Free Republic

PASAYTEN WILDERNESS, Wash. — Past the asters and aspen and subalpine fir, past the quick, cold creeks and the huckleberry hillsides, the bear hunter stopped and cocked his tweezers. “Here,” said Bill Gaines, a wildlife biologist for the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, “is the mother lode.” Caught on a prong of barbed wire that he had strung weeks earlier in these remote mountains was a tantalizing clue: strands of light brown bear hair. “Oh, look at that, look at that root right there,” he said. “That’s really good.” It will be months before DNA tests tell the full story: did those...

Wildlife officials have killed a grizzly bear in Wyoming and a grizzly bear in Montana to head-off potential lawsuits. The Montana grizzly killed and partially consumed Kevin Kammer at a Gallatin National Forest campground near Cooke City, Mont. on July 29. The Wyoming grizzly killed 70 year-old botanist Erwin Evert on June 17 on the Shoshone National Forest near the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The circumstances were quite different, but the decision to kill the bears was undoubtedly influenced by a 1996 court case over the terrible bear mauling of 16 year-old Anna Knochel at a U.S. Forest...

CODY — Authorities are investigating the circumstances surrounding the fatal mauling Thursday of a Shoshone National Forest cabin owner by a grizzly bear. The incident took place at a site where a bear had been captured and released earlier Thursday. Erwin Frank Evert, 70, of Cody, was reported missing by his wife to a member of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team that had been conducting research in the Kitty Creek drainage, about 10 miles east of Yellowstone National Park. Researchers had earlier trapped and released an adult male grizzly in the area... A study team member returned to the...

A man riding his bicycle to work Tuesday on a city trail was attacked by a grizzly bear, which swatted his ear and bit him on the leg, police said. Sean Berkey encountered the bear on the east end of Rover's Run trail at 5:30 a.m. as he headed to work at the Alaska Native Medical Center, where the 45-year-old works as a pediatric pharmacist. He had crossed a wooden bridge when he surprised the sow, who had a cub with her. Berkey stopped his bike, and the bear charged. He momentarily used his bike as a shield, said Bruce...

Inter Lake editorial U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy has raised the bar to insufferable heights when it comes to recovering a species under the Endangered Species Act, so much so that, if his ruling were upheld, American jurists should be prepared to slave over ESA litigation for eternity. Molloy's recent ruling that restored ESA protections for Yellowstone grizzly bears must have U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials wondering just what it will take to succeed with recovery. Molloy ruled their conservation strategies and plans for grizzly bears, developed through years of expensive efforts, were inadequate. Guidelines and standards for monitoring...

Alaska is a land of contrasts. Thirty minutes in a bush plane will transport a visitor to another world, somewhere over the rainbow-trout streams. Glaciers of turquoise ice float next to forests in this wilderness. Bear country, as nature intended -- and then altered by man. It is a fitting place for eccentric bear enthusiast Charlie Vandergaw to play by his own rules. "That's what I like about Alaska, because I can live like I want to live. Fish or hunt, and you don't have to answer to anyone out here. You're not controlled by other people," Vandergaw said. But...

Not often does a man open the back door of his home, poke out the barrel of his rifle and shoot a monster-size grizzly in Alaska. (snip) Twenty-two feet from his home, he shot a grizzly that measured about 8 feet from nose to tail, Sorensen said. Standing on its hind legs, it would have towered around 10 feet. Full story w/photo at link.

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...

A teenage girl riding in an all-night bicycle race suffered severe injuries early this morning when a bear attacked her on a trail ... Police officers with shotguns escorted medics into dark woods to retrieve the girl... "She was cut up and bit pretty good," After the mauling, the girl used her cell phone to call 911 but was unable to communicate... Another rider who came along found her sitting on the ground and said she could utter only one word: "Bear." He then used her phone to make another call for help. Sinnott said he didn't arrive in time...

A man from B.C.'s Interior not only survived being mauled by a grizzly — he killed the bear as well. John Shorter, 38, was hiking near Dease Lake in Northern B.C. Tuesday when he said he smelled a bear in the area. "I heard a woofing sound, turned, seen a grizz coming at me. I managed to get my rifle up and get one round into the chest.… At that point he got on top of me, obviously, and took me down," Shorter said. "He proceeded to try to maul me in the back of the scalp and on the...

