera on hand next week in order to capture that behavior on film.

Temporary New Tenants Now Permanent?

Our arrival at the Fortress last Tuesday morning was met with an unexpected surprise: we had once again been visited by bears during the night. Although we suspected the same mother with cubs who had been hanging around previously, we couldn't be sure. A perimiter sweep of the fence line revealed a very large and very fresh bear track in the mud, one perhaps made by the mother. Again, we contacted Phil Mooney, the local Fish and Game biologist, and informed him of the situation. He gave us the go-ahead to try trapping again and if the culprit turned out to be a different bear, then we could radio-collar him as well. We rigged the trap that night and returned the next morning to find the exact same three cubs (numbered 12, 13, and 14), but no sign of the mother.

Following the signal from her collar, Phil and a trooper found her dead body a few miles away but were unable to distinguish a cause of death visually. An investigation is currently underway. Meanwhile, the three cubs are being housed at the Fortress. Phil is lobbying for us to keep them, but we won't get a final word on that until sometime next week. While waiting, we've started trying to socialize them by letting them see us throwing food out to them. Occasionally we have entered the enclosure and allowed them to watch us pouring out dog food. The goal is to help them develop a positive association with us, and it's worked remarkably well thus far. For the first two days, they hid in the bushes when people appeared, but spent the rest of the week playing and sometimes sleeping in plain sight, so we couldn't be more pleased with their progress thus far. The death of the mother has been a pall of sadness hanging over our heads, though. We wish things could have been different for her.

That said, it does raise a mystery. If the mother is dead, what is the explanation for the large bear tracks outside the fence line? Could it be the big male that was after the cubs? If so, did he kill the mother and follow the cubs when they came back to us for safety? We may never know the answers to these questions.

Yellowstone Bear Attack Stresses The Need For Co-Existence

In late July, a sow grizzly with three yearling cubs attacked campers in the Soda Butte area of Yellowstone National Park, rampaging through three tents in the middle of the night, badly injuring two people and killing one man. Almost immediately, the bears were captured and DNA testing identified them as the culprits within 24 hours (funny, it takes longer than that for DNA testing to link a human being with a crime). The mother was euthanized shortly thereafter and the cubs moved to a temporary holding cell until a home can be found for them at a zoo.

Now it's coming out that while the mother appeared healthy, the cubs definitely are not. Weighing only 60 to 70 pounds when they should weigh 100 to 130 pounds, and all three still sporting ragged winter coats, the cubs are badly malnourished and not very well fed. As tragic as the attack was, could this be the reason for it? A mother facing a lack of natural resources and desperate to feed her starving cubs? I don't feel that euthanizing the sow served any purpose to begin with and, in light of this new information, it now seems even more senseless. Is it supposed to teach her a lesson or act as some kind of punishment? We are warned constantly about "anthropomorphising" animals, yet we are so quick to force our notions of "justice" upon them as if they can understand the concept. I feel that a better solution would have been to place her in a sanctuary to live out her life naturally with her cubs.

Recently a black bear was euthanized in Yellowstone for developing a taste for human garbage and again it begs the question WHY? There are plenty of bear sanctuaries around that would have taken him and many of these places were started for that very reason: to take in problem bears as an alternative to killing them. Nonetheless, that incident started a mass public criticism of those who preach co-existence with bears, citing instead that we need to forcefully dominate the animal in every way possible. Someone should really inform these people that our attempts to dominate bears are a very large part of the problem. The more we attempt to exert our will on these animals, the more of their territory we invade, the more we show them that we are a dangerous predator, the more of their natural resources we eliminate, the more desperate choices they are forced to make....which can include preying upon us. Greater public education is desperately needed. Camping with electric fences and bear spray should be mandatory and people should expect certain potential consequences if they choose to go without those precautions, like driving without a seat belt. We have to be more aware of the impact our actions have on the world around us and take careful steps to ensure that animals like bears have what they need to survive without turning to us as a possible alternative. Search for "Yellowstone bear attack" and check out some of the comments on news reports of this incident and you'll get a pretty good idea of how far from a positive change we really are.

I'll cap this off with a quote from R. Yorke Edwards, a Canadian environmentalist who hit the issue square on the nose: "When all the dangerous cliffs are fenced off, all the trees that might fall on people are cut down, all of the insects that bite have been poisoned, and all of the grizzlies are dead because they are occasionally dangerous, the wilderness will not be made safe. Rather, the safety will have destroyed the wilderness."

Temporary New Tenants

With the salmon run unusually late this summer, wild bears have been coming down to eat the plentiful numbers of berries growing along the fenceline at Fortress of the Bear. The most prominent among these are a mother with three second-year cubs (pictured at left in a photo from the Sitka newspaper).

After cleaning out the berries, these four came over the fence at Fortress every night for a week. They never did any serious damage and ultimately fashioned a very impressive bed out of hay, straw, and shredded paper. They seemed to be making themselves right at home.

Consulting with the local biologist, he asked us if we could trap him in our second enclosure, which is currently empty, so that he could radio-collar the mother and tag the cubs in order to track their movements. We agreed and successfully managed to catch them late one night. The next day the biologist came in and tranquilized them with a full crowd of tourists as spectators. The mother was radio-collared, and the cubs tranquilized and numbered. The plan was to release them that night but the mother had not fully recovered from the tranquilizer, so we decided it best to keep them another day to monitor her progress.

