Take action on behalf of grizzly bears and their habitat
Reader stories of awe, encounter and the value of wild grizzlies.
For far too long news outlets have been dominated by stories that paint grizzlies as threatening and problematic. Some writers would have us believe that grizzly bears are demonic and evil. This public furor has fed a campaign mounted by politicians in the northern Rockies to remove protections for grizzlies, institute a trophy hunt, and kill on sight any grizzlies deemed to be “a problem”—ultimately with the intent of confining a reduced number of grizzly bears to wilderness areas too small to support viable populations.
Laura Simms regaling grade-schoolers
The essays posted here were sent to us in response to an invitation we extended to readers of Grizzly Times and our Grizzly Times Newsletter to correct these narratives of negativism. They consist of prose and poetry featuring an inspiring or magical experience with grizzly bears, whether through an encounter, an observation, a reading, a video, or even a dream. We hope through these contributions to not only promulgate a positive vision of grizzly bears, but also foster a community of mutually inspired people willing to speak up for grizzly bears and others who care about these animals.
“Grizzly” by Ellen Bass
She grazes in a meadow, sulfur blossoms spilling
from her jaw.
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At this moment she seems so calm, she could be holy,
if what that means is something like being
wholly unaware of the good she gives,
how even her rooting tills the soil
and even her shitting ferries the seeds
and even her bathing is a joy to behold
as I am beholding her this morning
as she leans over a water hole, her shadow first
and then her reflection on the skin of the water,
then the splash as she enters, the pond opening,
rippling, and the scritch as she scrubs
her head with her paw, the great planet
of her head that she dunks and raises, shaking
the water in wide arcs, spraying
the lens of the hidden camera. And now
she climbs out, water rivering off her fur.
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She is drying that huge head
in the long grasses.
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And here she hunkers
over a bison carcass, slowly ripping free
the shoulder. Those precision instruments
that work with an ease that seems—yes—delicate.
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Blood stains the river and stains
the snowbank and stains the rock.
Vessel carrying the chemicals of life—
hair and bone, flagella and bloom.
She carries them, lumbering forward
as she sinks her teeth and feeds.
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Used with permission from Ellen Bass
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Ellen Bass is an acclaimed poet who has won many awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. The poem “Grizzly” is in her collection of poems, Indigo, published by Copper Canyon Press.
“In Honor of Monica” by Cecelia Mink
I was raised on a farm and cattle ranch in southern Idaho. It was hard work but rewarding to spend part of my summer on a horse looking for lost calves in the mountains. My three favorite things: horses, cattle, and mountains. It was wild and adventurous. While in the lower Sawtooth Mountain range my dad made it clear to us kids that we were to leave the wildlife alone. He would say, “We are in their home”. Co-existence was mandatory. I had no idea at the time how much this experience would come full circle later in life.
I have always loved bears. They are larger than life to me. It started with Smokey Bear. Then I heard of the famous Queen of the Tetons, Grizzly 399. I was smitten.
September of 2021 changed my life forever. Word spread that a mama grizzly, Monica, and her three cubs were killed in Polebridge, Montana, after becoming conditioned to eating trash left in a trailer by some irresponsible people. When I saw the picture of Monica with a tear coming from her eye, I vowed that day I would become an advocate for these creatures of grandeur even though I had no clue what I was doing.
I am an avid hiker and backpacker and I have yet to see a grizzly bear in the wild. Every day I think of that tear coming from Monica’s eye, which inspires me to keep fighting for these precious souls. I then think of my dad and I ask myself, “Why can’t everyone just learn to co-exist? It isn’t that hard.”
John Muir offers a quote that perhaps captures our relationship with grizzly bears best: “Bears are made of the same dust as we, and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bear’s days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsing’s like ours and was poured from the same fountain….They truly have a spirit that we as humans have.”
When I think of this quote, I see them as my kindred spirit.
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Ceclia is a wildlife advocate from Idaho, currently living in Whitefish, Montana
"One Day I Met a Bear" by Louisa Willcox
If I had been moving any faster, I would have plowed into the grizzly bear. With the momentum of my seventy-pound pack, I fell backward. For a second that felt like forever, our eyes met. We were as surprised as we were drenched by a thunderous downpour. Then the bear wheeled, crashed through a creek and vanished in the darkening woods.