A grizzly bear that appeared in a recent Will Ferrell movie killed a 39-year-old trainer with a bite to his neck Tuesday ... Three experienced handlers ...Rocky is 7 1/2 feet tall, weighs 700 pounds ... Randy Miller also said, "If one of these animals gets a hold of your throat, you're finished,"... "You can train them and use as many safety precautions as you can, but you're still taking a chance if you're putting yourself in contact with them," Richards said. "It's still a wild animal. Even though it may appear that the bear attacked for no reason, there...

Juneau man recounts Friday morning bear attack on Admiralty Island . A "crack" in the brush. A split second to turn and see the bear. Another second to click the gun's safety off. That's all the time Dr. John Raster had before the brown bear attacked him. "I screamed and fired a shot into the air," he said. "It was already on me and the gun was still pretty much slung around my shoulder. He bit me and started scratching me and pushed me down into the water." The Juneau doctor had been walking alone Friday morning along a stretch...

Long ago, grizzly bears thrived in Montana as did tales - some tall, some true - told by frontiersmen of a man-eater even more fearsome than the other two bogeymen of the forest, wolves and mountain lions. Today, the reputation of Ursus arctos horribilis - along with other major predators ... Also changed is how people can handle encounters with grizzlies, using a chemical spray rather than guns to improve the odds that both humans and bears will escape the encounters unharmed. But Workman believes that if a bullet was good enough for his great-grandfather more than a century ago,...

Advice from FWP not always applicable. If you're on a sight-seeing trip through the mountains while carrying your hunting rifle, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks' advice regarding grizzly bears is great. But if you ever hope to actually fill a tag with an elk or deer, the advice has some problems. Making noise For example, one piece of advice to avoid bears is to make plenty of noise as you hike through bear country. Another is to hunt in pairs or groups. Yet another is to avoid cover that might hide a bear. Unfortunately, most hunters would agree that the...

For the first time in decades, people venturing into the sprawling Selway-Bitterroot ecosystem are going to be told to keep their eyes peeled for grizzly bears. That change follows the killing of a large grizzly bear in a roadless area of north-central Idaho, where the last confirmed sighting of the species came in 1946. The grizzly was shot Sept. 3 by a Tennessee hunter near Kelly Creek, about three miles from the Montana border. The bear was a young 400- to 500-pound male that was between 6 and 9 years old, said Chris Servheen, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's...

A man is recovering in hospital after being attacked by a female grizzly. The victim, a man in his 30s, was preparing for bow-hunting season ... He managed to kill the bear with a knife, but suffered serious arm and elbow injuries.

An eastern Idaho man was mauled by a grizzly bear just outside his rural home, suffering deep bite and claw wounds across his back, investigators said. Authorities did not immediately release the name of the 33-year-old victim of the Tuesday night bear attack, saying he requested anonymity. They said he was in stable condition and good spirits in an Idaho Falls hospital. "He just stepped outside of his house to look for his dog ... then the bear knocked him down," said Idaho Fish and Game Regional Supervisor Steve Schmidt... "The bear caused significant injuries to his head, back, shoulder...

Interior bears have been seen spreading northward over the years. Shotgun-toting guards who scan the Arctic Ocean for white polar bears spent last week looking for a brown mass of fur on the reddening tundra surrounding this Inupiat village. The grizzly, a threat to anglers and backcountry hikers across much of Alaska, isn't a problem here. Usually. They're rarely spotted this far north. But two brown bear sightings recently put some residents on edge and prompted managers at a research area east of the village to evacuate scientists doing fieldwork on the tundra. Polar bears, which top 1,000 pounds, commonly...

Planning to overnight at the Kenai's most popular campground? Leave the tent at home. Tent camping is now banned in the Russian River campground. Campers there must sleep in a hard-shelled vehicle. This comes after a bear grabbed a man sleeping in his tent early Saturday morning and bit him. Other campers scared off the bear after the man started yelling. He suffered minor injuries.

The Pope took a couple of days off to visit the mountains of Alaska for some sight-seeing. He was cruising along the campground in the Pope mobile when there was a frantic commotion just at the edge of the woods.A helpless Democrat, wearing sandals, shorts, a "Save the Whales" hat and a "To Hell with Bush" T-shirt, was screaming while struggling frantically, thrashing around trying to free himself from the grasp of a 10 foot grizzly.As the Pope watched horrified, a group of Republican loggers came racing up. One quickly fired a .44 magnum into the bear's chest... The other...