Toronto Star

SHARING WITH BEARS

Two attacks by grizzlies led to new knowledge for hikers,

- KARIN BRULLIARD THE WASHINGTON POST

Patrol ranger Bert Gildart was driving down the highest pass in Glacier National Park just after midnight on Aug. 13, 1967, when a woman’s voice suddenly crackled over his two-way radio. It was another ranger, and she had a horrifying message: a grizzly bear had mauled someone at the popular Granite Park guest chalet.

Gildart called for help, setting in motion an urgent medical mission. Hours later, as he slept in his apartment at park headquarte­rs, a colleague knocked on his door.

“He said: ‘Bert, you’ve got to get up. There’s been a grizzly bear mauling,’ ” recalled Gildart, now 77. “I said, ‘I know.’ He said, ‘No: There’s been another one.’ ”

The informatio­n, Gildart says today, was “mindboggli­ng,” and for good reason. The park, about 4,000 square kilometres of stunning peaks and valleys in northwest Montana, had recorded no grizzly-caused human fatalities since it was establishe­d in1910. Then, on one night, two bears in spots several kilometres apart killed two campers. Both victims were 19-yearold women.

Those attacks, which took place 50 years ago this summer, set off an immediate quest at Glacier to understand how a tragedy of such infinitesi­mal odds could have happened. But they also marked a turning point in relations between North Americans and the continent’s largest predators, revolution­izing how public agencies deal with bears and inspiring new paths of research on grizzly behaviour. The impact of the deaths still echoed in federal officials’ recent decision to remove Yellowston­e-area grizzlies from the endangered species list.

“We’ve certainly had our share of other types of fatalities, but none of them seemed to live like that particular event does,” said John Waller, Glacier’s bear biologist. “It was a watershed moment for bear management, not just in Glacier but the whole National Park Service. It fundamenta­lly changed how we view our relationsh­ip with bears.”

Theories about the attacks’ cause swirled in the aftermath. Perhaps lightning and dry conditions, which sparked wildfires that week, had possessed one bear to drag Julie Helgeson from the Granite Park campground where she slept and a second to mangle Michele Koons at the Trout Lake site where she camped with four friends.

But soon it became clear that the problem was far more mundane: human food and garbage.

Glacier, a park that had recorded just 110,000 visitors between 1910 and 1920, was in the late 1960s welcoming nearly one million people a year, and more of them were heading into the backcountr­y. Granite Park Chalet, a mountainto­p site reachable by trail, had so many visitors in 1967 that its incinerato­r could not contain all their trash, and managers discarded the excess in a gully behind the facility. Soon the grizzly bears’ nightly foraging there became a tourist attraction.

Many park staffers were uncomforta­ble with this situation, as recounted in Jack Olsen’s 1969 book Night of the Grizzlies. Among them were Gildart and his friend, wildlife biologist Dave Shea. They had witnessed five bears dine on trash at the chalet days before, and both had expressed concern at park headquarte­rs.

“It was basically an incident waiting to happen,” said Shea, 77, who worked at Glacier for 36 years.

In the Trout Lake area, meanwhile, one grizzly had spent that hot summer rummaging through garbage barrels near a collection of cabins, menacing hikers and raiding backcountr­y campsites. Although backpackin­g was becoming more popular, there “was no wilderness ethic,” Waller said: Campers would simply leave behind their trash, providing nourishmen­t to bears smart enough to associate it with people.

The Glacier maulings inspired a generation of scientists. Stephen Herrero had just finished his PhD in animal behaviour in 1967 when he heard the news — and couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“Here was an ideal and important topic to try to understand — what went on in the minds and bodies of bears,” said Herrero, who became a leading authority on bear attacks and behaviour at the University of Calgary.

“The big problem with the bears at Glacier was too many of them had learned to tolerate people more and more, and ignore people more and more, and then finally go after people themselves,” Herrero said.

The immediate response, however, was to find bears in the areas of the attacks and kill them. Within two days, rangers had fatally shot three at the chalet. Shea was among those who fired at the third, a sow with two cubs and a ripped paw pad that would have been painful, possibly increasing its aggression. Investigat­ors concluded that this bear had likely killed Helgeson and seriously injured her boyfriend. Gildart was deployed to track down the Trout Lake bear. He shot it two days after the attacks — an emaciated female that had glass from garbage embedded between its teeth and a mass of human hair in its stomach. Soon after, Gildart helped collect several giant bur- lap sacks of trash near the lake.

News of the maulings, splashed across newspapers nationwide, was a public relations crisis for the Interior Department. A few critics called on authoritie­s to finish off the extirpatio­n of grizzly bears that had begun as early settlers pushed West and left them in only a few patches of the U.S., including Glacier.

“Some people said, we ought to go in there and hunt them all out. And that first year, that’s kind of the way I felt,” Gildart said. But he changed his mind: “We learned all these bears being seen on a regular basis were conditione­d to food — and had lost their fear of people.”

That understand­ing triggered major changes in Glacier and elsewhere. A strict “pack in, pack out” policy was establishe­d for backcountr­y sites, which were also given designated cooking areas that were separate from sleeping areas. Cables or hooks for hanging food out of bears’ reach were put in place. Campers were required to reserve spots, which limited their numbers.

Strategies for what to do about “problem bears” — the kind that seek human food — have evolved. In the early 1980s, Glacier said it would shoot or move more of them. Later, trapping and relocating prevailed, until studies revealed that the animals usually returned to where they were caught. Now the preferred method is hazing, or using things such as rubber bullets and loud cracker shells, “to teach that bear no,” Waller said.

But the big idea is conflict prevention, he said. These days, Glacier regularly closes trails so grizzlies can access berry patches or carcasses without running into people. And all those bear-proof garbage cans in national parks and elsewhere bears live? They’re produced by an industry that grew out of the Glacier attacks, Herrero said.

“Tremendous progress has been made to keep bears away from these attractant­s,” he said. “It’s really been quite successful — not only saving people’s lives, but also saving bears’ lives.”

There are no guarantees, of course, but park officials stress that the threat from bears is very low. Grizzlies have killed eight people in Glacier since 1967, most recently in 1998, and most were food-conditione­d bears. Bears, both black and grizzly, have injured about 100 people in the park’s history, usually following a “surprise encounter,” Waller said.

But neither Gildart nor Shea goes to Glacier anymore. It’s too crowded. The park expects to log three million visitors this year, many of whom act like they’re “walking in a zoo,” said Shea, who fears the potential for tragedy is rising. “The bears aren’t quite as wild as they used to be, because they’re hearing people and people noises all the time.”

“It astounds me to see grizzly bears along a trail and people approachin­g within 20 or 30 feet to get pictures,” Waller said. “Really, bears are very, very good to us. They’re very tolerant, because despite our best efforts, people do amazingly stupid things every year.”

“Some people said, we ought to go in there and hunt them all out. And that first year, that’s kind of the way I felt.”

BERT GILDART

FORMER PATROL RANGER

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 ??  ?? The impact of the deaths from the two grizzly maulings 50 years ago echoed in federal officials’ recent decision to remove Yellowston­e-area grizzlies from the endangered species list.
The impact of the deaths from the two grizzly maulings 50 years ago echoed in federal officials’ recent decision to remove Yellowston­e-area grizzlies from the endangered species list.
 ?? BERT GILDART ?? Ranger Leonard Landa with the body of the bear that killed Michele Koons in 1967.
BERT GILDART Ranger Leonard Landa with the body of the bear that killed Michele Koons in 1967.
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