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What happened? Who was this mysterious being anyway? Grizzlies became my obsession. The more I hiked in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, the more I was smitten with the animal that defined it. Learning about the ways of the bear meant appreciating its plight—the destruction of its habitat and the hostility of many who live in and around grizzly bear country. I felt compelled to act. Four decades of conservation work perhaps represent a gesture of atonement for the harm we Europeans have inflicted.
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As I dug into the lives and ecology of bears, I unearthed new levels of our connections with “Bear,” a word that shares the same root word as “breath,” “birth” and “bury.” For time out of mind, our lives have been intertwined. We ferociously nurture our young, teaching them not less than everything about how to live in the world. We have long shared similar foods—bison, berries, salmon, and roots. We share a sense of intelligence, playfulness, courage, and resilience. I was not surprised to learn that one of the oldest stories told throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from Greece to Siberia, is about the Woman Who Married a Bear.
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But I continue to be surprised and dismayed to find that despite much-improved education about grizzly bears, their habitat, and nonlethal conflict deterrents such as bear pepper spray, too many bears continue to be killed unnecessarily. Although we currently have more bears in Greater Yellowstone than at the time of my encounter, we have still not assured meaningful restoration of the Great Bear or ensured that there are enough bears to fill historical ecological roles. As those of us who have long advocated for bears have become grizzled, we need a new generation of advocates willing to speak up for grizzly bears and the magical wild places they need to survive.
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For more about Louisa see: https://www.grizzlytimes.org/interviews-louisa-david and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW-oX6u4f6Q
"Changing Lives One Grizzly at a Time"
by Brian Peck
Soon after moving to Montana, my wife and I had the opportunity to see how even a brief and distant encounter with a grizzly can transform someone’s day—and perhaps their life. In mid-September, in the glacier lily meadows at Glacier National Park’s Logan Pass, we saw a grizzly with a dark black coat and silver highlights down his back.
A family from Michigan arrived and asked what we were looking at. When I said “a grizzly” the mom jumped a foot in the air exclaiming, “Oh my gosh where? I’ve got to see it!” I pointed it out and invited her to look through my scope, which was at 48X for one of those “up close and personal” moments that few people ever get to experience.
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Her jaw dropped and her eyes grew wide, “Oh my gosh, this is unbelievable. He’s so beautiful. This is too much.” Other family members pried her away from the scope so they could look. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and a smile stretched from ear to ear.
She told us that they’d been in the park for a week hoping to see a grizzly but with no luck. She told us that we’d made their day—no we’d made their entire trip! I pointed out that we only brought the scope, and the real thanks should go to the black and silver bear that transformed a subalpine meadow into a lifetime memory. Then I gave the family a copy of the Great Bear Foundation newsletter and urged her to help ensure that grizzlies survive. She thanked me and promised they would help.
Twenty years later I remember that moment like it was yesterday, and somewhere in Michigan, I suspect there’s a family that still looks back on that day and smiles. Such is the power of the Great Bear to transform days and change lives if we are willing to summon the humility to look, listen, and learn.
Brian was an indefatigable advocate for wildlife and a consummate educator. For decades, he was a leading voice for grizzly bears and wolves in the Northern Rockies and worked as a wildlife consultant for Great Bear Foundation, Sierra Club, and Natural Resources Defense Council, among other groups.
"Sharing the Land" by Bill Leikam
Since 2009, for the past fourteen years, I have made an annual journey up to my friend Bob’s base camp where I spend time on rare occasions watching the grizzlies climb to the rocky mountainside where they turn the rocks and devour the grubs beneath. I have watched them cross the creek about a quarter mile away moving east up along a valley that skirts the edge of Sun Dance Mountain.
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Just last week I returned from my annual journey to the Badger – Two Medicine Wilderness in Montana. This year I decided for the whole time that I was in camp that I would not speak. The week before I arrived my friend Bob who owns the sacred land that camp is located on, sent me a photo of a bison not far from camp. Now that’s extremely rare and Bob wrote, “Maybe this bison is an auspicious sign.”
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Be that as it may, on the morning of July 7th, 2023, I decided to take the dog Sonny off to where Bob had seen the bison. We, Sonny and I, were up on a promontory looking down on a small lake with a stream leading downhill. No bison there. I turned and looked behind myself and off to my left, maybe 200 yards distant, walking right along, was a big brown grizzly just moving along minding its own business. Sonny saw the bear and started toward it. She didn’t get far before I shouted, “No, Sonny! No! no! Get back here!” Sonny came back. The bear glanced at us, and kept right on going.
