The Guilty Bear

West Elk Wilderness near Crested Butte, CO; 2022

To date, I have embraced a calm & respectful attitude towards bears. I see them from time to time in my wandering, and usually feel joyous about such sightings—lucky, even—because what a special thing it is, that this large, mammalian predator still exists in North America.

Recently, though, I listened to a 2-part series on the National Park After Dark podcast, covering The Night of the Grizzlies in Glacier National Park, and I began to wonder if my joy at seeing bears in the mountains wasn’t a bit cavalier. Perhaps fear should race down my spine at the sight of those massive, black haunches powering away from me through the willows, maybe I should be frightened by that pair of dark, doleful eyes studying me from behind a stand of aspen.

On the aforementioned night of August 16th, 1967, in Glacier, two women nine miles apart from one another were fatally attacked—and eaten, I should mention that—by two different grizzly bears.

Up until that point, the National Park service had maintained an absurdly lax stance on human-bear interactions; in fact, park rangers encouraged behavior like feeding bears from car windows and gathering to watch bears consume trash and waste at designated dumping sites, as a way to bring visitors to the parks.

No bears in this photo, just a spooky view of Gothic Mountain near Crested Butte, CO

The deaths of the two park visitors in Glacier occurred after numerous reports from hikers and campers about “a problem bear” stalking people and raiding camps that summer; their complaints went unanswered by park officials. Rangers insisted bears were not a threat to people, plus, park officials were otherwise occupied combatting extreme wildfires that summer.

After listening to the NPAD podcast, I decided both deaths could have easily been avoided if the smallest amount of foresight had been exercised by the park service—a rational which made me feel safe, of course.

But I am an insatiably curious person. So.

I spent some time researching fatal bear attacks in North America—Wikipedia has an excellent, and admittedly incomplete, resource covering all known bear attacks dating back to the 1780s—what I learned surprised me.

The National Park service maintained bears were not a real and dangerous threat to people until the two attacks 1967; however, nearly 50 bear attacks had already been documented in North America in one form or another leading up to the tragedies in Glacier that summer.

What evidence had the Park Service based their rational on? I can’t imagine.

I do not proclaim to be a nature photographer, but this is about the max level of definition you should get with an iPhone (if your photo is better than mine, you are standing too close). 

I kept reading through Wikipedia’s list and was unsurprised to learn that most of the bears responsible for attacks on humans were hunted down and killed for their transgressions, and I was even less surprised to know that many innocent bears were killed in pursuit of “the guilty bear”.

So far in the 2020’s, there have been 14 fatal bear attacks, 5 by black bears, 8 by brown bears (grizzlies), and 1 by a polar bear. The bear attacks occurred in Alaska (4), Alberta (3), Montana (3), Ontario (1), Saskatchewan (1), Colorado (1), and Great Smoky Mountains NP (1).

The singular bear attack in Colorado in the 2020’s happened in 2021, at the jaws and paws of a mother black bear and her cub near the town of Durango. Both bears were caught and killed. It is possible the mother bear felt threatened and was protecting her cub—the woman who was killed was out hiking with several dogs—but wildlife officials decided these particular bears posed too great a threat to humans, so they eliminated them.

In the 2010’s, there were 30 fatal bear attacks, 11 by black bears, 17 by brown bears, and 2 by polar bears. Both polar bear attacks occurred in Nunavut, 6 of the brown and black bear attacks occurred in Wyoming, 3 occurred in Montana, and 7 occurred in Alaska. There were no fatal bear attacks reported in Colorado during the 2010’s.

A still from a video I took on the Appalachian Trail in 2018, New Jersey; perhaps a bit too close for comfort. 

In the 2000’s, there was one fatal bear attack in Ouray, Colorado; the individual who was mauled by the black bear had been feeding bears for years even though wildlife officials had repeatedly told her not to. One day a hungry bear burst through her fence and that was that. Two bears were killed in the process of apprehending “the guilty bear”.

And—I’m sorry, because this is a tangent—in the 1980’s there was a fatal polar bear attack in New York’s Central Park Zoo because a person (a 29yr old male) climbed THREE FENCES to get into the polar bear enclosure. The bear ate him. Do I blame the bear? Decidedly not.

The first fatal bear attack reported in Colorado in modern times, occurred near Rocky Mountain National Park in 1971. A man was mauled while he was camping. The black bear was hunted down and killed. After this attack there are no reported fatal attacks in Colorado until the mauling in Ouray, Colorado, in 2009, and the subsequent attack in Durango, in 2021.

My biggest takeaway from the stories behind many of the fatal bear attacks in North America, is a rather obvious one—bears are dangerous and they are physically capable of killing people if they decide they need or want to (so let’s not give them a reason to? Hello, woman feeding bears in her backyard? Excuse me, dude jumping into the polar bear enclosure? Hi, yes, please stop).

A mauling is a tragedy for humankind, in absolute, I do not mean to make light.

A mauling is also a devastation for the bear.

For every human life taken by a bear, one or more bears are hunted down and killed in order to find “the guilty bear”.

A very small paw, near Ouray, CO

Out There Colorado explains that “4,943 [bear] encounters were reported in 2020 – a third of which were trash-related. These encounters led to 120 bears being euthanized, up from 92 in 2019 and 63 in 2018”.

No more than 5 people in Colorado have lost their lives to bear encounters in the last 100 years, but hundreds of “guilty” bears have been killed as a result of human-bear interactions.

So I’ll ask you the obvious question, who poses the greater threat, the bear? Or us?

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about bears in relation to my backcountry forays since I started writing this blog post almost a month ago, and my overarching opinion of bears has not changed.

I hold bears in the utmost esteem and respect—hell, I have a massive, roaring bear tattooed on the upper portion of my left arm—I am wary of them, of course, but not overwhelmed with fear, no; I am mystified by bears.

I do want to emphasize, though, when we step into wilder spaces, we are venturing into the bear’s domain; we need to be mindful of our own presence and impact. It is our duty to pay attention to our surroundings and situation, to avoid doing anything that could jeopardize our own safety or, indirectly, a bear’s.

Basically, we need to be excellent house guests because the homeowners, should we encounter them, are omnivorous and weigh hundreds of pounds; lucky for us, though, few of them have a concept of their ultimate prowess.

The backcountry is not supposed to be (and I pray it never becomes) a modulated environment. There are risks associated with venturing into remote environments and that is part of what makes any adventure all the more exciting.

Judd Falls above Gothic Townsite (someone fell 300 ft into this waterfall last week and had to be rescued; thankfully they survived, but this is a reminder of the many risks associated with wilder spaces, beyond bears)

For more information on how to handle, or altogether avoid, bear encounters, please read the National Park Service’s article:

Staying Safe Around Bears

I’ll let them do the heavy lifting on this one, after all, they are the experts.

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I hope I haven’t scared you away from the backcountry…

Personally, I have seen upwards of 15 bears since 2016, along the Appalachian Trail, in Asheville, British Columbia and Alberta, Shenandoah NP, Great Smoky Mountains NP, and in the mountains surrounding Crested Butte, CO, my home. For as much time as I spend alone in wooded areas, my sightings are infrequent and none of them have resulted in negative outcomes for me or the bears.

I remain grateful when I spot one of these majestic, lumbering souls—to me, a bear is the heart of any forest.

Thank you for reading!

All of my sources are hyperlinked in this article.