Earlier (in June) we posted an article about grizzlies that had come out of the Rocky Mountain Front mountains are were out on the plains east of Interstate 15 in Montana (that is a N-S 4-line highway).
The bear was 177 miles from Pine Butte Swamp, a nature preserve on the Front where grizzly bears are often found in the springtime.
Wayward grizzly caught. By Karl Puckett. Great Falls Tribune Staff writer.
Grizzly feeding on elk. © Ken Cole
News Release – 6/28/09
Idaho Department of Fish and Game
Three eastern Idaho bear hunters got an unpleasant surprise Sunday morning, June 28, when their hounds surrounded a female grizzly with cubs.
The bear took after the hunters, knocked one man down, bit him on the right arm and tossed him around.
The names of the three men haven’t been released. All are from the Idaho Falls area and two are brothers. The victim was transported to Madison Memorial Hospital in Rexburg. He suffered lacerations to his right arm but no other apparent injuries.
Idaho Fish and Game officials are in the area looking for the bear. But they warn area residents, other hunters and anyone in the backcountry that the bear may be wounded and dangerous.
The three men were hunting black bears with hounds about 6 a.m. Sunday, on Bishop Mountain near Harriman State Park.
They released their hounds on a scent, and the dogs soon surrounded what the men thought was a black bear. When the men arrived they quickly realized they had a grizzly.
The effort to protect Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front from natural gas development has been and continues to be pretty successful. These oil, gas leases along the Front were the work of two NGOs, The Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front and Trout Unlimited.
The leases were bought from Donald Curry of Curry & Thornton of Ft. Worth, Texas.
This is very important grizzly bear habitat and deer, elk and moose spring, fall and winter range.
Leases Retired. By Karl Puckett. Great Falls Tribune Staff Writer
More on this. Added July 8, 2009. New lease arrangement advances preservation of Front. Great Falls Tribune.
We’ve been talking about grizzly south of Interstate 90 in Idaho, but a more obvious unusual movement is the presence of two or more grizzly bears out on the plains, well east of the Rocky Mountain front.
Young grizzlies push farther eastward. By Michael Babcock. Tribune Outdoor Editor • Great Falls Tribune.
Interstate Highway 90 cuts across NW Montana and the Panhandle of Idaho creating a massive barrier to grizzly migration and restoration to central Idaho. That’s the bad news. The good news it is not absolute.
Although finding a grizzly by way of its being dead is not the happiest method of finding a bear on the south side of the barrier, the fact that a grizzly was just shot there by an elk farmer near Rose Lake, Idaho in the Panhandle makes it at least the second bear to cross in two years.
Because both bears were killed, that raises a strong possibility that others have made it and survived.
Story in the Spokesman Review. Grizzly had killed bull elk, farmer says. Bear shot after attack at Bugle Mountain Elk Farm.
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On the earlier dead grizzly. Grizzly Bear killed in north central Idaho came from the Selkirk Mountains. October 2, 2007
The Three Bears? Try 163,000 … and counting
ROGER ALFORD, Associated Press Writer
“You’ve got bears moving into areas where people live and you’ve got people moving into areas where bears live,” said Mark Ternent, a state bear biologist in Pennsylvania. “Both of those scenarios frequently involve people with little experience living around bears.”
Ternent said most of the encounters are harmless, ending with the bears running away.
“The average bear is afraid of people,” he said. “If it encounters a person, it would rather flee than fight.”
Boyles said people can prevent unwanted bear encounters by doing simple things like putting bird feeders out of reach of the animals, putting trash out only on the day it is to be picked up, and keeping pet food indoors.
Fortunately he was able to walk 4 miles to the trailhead.
Update: the original story has been replaced by a much more detailed one below.
Boise man in hospital following griz attack. By Karin Ronnow. Bozeman Chronicle Staff Writer
. . . and there have been more recent encounters.
Two Alberta men recovering from grizzly attack. Edmunton Journal. They were searching for elk antlers. A lot of grizzly bear attacks have happened to those looking too intently for elk antlers while in grizzly country.
Glacier National Park jogger survives grizzly attack. Missoulian. By Jim Mann in the Daily InterLake. The jogger forgot his pepper spray. At any rate, jogging on trails in dense grizzly country like Glacier National Park is not a good idea.
Numerous methods are identified, but a smaller number give more “bank for the buck” (the buck being not so much money as political or cultural resistance).
Yellowstone Mortality and Conflicts Reduction Report. IGBST. June 5, 2009
Note: I hope discussion of this doesn’t result in another long debate over pepper spray. RM
Note 2. We had a long discussion on “Greater Yellowstone grizzly deaths pass lethal limit under delisting,” beginning last November (2008).
Although the problem solving can be tough for the bears at the Discovery Center, they usually manage to pry open, squash, or mangle a food container given them, but certain coolers made by Yeti Coolers and by Engel USA have proven to be bear proof.
Story: Grizzly Bear-Tested Camping Coolers Approved By Government. By Susan Gallagher. Huffington Post. AP
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