Seeing that bear that close caused a stir in me that said, “What a beautiful spirit. We can both be here and enjoy the land.”
Bill Leikam co-founded the Urban Wildlife Project that focuses on studying and advocating for gray foxes in the San Francisco Bay area.
Karin Lease is an artist and nature, animal, civil & human rights advocate who lives in Sebastopol, California.
"Cosmic Spirit of the Great Bear"
by Karin Lease
The following email was sent to us by Karin Lease in response to our request for anything written that captures the magic and mystery of grizzly bears. We publish it here with Karin's permission:
"My heart breaks with the beauty and vulnerability of these magnificent bears.
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I am in tears as I read the newsletter and look at the photos.
There is so much fear and ignorance in humanity that I find it unbearable (lol oh no... I didn't mean to do that!) at times. And I feel so helpless in the face of it...
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I'm sure you've seen the film that I think is called The Weir? Did I find out about it from you? To me, it tells everything we need to know about bears. It is so touching and miraculous actually. I love that film so much.
I wish I had a grizzly story to share, but alas I have never experienced any bears, excepting black bears.
Thank you for your beautiful and evermore essential work.
I am including a very amateur painting I did of two bears."
"Grizzlies Saved My Life" by Dave Stalling
It happened on a chilly August morning in a high-mountain meadow about seven weeks into a 10-week, 1,000-mile solo backpack trip through the most remote, rugged, wild country left in the continental United States -- from my front porch in Missoula, Montana, to Waterton, in Canada's Alberta province, mostly off trail, crossing only three roads along the way.
I lay safely hidden behind a downed subalpine fir tree watching a silver-tipped grizzly and her two cubs about 100 yards or so upwind of me. She was lying down, resting, keeping watch on her young ones as they wrestled, rolled, and chased each other in the grass. The cubs ran and pounced on their mom a few times, and she nudged them away with her snout. When one cub tried to suckle her, she swiftly swatted the youngster with her powerful big paw, in a seemingly effortless motion, and sent the startled cub rolling. Then she got up, walked over, and reassuringly licked the cub until all seemed well in the world.
I departed on this big, wild adventure deeply depressed, and I wasn't so sure I planned to return. A few drunken nights earlier I drove to a trailhead with my Remington Model 870 12-gauge shotgun planning to walk a ways into the woods and pull the trigger with barrel in mouth. Instead, I sat in my car thinking of my son, my family, and my friends, sobbing so hard I shook until I passed out. I awoke at sunrise and drove back home.
I was still struggling with my father's death the fall before, and my wife of 14 years demanded divorce; I had grown too damn miserable to live with. Years of accumulated shame, guilt, fear, confusion, and sorrow were rumbling through me like thunderous, dark clouds ready to let loose a dangerously potent storm. As a leader in wildlife conservation, I was commonly praised for my honesty, but I was hiding a dishonest life. I was living a lie, suffocating beneath a deep internal avalanche, and I hated myself. Turmoil ate away at me like cancer. So, as I have often done in my life, I escaped to the wilderness.
When I first I retreated to the wilds of Montana fresh out of a Marine Force Recon unit, I developed a particular fondness for and connection to grizzly bears. They're beautiful, powerful, fascinating, potentially dangerous animals that are gravely maligned and misunderstood. Some people hate them and many fear them because they don't know and understand them. They're bears. They are what they are; they do what they do. They want to (and should) be given respect and space and be left alone to live and be themselves. I've spent most of my life fighting to protect wildlife and wild places, always with this thought in mind: If we save enough room for grizzlies, which need a lot of space, we pretty much keep intact entire watersheds and ecosystems that sustain an abundance and diversity of species -- including us. As Doug Seus, founder of Vital Ground, succinctly puts it: "Where the grizzly walks, the earth is healthy and whole."
Such thoughts and more buzzed through my brain as I watched that sow and her cubs in that high-mountain meadow on that chilly August morning. Then it struck me: I had spent so much time alone in the wilds because in the wilds I could truly be myself. In nature, in the wilds, there are no societally created norms, judgments, and expectations. Everything is what it is. A grizzly might judge me as a threat or feast but doesn't care who I fall in love with and sleep with. I was fighting to defend and protect wildness, naturalness, and the freedom of wild grizzlies while denying and suppressing my own wildness, naturalness, and freedom. Like the grizzlies, I am what I am and do what I do. I want to (and should) be given respect and space and be left alone to be myself.
