Last week, one hiker was mauled and killed by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park, according to discovery. If they were unable to house the cubs, the young bears would also be sentenced to death. The National Park Service has identified the victim as Lance Crosby of Billings, Montana.
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Crosby’s body, which was partially consumed, was found by a park ranger Friday near the Elephant Back Loop Trail in the park’s Lake Village area, after the man was reported missing by his co-workers Friday morning.
Wildlife biologists will use evidence collected at the scene, including paw measurements, scat samples and DNA, to determine if the female bear in custody is indeed the culprit. It’s much more likely that he wandered onto them, startled them, and the mother attacked him to protect her cubs.
But those deaths, apparently the results of a grizzly bear encounter and of 100-degree temperatures, are an anomaly, according to National Park Service statistics.
“The decision to euthanize a bear is one that we do not take lightly”. Yellowstone has had a grizzly bear management program since 1983.
“A defensive bear is one you have surprised, which can elicit an extremely rapid attack”, according to the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks guidelines. A park spokeswoman told reporters this was the first human-bear encounter in the park in 2015, but there have been five non-fatal bison gorings.
Barbara Gallagher wrote on Facebook said: “This bear was in it’s habitat and a person was also in it. The bear protected her cubs as is natural”.
I hope park administrators will refuse to kill the bears, or at least the people who are sent out to do the killing will say “no”, as did Bryce Casavant, a most courageous conservation officer who refused to kill two black bear cubs near Port Hardy on northern Vancouver Island and was suspended for his refusal to do so.
Campbell began the Bear 760 group after a bear in Grand Teton National Park, Grizzly Bear 760, was relocated out of the valley and a few weeks later euthanized by Wyoming Game and Fish for a variety of reasons based on their protocol. Crosby previously lived in Yellowstone and worked with several of the park’s medical clinics in the past. They simply did what bears do.
The name of the individual is being withheld pending family notification, officials said. Two of them were killed in separate incidents in 2011.
The grizzly’s cubs will not be able to survive without it, said Yellowstone spokeswoman Amy Bartlett.
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A total of 1,025 people died in national parks from 2007 to 2013.