Although she was strangely slow to recover, she finally did pull out of it and we attempted to drive them away the next evening. Two hundred firecrackers were thrown into the enclosure and we banged pots and pans while screaming and shouting. Despite everything we think we know about bears, the noise did NOT frighten them away. Instead it angered the mother and she attacked the firecrackers. Again, I have to emphasize: if you're enjoying outdoor activities in bear country, you should make noise....but within reason. Do not be an intrusive presence!

With our failure in driving the bears away, we left the gate to their enclosure open and went home for the evening. When we returned the next morning, the family had found their way out....but not before frollicking around inside the facility first. A reading from the mother's radio-collar indicated that they had only moved a half a mile away and the next morning we found that they had broken in again. After hanging around for another day or two, they moved off but haven't gone more than four or five miles. It's only now that we've discovered the full story behind what was happening. Apparently a large male bear in the area has been threatening cubs and this mother was bringing hers over the fence into our facility to protect them, knowing that their pursuer would not follow them into an area that smelled strongly of two large males. Considering the bed they made, their reluctance to leave when we tried to drive them away, and their refusal to leave the area despite the lack of a food source, it's the only explanation that satisfactorily answers all the questions. Now that fish have finally started moving into the streams, the male has moved on, giving this family a chance to get out.

Even so, they haven't gone far and are not on one of the fish streams. They haven't yet gotten into trouble with the residents, but if they do the tagging and collaring will identify them as research bears and prevent them from being shot. Instead they will be brought back to us where they will be given plenty of love and care. I've been off work a couple of days and haven't heard any news about them, but with all the recent sightings of the cubs, I expect to hear something new first thing in the morning.

The Grizzly Maze: The Legacy of Timothy Treadwell

It's inevitable that this would happen. Now that I'm working with bears, the subject of Timothy Treadwell comes up almost on a daily basis, either when people ask my opinion of him, or - particularly annoying - when people caution me about talking to Chaik and Killisnoo and calling them things like "pretty bear" because "that's what Treadwell did." While I never really had any serious problems with Treadwell, having to address this issue day after day has made me almost unapologetically a Treadwell supporter and I'm glad to say that I've been able to offer some of our guests a little more food for thought than Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man did.

After seeing that 2005 documentary, I had wanted to learn more about Treadwell's life and mission, but was somehow reluctant to go down that path. I had long heard that Nick Jans's The Grizzly Maze was not only the best book on Treadwell's life but was also the most unbiased and fairly-balanced. Initially hesitant, I finally - warily - picked up a copy at a bookstore in Sitka and was greatly intrigued by what I read.

From the get-go, Jans wastes no time lambasting Herzog's Grizzly Man for its fraudulent depiction of Treadwell and his seeming "insanity". Several bear experts who knew Treadwell - among them Charlie Russell and Stephen Stringham - also criticized the movie for trying to turn the audience against its subject, stating that Treadwell was getting stronger and becoming more mellow through his work with the bears, not spiraling into insanity and paranoia. Timothy was an aspiring actor with a big ego and an equally big imagination who often entertained himself with his video camera while spending all those months alone in the Alaskan wilderness. Heck, I have a video camera and I often do the same thing. One can easily be made to look mentally unstable if moments like that are carefully selected and placed at opportune moments. In Jans's introduction, even Timothy's greatest detractors confess their shock with Grizzly Man, stating that the man seen on film there was not Timothy Treadwell.

Reading about Timothy's life brought up mixed emotions for me. Outside of the obvious bear connection, I found myself identifying with him in some ways. Even so, I have my issues with him as well. The first is that he did not take steps to protect himself. A simple electric fence around his camp and a can of pepper spray would have been enough to keep him alive. I completely understand why he did what he did, but he should have been prepared for the possibility of running into that one bear, the one gone horribly wrong. Charlie Russell and Stephen Stringham have spent years living with wild grizzlies, seeking to prove what Treadwell sought to prove, but both have been appropriately prepared for a bad situation, and, despite Russell's incredible discoveries working with wild grizzlies, perhaps working with tame or captive bears would have been a better option for Treadwell. After all, wild bears are more focused and single-minded in their quest to find sufficient amounts of food, whereas a tame or captive bear that is not faced with these concerns would have a different mind-set and might offer more insights into what bears are truly capable of. My biggest issue with Treadwell is that after being killed by a bear, those of us who seek to prove, as he did, that bears are misunderstood and undeserving of their monstrous reputations, will probably never be taken seriously again. If Timothy wasn't concerned for his own safety, he should have at least thought of the safety of his girlfriend, the bears he loved, and the validity of the work that he, and others, have been doing.

And there my problems with Treadwell stop. I sympathize with him in every other way and I frankly find it sad that no one took him or his work seriously. A man who spends four of five months out of the year for 13 years - unarmed and unprotected - with grizzlies in one of the wildest corners of the planet, is surely someone who knows something that the rest of us don't. Whether this speaks to the accuracy of Treadwell's beliefs or to the natural tolerance of the bear, it still speaks to something that is important and that cannot be ignored. People only seem to focus on how things ended instead of how long it took for things to get to that point. Of course, if you own a car and you drive everywhere you want to go, it's only a matter of time before you have a wreck. That won't get you labeled as crazy or suicidal, though. So whenever this subject comes up at work, my response is this: if Timothy Treadwell had been a NASCAR driver and had been killed in a head-on collision with a concrete wall, he would have been lauded as a hero instead of a nut with a death wish. So what's the difference between him doing that and doing what he actually did?