I accepted myself that day while watching those magnificent and tenacious animals. In no small way, those bears helped save my life. I often joke with friends that grizzlies made me gay.
Henry David Thoreau wrote, "In wildness is the preservation of the world." Wildlife and wild places preserve truth of reality, of life and death, and our primeval connection to this earth. To deny that is to deny ourselves; to destroy it is self-destruction. To embrace, understand, and accept it is to embrace, understand, and accept our own innate nature and wildness.
Everything is what it is, including us. We are part of it all. We ignore that at our own peril. I learned that from wild grizzlies, in a wild high-mountain meadow, in a truly wild place.
David Stalling is a writer, photographer and wildlife advocate living in Missoula, Montana.
"A Herd of Grizzlies" by Leslie Patten
I live in a place where “problem” grizzlies are dropped off.. Wyoming bear biologists tell me there’s a grizzly up every drainage in this valley.
I have seen grizzlies many times on hikes, but there are a few times that are indelible in my memory. Here is one of them.
Fifteen years ago the State of Wyoming did a logging project on private properties that butt up to the National Forest next to my house. I’d been reading about living with grizzlies, especially trying to understand their nature not just how to stay safe in grizzly country. I’d recently read a story about a Woman Who Married a Bear: a native girl who falls in love with a handsome grizzly that can transform himself into human form. The woman joins the bear villagers in their lodges, sharing food, talking and laughing about bear things. The woman returns to her village every winter, teaching them what plants are good for food and medicine.
It was fall and I walked into the small meadow next to my cabin to search for a ball my dog had left there. The nearby logged areas had stumps with high new growth; among the autumn shadows they could be fooled for bears. As I searched the grass, at first I paid no attention to a multitude of out-of-place stumps. But looking a second time, I realized I wasn’t seeing tree stumps, but four very large grizzly bears about seventy-five feet away. This was a mom with her 2 ½ year-old offspring, yet they looked almost as big as her. Since I was so close to my house, and hadn’t planned on venturing far, I hadn’t brought bear spray. My dog Koda was well trained for bear situations. He never barked, wasn’t aggressive and obeyed. So I tried to quietly corral him to head back to the house. The bears were very busy digging up thistle roots and hadn’t noticed us. But Koda was also busy looking for his ball. I had to firmly call him; and once I did, mama grizzly looked up. With Koda in tow, I slowly started back to the house, keeping a sideways glance on the bears. It was clear Mom was accessing the situation—fight or flight, threat or not? I sensed I could read her thoughts. Instantaneously, she gave her signal and four large bears ran off into the woods.
Within moments I too was gone, into my house. Adrenaline pumping, but also wonder and amazement. I’d seen solo bears before, but never four bears together, all looking as big as adults. A family unit of bears. It was an experience I’ll never forget. I thought about the woman in the lodge, living in the company of bears. It was if for a few moments I’d been in a bear lodge. For a few precious moments I felt melded into bear consciousness. That experience was so powerful, that although I’m not an artist, I spent days drawing and painting it.
Leslie Patten is an author and advocate for wild animals and wild lands who has lived in the remote Sunlight Basin of Wyoming's Absaroka Mountains for the last 18 years.
"Grizzly Bear Telepathy" by Mike Bader
Of the many dozens of fascinating grizzly bear stories I can tell from my days as a Yellowstone ranger and Montana wilderness guide I will share this one.
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In 1982 myself and two friends hiked up to Sepulcher Mountain (about 9600') in the Gallatins inside Yellowstone Park. My habit then was to walk ahead and not engage in much conversation as I saw and heard more of the wild things.
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Near the top there was a small meadow I had just begun walking into when I heard my companions shouting "Mike! Mike!" Annoyed I said "what?" When I looked up, I saw what. About a 400-pound grizzly looking right at me.
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I swear I had telepathic communication with this bear. It said "you have to help us. There aren't very many of us and there isn't anywhere we can go to completely avoid humans." It then walked off and vanished into a dog-hair stand of trees without a sound, as a bull elk with a rack of antlers can do.
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From that point on I was an advocate and in that year of 1982 I obtained the first draft copy of the Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan which I still have.
Mike Bader is a former Yellowstone ranger, independent consultant and researcher with several papers published in science journals and has been a grizzly bear advocate for more than 40 years.
