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Yet another reason use caution when in bear country

Bilder

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Bilder

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Bear kills 2 in Alaska

 

KING SALMON -- A man and a woman were fatally mauled in a bear attack in Katmai National Park and Preserve - the first known bear killings in the 4.7-million-acre park, National Park Service officials said Tuesday.

 

The bodies were found near Kaflia Bay on Monday when a pilot with Andrew Airways arrived to pick them up and take them to Kodiak, Alaska State Troopers said. The park is on the Alaska Peninsula.

 

The pilot saw a bear, possibly on top of a body, in the camp and contacted the Park Service in King Salmon and troopers in Kodiak.

 

Park rangers encountered an aggressive bear when they arrived at the campsite and killed it. Investigators then found human remains buried by a bear near the campsite, which was in a brushy area with poor visibility.

 

No weapons were found at the scene, Park Service spokeswoman Jane Tranel said.

 

The victims, believed to be in their late 30s to early 40s, were from Malibu, Calif. Their identities are being withheld pending notification of relatives.

 

The remains and the entire campsite were packed out Monday and transported to Kodiak on the Andrew Airways flight.

 

As the plane was being loaded, another aggressive bear approached and was killed by park rangers and troopers.

 

The bodies were flown to the state medical examiner's office for autopsy.

 

Dean Andrew, owner of Andrew Airways, said the pilot was too upset to comment. The company had been flying the man out to Katmai for 13 years and the woman for the last couple of years. Andrew said the man was an experienced outdoorsman.

 

"We were all good friends with him," he said. "We haven't had time to deal with it."

 

The pair were photographing and watching bears at the Kaflia Bay lakes, usually not frequented by visitors, according to Park Service spokesman John Quinley. He said bears are attracted to the area by a late run of salmon passing through lakes.

 

Other areas along the Katmai coast are popular destinations for watching bears.

 

In the mid-1980s, a brown bear mauled the body of a visitor who drowned, but this week's attacks are the first known bear killings in the park, Quinley said.

 

Rangers were returning to the site Tuesday and have closed the Kaflia Bay and adjacent areas to visitors.

 

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I have never been lost. Been awful confused for a few days, but never lost!

N61.12.041 W149.43.734

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MountainMudbug

+MountainMudbug

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Always sad to hear.... for the people and the bears.

 

We had our first bear encounter in the Smoky Mtns a little over a month ago - a relatively small bear was 50 ft up in a tree eating nuts. We watched a few minutes, then we beat feet out of there when it started to climb down icon_eek.gif

 

I'm much more alert (and worried) while hiking now

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bigeddy

+bigeddy

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Those brown bears, otherwise known as top-level carnivores, are not to be taken lightly. Not many of them left in the lower 48.

 

We have come across black bears while hiking in California and Oregon. A month ago we found a cache scattered over the ground by a bear, emphasizing the importance of using appropriate containers and not putting food in them.

 

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Bilder

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Yep.

 

Had a bad feeling that it was Treadwell that got killed. I have met him a couple times as he was shipping gear to Kodiak. Was a nice, yet quirky kind of guy. He did love to push the envelope in getting really close to the bears.

 

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I have never been lost. Been awful confused for a few days, but never lost!

N61.12.041 W149.43.734

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briansnat

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Well so much for THAT!

 

From a web article:

 

Timothy Treadwell spends up to four months a year living unarmed among the wild bears of Alaska. To most people, this would seem like a foolish, foolhardy way to spend a summer. After all, it would only take one whack of grizzly’s paw and goodbye, Tim.

 

But he doesn’t quite see it that way.

 

"I’m much more likely to be killed by an angry sport hunter than a bear," he said decisively. "I’m in more danger here in San Francisco," he added.

 

Treadwell, 36, was speaking to me by phone from a cheap hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, so I couldn’t argue the point. He was on the road promoting his 1997 book, "Among Grizzlies: Living With Wild Bears in Alaska," which has just been issued in paperback by Ballantine.

 

His book describes how he became a bear fanatic and what it’s like camping in the Alaskan wilds with only bears and a too-friendly fox for company.

 

Treadwell lets you know right away that he’s not a scientist and that his life with bears comes from his heart, not his head. Still, I asked him if his hours and hours of on-site observation had added anything to bear science.

