Free Republic

Lorna Weafer, the 36-year-old Suncor instrument technician who was mauled and killed by a black bear ... Weafer was on her way back to work from a washroom when she was attacked by a large, male black bear while working at a Suncor oilsands site north of Fort McMurray, Alta., around 2 p.m. on Wednesday. She was declared dead on the scene. ... Mike Ewald, an investigator with Alberta Fish and Wildlife, said Weafer’s co-workers tried to scare the bear off using fire extinguishers, a water cannon and air horn — “all general things that should scare it off,” Ewald...

Officials from Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department confirmed late Monday that a 31-year-old Utah man had been killed by a bear. ... A release from the Wyoming wildlife agency said Fremont County Coroner Ed McAuslan "indicated the pathologist’s preliminary report stated the individual suffered blunt force trauma from a probable bear bite." Evidence collected at the site is being analyzed to try to determine if the bear that attacked Stewart was a grizzly or a black bear. ... Hunter said there are high densities of grizzly and black bears in the drainage where the body was found and there were...

A young California mother attacked by a grizzly bear while running along a remote road through the woods at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson says she was at one point sure she was going to die. In a video interview with military officials 12 days after the attack, Jessica Gamboa, wife of a soldier on the base and mother of a 4-year-old son, said she thought her life was over after the bear knocked her to the ground, picked her up by her backside, carried her across the road, dropped her to the ground, and worked her over twice more before finally...

Maine man badly injured in Torngat Mountains National Park. A U.S. hiker vividly recalls the night one of his fellow campers was pulled from his tent and attacked by a polar bear in Torngat Mountains National Park in northern Labrador. Matt Dyer, a lawyer from Maine, was badly injured during the attack at around 1:30 a.m. AT on July 24. Richard Eisenberg was with Dyer and six other hikers as part of a Sierra Club hiking trip to the remote park. He said the group woke up to the sounds of Dyer screaming as he was dragged from his tent....

The 12 year old girl from Haring Township is in stable condition after undergoing surgery after a black bear attack. She suffered deep cuts in her thigh. Just after 9 PM, Abby Wetherell, was heading home from a cabin down a two-track, north of Cadillac, when she saw a black bear. She began to run, hoping to make it to a nearby house. The bear attacked and clawed her. Abby got to her feet and started running when the bear attacked her again. The girl shouted for help. A neighbor heard her and ran to her aid, calling out Abby's...

A B.C. filmmaker says he's lucky to be alive after narrowly avoiding a grizzly attack while filming in the Robson Valley, southeast of Prince George. Leon Lorenz, who lives in Dunster, B.C., was filming grizzly bears in a nearby valley last Monday evening when he spotted a bear and her cub. Lorenz said he took cover behind a spruce tree so he could film the bears without disturbing them, but the mother bear picked up his scent.

A 76-year-old man from Auburn, Mass. says a bear was about to kill him when it entered his backyard recently, so he took his gun, aimed it, and fired. He killed the bear, but now the senior citizen and military vet is facing charges because he apparently didn’t possess the right gun permit.

Human remains found ravaged by one or more brown bears on a southeast Alaska island are likely from a Sitka man overdue on a boating trip ... They also found evidence of a struggle. They followed a trail of disturbed vegetation and articles of clothing to the human remains, which had been partially eaten. The remains had been cached within 50 yards of the beach.

A small boy is safe in Mesa after quite the run-in with a black bear Saturday. State wildlife officials tell us the boy spotted the young bear outside of his home before turning around and running back. The bear chased after him until the boy's father shot it with a gun. Officials say the bear was able to run back into the woods where they believe it eventually died. They are continuing to search for the carcass. "We do support the father in this case because he certainly had the right to do protect his family from this threat," Mike...