"The Language of Grizzlies" by Tom Sachse
We had permits to backpack Lamar Valley in Yellowstone. Once in the park we stopped at the ranger station to pick up the permit and to view the required safety video. My son Dan was well prepared. He researched the dangers of bears in the wild and the steps to remain safe in bear country. I, on the other hand, had just read a book by a backcountry guide who wrote that in 35 years of guiding in the back country of Yellowstone and the Tetons he had never encountered a bear. I took the guide’s lead over my son’s research and decided I didn’t need bear spray.
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The hike was infiltrated with mishaps. We already had a long day and when we finally got to the trailhead, at 3:30pm, it started to rain. We hiked the five miles to our campsite experiencing a slippery trail and a fast-running creek we had to cross. We reached our campsite, set up our tents and began cooking our dinner. It stopped raining as we finally settled around 7pm. While our food was cooking, I looked over at our tents which were 50 feet away from our fire when I saw something big and blond moving around our tents. I thought it odd that an elk would be going through our camp. Looking more closely I saw it was a grizzly.
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Dan saw him about the same time and slowly got up and began banging a pot and talking softly to the bear. I stood there watching.
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The bear, unimpressed with our responses, continued to sniff around the tents and noticing when he had our attention, walked over to the remains of an old elk carcass which was only about 10 feet from our tents, but we hadn’t noticed it when we set up camp. The bear rolled around on the hide and threw the leg bone into the air a number of times.
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After sending his message he slowly walked away from the carcass. We settled back down and continued with dinner while keeping an eye on the bear. The bear circled our camp and every time we moved or made a sound, he stood up to see what we were doing. He crossed the same river that we struggled with, without a issue. Showing his true strength. We enjoyed his presence until it was dark. What the bear did after that we hadn’t a clue. We were tired from the long day and realized that we were not going to be able to get back to the trailhead so we turned in for the night. I resigned myself to the fact that if the bear returned, I only had Dan and his bear spray to rely on.
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The bear didn’t return, but we got his message. The carcass was his and as long as we respected his space, he would let us stay in his territory.
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That was nineteen years ago. Dan now guides in Yellowstone and I’m retired, but that night with the bear is embedded in our memories. We still reminisce about that backpacking trip and the grizzly has become our totem. It’s a connection my son and I will always have.
Tom Sachse is a retired educator who helped develop Utah's Secondary Comprehensive Counseling & Guidance Model.
"My Encounter with One-oh-Four"
by Jennifer Watson
I’d first heard about her through the sort of grapevine that is typical in small towns. The town was Cody, Wyoming, and the creature I’d heard about was Grizzly Bear #104, the iconic North Fork of the Shoshone River grizzly bear.
One-oh-four, as she was known without further explanation in Northwest Wyoming in those days, spent her entire life near Pahaska Tepee, a dude ranch type of lodge just outside of the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park.
Now I had the opportunity to view this magnificent creature in her natural environment.
Word had it that she was consuming and guarding her kill on a gravel bar a short distance from the Pahaska Tepee Lodge.
I had to go.
We walked a faint path northward from the lodge, leaving behind the protection of our vehicle and other forms of human shelter. It was late afternoon, and the afternoon sun filtered down through the forest as we picked our way quietly up the small tributary where we understood we would find her.
We rounded a corner of the stream, and there she was! Not more than 400 or so yards away!
Her kill lay in the bed of the stream, where she had covered it with debris and branches. She guarded it diligently. We froze in place, speechless, and in awe of the animal before us, a gorgeous animal of brown with golden highlights.
Suddenly, she rose up largely on her hind legs, and sniffed the air. She had caught our scent!! Although there was what amounted to a 75-foot cliff between her and us, and some distance, a sense of uneasiness quickly consumed me. I felt exposed, vulnerable. I’d never before viewed a wild grizzly this close without the protection of a hardened steel vehicle.
Were we a threat to the food she had procured with great effort? We didn’t stick around to find out. We granted her her grace and her meal, and backed away toward Pahaska and our vehicle.
One-oh-four lived nearly her entire life on the North Fork of the Shoshone. Though she was captured and relocated several times, she always found her way back home to the place where I had glimpsed her in her domain. She raised several litters of cubs there, and though she met her unfortunate demise on the very highway she clung to, I like to think that her descendants are roaming wild and free in the hills of the Shoshone National Forest, where I was lucky to briefly glimpse their famous great-great- grandmother.