 

"Well," he said, "I’ve observed the social culture of grizzly bears, their hierarchy and their recognition of that hierarchy. I’ve seen one bear, Taffy, use a stick in a crude tool-like fashion to scratch her back. And, hmmm. What are some bear myths? Well, it’s true that dominant males do sometimes kill cubs but it’s overstated and blown out of proportion. There’s no reason or advantage for it, the female will not then mate with the male. Oh, and bears do run downhill, very fast. Never run from a bear. They can be ferocious, dangerous animals but they are also shy, gentle giants."

 

I realized I was asking Treadwell the wrong question. He’s not the guy to ask about the science of grizzlies, although he has observed them for longer periods of time and more intimately than most experts. The question to ask Treadwell is: Why? Why does he camp by himself with only bears for company in an undisclosed location so remote that he sometimes doesn’t talk to another human being for more than a month?

 

"I’m their lifeguard," he says simply. "I’m there to keep the poachers and sport hunters away."

 

Since 1995 Treadwell has been a summer resident in the bear hierarchy and an expert bear observer. Patient, passive, he becomes part of the fabric of their lives.

 

(Oddly, he shaves and bathes every day while out in the field. It’s a personal quirk. He just doesn’t want to look like the stereotypical bear poacher or wild man of the mountains, even if there’s no one there to see him.)

 

"Bears have 21 basic body signals," he said. He knows them all and knows how to deal with a bear that’s upset, frightened, liable to do him injury. Frequently, he sings to them.

 

But he certainly doesn’t recommend others do what he does.

 

"They’ve taught me how to be confident and calm in their presence and give them their personal space," he said. "This may sound egocentric but (I live with bears) like Ted Williams hits a baseball. I can’t teach others how to do it."

 

Treadwell says he did bring a girlfriend out to the Alaska wilds and the bear habitat for about a two-month period in 1997.

 

"She started out in total fear and ended up loving the bears, too," he said.

 

He won’t say exactly where the bear encampment is.

 

"Ecotourism will kill the bears," he said. "They don’t have much of a future. They’ll either be loved to death or shot to death."

 

In Alaska, it’s legal to hunt grizzlies. About 1,200 a year are shot, about the same number are poached. Bear hunting is a multimillion dollar business. That’s why Treadwell is such a threat; he doesn’t want any bears killed and he has chased off hunters in the past. In fact, he takes a lot of heat from a variety of quarters – from scientists who scorn his methods, from hunters who mock his concern, from pilots and tradespeople in Alaska who object to his fervor.

 

Treadwell doesn’t care. He has committed his life to wildlife preservation.

 

"You know how people accuse animal rights activists of liking animals better than people?" he asks me. "Well, these bears are so much better than people. They are better than us. They make up a perfect ecological system. They do no damage, they are amazing and beautiful. They are basically peaceful and I would have no life without them. I’m living as long and hard as I can for the good of the bears and preservation of their habitat, which is good for the environment and the planet. If Taffy were in danger, I would shield her with my body."

 

"You can't make a man by standing a sheep on his hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position, you can make a crowd of men" - Max Beerbohm

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Bilder

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Yes, hunting is banned and there has never been a case of poaching documented in the park. IMHO the only thing this guy did was get the bears used to the presence of humans.

 

Turns out that they had a camera running at the time of the attack. No video can be seen, but the audio is there.

 

Here is a link to the report:

 

Follow up story

 

By CRAIG MEDRED

Anchorage Daily News

 

(Published: October 9, 2003)

Among the last words Timothy Treadwell uttered to his girlfriend before a bear killed and partially ate both of them were these:

 

"Get out here. I'm getting killed.''

 

Words caught on a tape recording of the attack also reveal Treadwell's girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, shouting at him to play dead, then encouraging him to fight back.

 

Alaska State Troopers report that is what they heard on a videotape recovered Monday at the scene of a bear mauling in Katmai National Park and Preserve. The tape was in a camera found near the bear-buried remains of Treadwell, 46, and Huguenard, 37.

 

Troopers spokesman Greg Wilkinson said there are no pictures on the tape, leading troopers to believe the attack might have happened while the camera was stuffed in a duffle bag or during the dark of night. Treadwell had talked to an associate in Malibu, Calif., by satellite phone around noon Sunday. He mentioned no problems with any bears.

 

The remains of the Southern Californians who periodically came to Alaska to live intimately with the bears were found the next day. A large but scrawny old bear with bad teeth that a pilot had seen sitting on the brush and dirt pulled over the bodies was shot and killed by National Park Service rangers at the scene after it charged them.

 

Troopers Wednesday refused requests to release the audiotape, but said it convinced them the two people had been killed by a bear. Speculation about whether a bear had actually done the killing had been fueled by Treadwell's oft-stated but unsubstantiated claim that he spent summers at Katmai to protect the bears from poachers and sport hunters.