NEWPORT, Pa. -- Officials say a bear attacked a couple inside their central Pennsylvania home, sending both people to a hospital. Pennsylvania Game Commission spokesman Jerry Feaser says the attack happened Monday morning in Oliver Township. He says the couple's dog was outside and ran into the home, followed by the bear. Feaser says the man inside the home was scratched and bitten and a woman was attacked as she tried to chase the animal away. Emergency dispatchers say both were taken to Harrisburg Hospital with unspecified injuries.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. -- A late-night bear attack left a camper scratched and shaken near South Lake Tahoe over the weekend. The bear ripped open the camper's tent and

Wolves and grizzly bears are mostly to blame for a steep population decline in a signature elk herd in the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, government scientists said on Wednesday. The elk population in the northern section of the park is prized by sportsmen who hunt outside Yellowstone boundaries in Montana and by the millions who pour into the park each year to see wildlife. Annual counts of the northern Yellowstone elk population show it has plummeted by more than 70 percent since 1995, falling from 16,791 to fewer than 5,000 today. Biologists said wolves and grizzlies are the...

The family of a Utah boy killed by a black bear can move forward with its lawsuit that contends the state didn't do enough to warn them to steer clear of the area where the bear had been seen earlier, the Utah Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. The court's ruling held that the state isn't immune from a lawsuit in the death of 11-year-old Samuel Ives, who was pulled from his tent and mauled by bear in American Fork Canyon on Father's Day in 2007. A state judge last year dismissed a negligence suit against the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources,...

According to Dave Loewen, a Fish, Wildlife and Parks game warden, the unidentified mechanic was working in his boss’s garage near Corbin — west of Interstate 15 near Jefferson City — about 3 p.m. when he heard an odd rustling outside. “He went outside to investigate, came around the corner and met a black bear face to face,” Loewen said. “The bear stood up on his back legs, the guy fell back on the ground and the bear came down on top of him with both his front paws on the man’s chest.” “He tried to spook the bear away...

Wildlife officers with the Colorado Division of Wildlife are searching for a bear involved in an attack Thursday night in Aspen. A man ...was attacked in his home by a bear shortly after 8 p.m. the homeowner's three dogs began barking loudly in the ground floor of the house... When the homeowner went downstairs to check on the dogs, he was confronted by a large, black bear. The victim of this attack is being treated at an area hospital.

Alaska State Troopers say an Anchorage man was forced to climb a tree to dodge a black bear near Campbell Airstrip. Charles L. Lamb of Anchorage told officers he was forced up a tree by a large black bear at about 11:30 a.m. Lamb says the bear stalked them for a half mile as they walked out.

A federal judge has declined to throw out a lawsuit against the government filed by the family of an 11-year-old boy who was mauled to death by a black bear. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled against the government's claim that federal agencies had immunity from being sued for negligence in the case... a black bear pulled him from his tent and killed him.

Mauling was in Gates of the Arctic National Park. A grizzly bear dragged a woman out of her tent Thursday and mauled her ... according to the National Park Service. The woman was saved by companions camped with her ... An Alyeska Pipeline Services Co. helicopter, normally used to monitor the oil pipeline, was expected to pick her up there and ferry her to a hospital in Fairbanks... They were camped and asleep when the bear arrived in camp. It apparently first entered a "food tent," Quinley said. "It destroyed a water jug," he said, and tried to get into...

One family had an unwelcome guest visit them on their camping trip Wednesday. The Division of Wildlife says campers reported a black bear came into their camp site and carried their dog away in its mouth. It happened on the Uncompahgre Plateau in the Big Creek Reservoir Area near Divide Road. No one in the family was hurt-- but their dog wasn't so lucky. If you come across a bear or mountain lion the first thing you want to do is make yourself look as large as possible. Making noise and throwing things can also help-- just don't bend down....

Bears Trap Geologists In Russia By Sky News SkyNews - Tuesday, July 22 03:07 pm At least 30 hungry bears have trapped a group of geologists at their remote survey site in Russia's far east after killing two of their co-workers last week. (Advertisement) The team of geologists on Russia's seismically active Kamchatka peninsula refused to leave their camp after the bears showed up, a spokesman for the region's emergency services ministry said. He said: "In the interests of safety they didn't come out to work - the people are scared by the invasion of bears." A bear killed two...