Jennifer Watson is a wilderness and wildlife advocate and member of Great Old Broads for Wilderness who lives in Lolo, Montana.
"In the Spirit of John and Frank Craighead"
by Tom Mazzarisi
As a boy growing up in New Jersey in the 70’s and 80’s, I fell in love with grizzlies long before ever setting eyes on one in the wild. My grandfather had a library of publications and books about natural history and the outdoors. Amongst them all I saw my first picture of a grizzly. I knew that there was something special and intangible about North America’s greatest animal.
A common thread through it all were pictures of the two men responsible for jump-starting the conservation of grizzly bears. John and Frank Craighead. Unapologetic, they did everything they could to convince the world that the grizzlies of Yellowstone National Park were in trouble. Politics permeated into the agency responsible for protecting these bruins within the park’s boundaries. They failed to heed the brothers’ scientifically sound recommendations to do right by Ursus arctos horribilis. Thankfully, with the creation of the Endangered Species Act, the sacrifice and hard work of the Craigheads was critical in getting the grizzly bear the protection it deserved.
Fast forward to 1991. It was the summer after my first year of college at the University of Colorado. I got a seasonal job scooping ice cream at the Old Faithful Upper Store within Yellowstone National Park. I had picked up an application when I was only 12 while on vacation to the world’s first national park and vowed to work in Yellowstone someday. And there I was, 7 years later. Grizzly bears were a rare sight 30 years ago in the park. I only got to lay eyes on one that summer, but it was magical, albeit with a bit of trepidation as the encounter unfolded.
Early that summer, while hiking a trail on the east side of Yellowstone Lake, between Cub and Clear creeks, fresh tracks in the dusty trail told the story of a grizzly that had recently passed through, headed in the same direction my friend and I were. The creeks back then were filled, bank to bank, with spawning cutthroat trout, and the bears came by the dozens around the huge lake to fish the creeks and streams that fed into it. It was late afternoon, and we were on our way back to the trailhead when a shadow ahead caught my attention. At first, I thought it was a person and thought it odd someone would be starting a hike this late in the day, but the shadow morphed into a four-legged beast, and it was heading in our direction.
The grizzly was a sub-adult. It stopped and looked at us with a slightly surprised expression, but mostly showed indifference. We on the other hand probably expressed far more surprise and angst. Judging by the way the grizzly was peering beyond us, it was clear it just wanted to get past us. We obliged and side-stepped off the trail. As if on cue, the bear continued down the trail, unabated, while showing no further interest in us.
Words will never be able to describe watching the medium-brown colored grizzly as it ambled past us from what was probably 25 yards away yet felt like mere inches. Nor will words ever describe the feelings that overcame me after the encounter. What can I tell you? The childhood expectations I had as a kid back in New Jersey of someday seeing a grizzly bear along the trail in Yellowstone were exceeded beyond belief. I became a warrior for grizzlies and all wild creatures.
Fast forward to the summer of 2023. I’m back working in Old Faithful, doing my best to protect all that makes Yellowstone special, especially grizzlies. In 1991, there were nearly 3 million visitors that came through the park. Today, it is expected to be close to or even exceed 5 million. Yikes. But because of the passion and efforts of the Craigheads nearly a lifetime ago, park visitors now have a very good chance of seeing a grizzly bear in the wild. This is just one victory in the ongoing battle to protect grizzlies.
Grizzly bear numbers have increased, but not at the exponential rate of visitation and human development within the Yellowstone and the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystems. Grizzly bears and people are on a collision course again. I fear the great bear will suffer in today’s version of westward expansion. Attitudes towards bears may be far more positive today than they were centuries ago when grizzlies and other native wildlife were persecuted to near extinction. But the newest threat is coming in the form of loving our parks and wildlife to death.
As Yellowstone was the epicenter of grizzly conservation in the late 60’s and early 70’s, it is at the epicenter of the latest threat to grizzlies and wildlife. It’s us. A lot of us. Millions of us crowding into grizzly country every summer. For every bear like the world famous 399 who shows incredible tolerance of us, how many unseen bears are being displaced away from critical food sources due to a lot more of us hiking, camping, backpacking, photographing, trail running, mountain biking, fishing, hunting, or whatever new outdoor-industry fad gets us outside?