 

"I'm their lifeguard,'' he told a reporter for The Davis (Calif.) Enterprise in 1999. "I'm there to keep the poachers and sport hunters away. I'm much more likely to be killed by an angry sport hunter than a bear.''

 

The Kaflia Bay area of Alaska's Gulf Coast -- where Treadwell spent most of his time in the state -- has long been closed to sport hunters, and Katmai rangers said there is no history of poachers killing bears in the area.

 

When bears die, they are usually killed by other brown bears, said park superintendent Deb Liggett, noting that 90 percent of the cubs each year are killed, and often eaten, by other brown bears. Adult bears sometimes kill each other there, too.

 

In this case, Wilkinson said, troopers are confident a bear was also responsible for killing the Malibu couple. Troopers are also convinced, he added, that the bear seen feeding on their bodies was the bear killed by Park Service rangers. There is no way, however, of knowing whether that bear or another shot by troopers at the scene did the actual killing.

 

The tape full of screams and rustling sounds details the attack, Wilkinson said, but adds little to explain exactly what happened or why. The tape, he said, lasts about three minutes. Scratching and dragging noises on it have led troopers to believe Treadwell might have been wearing a body mike when the attack began.

 

After Treadwell calls for help, Wilkinson said, Huguenard can be heard shouting "play dead.'' That is the recommended response to being grabbed by a brown or grizzly bear, but authorities stress the idea of playing dead should be abandoned if the bear continues to press the attack.

 

On the tape, shortly after the warning to "play dead,'' Wilkinson said, "Huguenard is heard to scream "fight back.'' Treadwell later yells "hit him with a pan,'' Wilkinson said.

 

After that, the tape goes dead. Because there are no pictures, troopers believe it is most likely the bear came in the night. The tent in which Treadwell and Huguenard had been camping showed no signs of being ripped open by a bear trying to attack people inside, but a friend of Treadwell's said it was common for him to leave the tent in the dark to confront bears that approached his camp.

 

"His way of operating was to get out of the tent immediately when he heard a bear around,'' Juneau filmmaker Joel Bennett said Wednesday. "He subscribed to the theory that the worst thing you could do was stay in the tent."

 

Bennett knew the flamboyant Treadwell well. Only two weeks before Treadwell's death they had spent weeks on Kodiak Island working on a Disney film about bears.

 

"You probably know that I've done three full-length films with him,'' Bennett said. "There's no question he had a remarkable repertoire with bears and had a remarkable ability for them to tolerate him ... (but) just so people don't get the wrong idea, Tim definitely knew there were bears out there that were bad medicine.

 

"This incident sounds to me like it had nothing to do with his work during the day to look at bears or photograph bears. It was a campsite situation.''

 

Dozens of scientists, bear guides and outdoor authorities who have spent their lives around Alaska's bruins have criticized Treadwell's daytime activities. The Californian had a seemingly overwhelming need to get close to bears.

 

"He was a strange dude,'' said Joe Darminio, a former guide at the Newhalen Lodge who used to take bear-viewing tourists to meet Treadwell. Many of the tourists, Darminio added, recognized Treadwell from television or his book, "Among Grizzlies -- Living with Wild Bears in Alaska.''

 

Opinions among the tourists were split on whether Treadwell's bear-stalking antics were crazy, but Darminio said there was agreement the blond Californian in the black Carhartt's with the bandana tied around his head like a pirate was entertaining.

 

It was hard to avoid being shocked or impressed by the fearless way he eased up to within feet of some of the most powerful predators on the continent. Treadwell said he could calm them by talking in his high-pitched sing-song voice and tell from their body language whether they posed any threat.

 

"He really was a Dian Fossey in that way,'' Bennett said. "She could have been killed by one swipe of a gorilla at any time. Dian Fossey got close to the gorillas. She touched them. Timmy did not encourage other people to do this. He says over and over in his films, 'Do not do this. Do not copy me.' It's obviously not something people should do, but it's something that he did."

 

Huguenard was exposed to Treadwell's daring antics at a grizzly bear presentation in Boulder, Colo. A graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine with a degree in molecular biology from the University of Colorado in Boulder, she knew trying to get close to brown bears was dangerous, but went along with Treadwell anyway.

 

"It was part of her life,'' sister Kathie Stowell told The Times' newspaper in their old hometown of Valparaiso, Ind. "They had a passion and that overrode everything.

 

"She definitely died, according to her, in the most beautiful, pristine place on earth.''

 

Reporter Elizabeth Manning contributed to this story. Daily News outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.

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I have never been lost. Been awful confused for a few days, but never lost!

N61.12.041 W149.43.734

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cachewidow

cachewidow

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The guy was an idiot, no two ways about it. Comparing him to Diane Fossey is no compliment to her, and yes, a gorilla could have knocked her senseless easily enough, but gorillas do not make it a habit to kill something and eat it, as they are completely vegetarian. Bears will eat anything that presents itself as a likely edible. If he had never set foot in the area, there is an excellent chance that these two dead bears would still be around, though it sounds as if one was at the end of its life cycle. And bringing in another person was completely reprehensible.

I have seen numerous bears in their natural habitat and would never in a million years consider a human to be a likely member of their hierarchy. All animals are wild and potentially aggressive, even Fluffy and Fido, but humans have this arrogance which knows no bounds.

 

"Thank you for calling Mom's Travel Service. Guilt Trips our specialty. Where would you like to go today?"

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Planet

+Planet

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This is sad. just a little while ago I saw a show about Treadwell on National Geographic or Discovery, one of those shows. He's been doing this for a lot of years, every summer for over 15 years I think. Some of these bears actually were quite close to him, he's been around since they were cubs, some he could get very close to. There were two foxes, one that would come close and another that would come right into camp and he would play ball with it, he says that's all the fox wanted was for him to throw the ball, and play catch. I thought what a cool thing. While it is a horrible way to go, he did die in a place he loved the best. May he rest in peace. And no, I do not think he was an idiot.

 

Now people who speak ill of the dead on the other hand......

 

Planet

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Bilder

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This just keeps getting worse the more information comes out:

 

Camp was on a bear trail

 

Biologist believes errors led to attack

BEARS: Californians' choices may have contributed to fatal encounter.

 

By CRAIG MEDRED

Anchorage Daily News

 

(Published: October 10, 2003)

Human remains and clothing found in the stomach of a 28-year-old brown bear killed by National Park Service rangers Monday have confirmed that the animal fed on the bodies of California animal activist Timothy Treadwell and girlfriend Amie Huguenard, authorities reported Thursday.

 

Fresh details about the attack near Kaflia Bay in Katmai National Park on Alaska's southwest coast also began to emerge.

 

According to a memo from Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Larry Van Daele, Treadwell set up his bear-viewing camp "in such a way that bears wishing to traverse the area would have had to either wade in the lake or walk right next to the tent. A person could not have designed a more dangerous location to set up a camp.''

 

In videos found at the scene, Van Daele said, Treadwell described "his campsite as (in) a potentially dangerous location, but he expresses his confidence that he understands these bears and they will not harm him.''

 

On Wednesday, Fish and Game dispatched Van Daele -- author of a book on the history of the brown bears on Kodiak Island and an authority on the half-ton coastal cousins of the grizzly bear -- to Kaflia to investigate what is believed to be the first deadly bear attack in Katmai park history.

 

"What caused this individual bear to kill and eat humans is unknown,'' Van Daele concluded. "It was very old but not in remarkably poor condition.''

 

Most likely, the biologist said, there was a chance encounter between the people and the bear that resulted in the bear attacking and the situation worsening from there. Though authorities who arrived on scene Wednesday found two bears competing to eat the carcass of an adolescent bear also killed by rangers on Monday, Van Daele stressed that he saw nothing to indicate "strange bear behavior occurring in the area.''

 

Alaska brown bears commonly scavenge any mammal carcasses they find, but attacks on humans are rare and cases of brown bears actually eating humans are so uncommon that even calling them rare would be an overstatement.

 

Audubon Society biologist John Schoen and other experts on Alaska grizzly and brown bears on Thursday pointed out that Treadwell's proclivity for trying to get close to Alaska bears for more than a decade illustrates nothing so much as the bears' amazing tolerance for humans. The self-proclaimed former drug addict and eco-warrior from Malibu, Calif., regularly approached bears on his summer sojourns here, often easing to within feet of them while talking to them in a sing-song voice.

 

On videotape recovered at Treadwell's camp, Van Daele said, there is more evidence of this potentially dangerous behavior.

 

One "video shows Ms. Huguenard within 3 meters (10 feet) of a sow with cubs as they fish,'' Van Daele wrote.

 

"One of the cubs came even closer to her while (Treadwell) filmed. She seemed uncomfortable but did not move. Some journal entries suggest that she was not as comfortable with the situation as he was. One of the last of his journal entries described his dismay as a large, adult male fought with one of his (Treadwell's) favorite sows near the camp.''

 

Such fights among bears are not uncommon, particularly late in the year when the bears are scrambling to put on as much fat as possible before winter. A poor berry crop this year and tapering salmon runs would only compound the situation, said Van Daele, who noted that the smaller brown bear killed in the area by park rangers and Alaska State Troopers on Monday had been largely eaten by other bears by Wednesday.

 

Rangers, troopers and Fish and Game biologists had to drive one bear off what was left of the carcass and shoo away another lurking in the alders nearby in order to investigate Treadwell's camp. They literally battled their way in, firing firecracker shells and using the whoop-whoop-whooping of a helicopter overhead to drive the animals away and keep them away.

 

From what was found at the campsite in this bear-infested area, and other information, Van Daele said he developed a theory on how Treadwell and Huguenard might have died on Sunday night.

 

"We will never know exactly what happened, and it is somewhat risky to speculate,'' he warned, but in effort to lend some sense to what happened, he offered this hypothesis based on journals, videotapes and evidence at the scene.

 

"The most telling piece of information is an audio recording made during the actual bear attack. This goes on for about six minutes and starts with (Treadwell) outside of the tent investigating a bear that came into camp. It was obviously raining very hard at the time and seems to have been twilight or evening, judging from some comments.

 

"The bear attacks (Treadwell), and he calls for help. Ms. Huguenard opens the tent fly and is very upset. At her urging, he 'plays dead.' It sounds like the bear then retreated for a couple minutes but returned. It again went after him, and he begged her to hit it with something. She in turn screamed for him to fight. The audio ends with his sounds no longer evident and her screams continuing.

 

"Based on all the evidence, I would guess that this old, large boar had been hanging around the areas getting the last fish of the season. There was little else available to eat, and he competed with the sow for food. Although not in bad condition, he needed more fat for the winter.

 

"That evening, probably Sunday night, (the male) was walking along a major bear trail and walked by the tent. When he encountered Mr. Treadwell, the bear reacted and either bit him and/or hit him. When he 'played dead,' the bear left, but as is often the case, when Mr. Treadwell started moving again, and/or Ms. Huguenard came to his aid, the bear returned.

 

"At this time, for some reason, the bear killed and ate him. I suspect that Ms. Huguenard's screams, which sound eerily like a predator call, may have prompted the bear to return and kill her. He then cached her body to be eaten later.''

 

A predator call is a device hunters use to lure foxes, coyotes and wolves into rifle range. It has a high-pitched tone meant to imitate the call of an injured animal. The calls have been known to attract bears in Alaska.

 

The old boar that fed upon Treadwell and Huguenard -- and is likely the one that killed them both -- was estimated to weigh more than 1,000 pounds and had broken canine teeth. Van Daele doesn't think the other bear that rangers shot at the scene Monday, an apparent 3-year-old, had anything to do with the killings. That bear's stomach, along with most of its carcass, had already been consumed by other bears.

 

"In my assessment,'' Van Daele added at the end of a five-page memo, "Mr. Treadwell's actions leading up to the incident, including his behavior around bears, his choice of a campsite and his decision not to have any defensive methods or bear deterrents in the camp, were directly responsible for this catastrophic event.''

 

Treadwell had carried bear-repelling spray for self-protection when he first began coming to Alaska to commune with the bears but had stopped carrying it in recent years. The founder of Grizzly People, an organization for bear lovers, Treadwell didn't believe it was right to spray bears with the irritating pepper spray -- even if it caused no long-term injuries to the bears.

 

"He just felt that was an invasive, aggressive mechanism that translated into a kind of attitude. He didn't want to have that attitude,'' said friend Joel Bennett, a Juneau filmmaker. "He kind of wanted to resign himself to whatever happened.''

 

Daily News Outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.

 

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I have never been lost. Been awful confused for a few days, but never lost!

N61.12.041 W149.43.734

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cachewidow

cachewidow

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It is sad these two people and two bears ended up dead, I can imagine the terror of it all, but just because the guy is now dead, doesn't mean he was not an idiot in the first place. Are we never to learn from history, if we never assess a person's behaviour because they are now dead? The conclusion is, doesn't matter how much time you have spent studying a wild animal, with formal training or not, you will never ever be able to predict what they will do at a given time.

 

"Thank you for calling Mom's Travel Service. Guilt Trips our specialty. Where would you like to go today?"

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