More than a half century ago, the Craigheads’ offered a solution that was in the best interest of the grizzly and the safety of park visitors to Yellowstone. It fell on deaf ears and resulted in an increase of injuries to park visitors and a lot of dead bears. The true carnage will never be known, but it most likely pushed the grizzly to the edge of disappearing from Yellowstone. I wonder what the Craigheads would say or do today in 2023. I have a pretty good idea.
Tough decisions and sacrifices will need to be made by all of us. Grizzly country is shrinking, not expanding, even though bears are reclaiming areas they once inhabited 200 years ago. More of us are crowding into the beautiful and wild country that grizzlies and so many other animals depend for their survival. In the spirit of John and Frank Craighead, let’s be fearless and uncompromising in coming up with solutions that ensure a future generation of kids can dream of seeing a wild grizzly.
Tom Mazzarisi spent part of his life working as a National Park Service Ranger but currently focuses on planning and leading Safaris in Africa.
"Grizz Tracks" by Pat O'Herren
Winnie the Poo would have termed it a blustery October day back in the early 70’s. Heaven’s Peak was encircled with snow bearing clouds, but blue sky occasionally appeared behind the mountains to the west. The wind was gusting in the 20-mph range as John, Jim, Nancy and I hiked toward Granite Park Chalet from the Loop in Glacier National Park. Jim and John were visiting Nancy and me who had moved a couple of years earlier to go to graduate school at UM. We were in a hurry to get to the Chalet, enjoy the view and then retreat back to the campground at Apgar.
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The wind was constantly pushing us as some 50 yards ahead of the other two, John and I rounded a lateral ridge cloaked in the fall remnants of alder vegetation. We stopped to wait, the wind died, we heard a low growling above us. My initial thought was that some idiot brought a dog on this backcountry trail. But looking upslope, the alder thicket was shaking as if it were being torn apart. A grizzly broke through the vegetation. My first vision is of her front paws off the ground leaping downslope directly at the two of us. I remember thinking “Oh shit” as I looked at John and fell to the ground on the trail in the proverbial fetal position. My next recollection is of a pounding on my Kelty backpack which was still attached by my shoulder straps. I was being moved toward the downhill edge of the trail and a very cold snout, or maybe it was a very hot snout, was then pressed between my pack and the back of my neck, much like my dog Sunshine used to do to me when we were playing on the floor.
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“The snout” pushed me the remainder of the way off the trail and I slipped downslope a few yards. I knew I was going to die.
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There is more to the story – I’m certain my heart was not beating when I saw the bear walking on the trail back toward me, head swinging in a classic bear pose, drool much like my Newfoundland dogs produce hanging from both sides of her “greasy mouth”, or as the Blackfoot People call the Grizzly, “Pa’ksíkoyi “. Then the wind pummeled the mountain once more, the bear ambled past, and later I managed to slowly pick myself up off the dusty earth. John, Nancy, Jim and I had much to discuss that night at Apgar.
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This bear had every right to take my life, to maul me, to neutralize me, to end what had been a lark in her territory. But she did not. And I owe that bear for every year I have lived since one spectacular blustery day in Glacier National Park. With a very close friend, we later formed a non-profit to benefit the bear and worked for many years with tribal, state, federal and private entities to protect each and every grizzly bear, to give each and every grizzly bear one more day of life. I owed her at least that much. And I still do.
Patrick O’Herren retired as the Chief Planning Officer for Missoula County, Montana and currently sits on that county’s Open Lands Citizen Advisory Committee as well as the board of Advisors for Swan Valley Connections.
"Grizz Tracks" by Gary Macfarlane
The lightning had splintered the top of a lodgepole pine fifty yards in front of us with such force, six- inch-long pieces of wood were driven into the ground a few inches. We beat a quick retreat from the meadow opening to a stand of shorter and younger lodgepole pines. The wind screamed like a jet taking off and our copse of two-inch diameter pines whipped around us, for an eternity it seemed. We heard numerous larger trees in the distance snap and fall. We were soaked but safe from the falling trees and lightning. It was the summer of 1987, along the Yellowstone River, in the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park. A couple weeks later we read in the papers it was a high elevation tornado or a not-so-micro burst that blew down large swaths of trees, the largest around Enos Lake in the contiguous Teton Wilderness.
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My youngest sister and I were backpacking from the mouth of Eagle Creek where it dumps into the North Fork of the Shoshone River to Turpin Meadows along the Buffalo River, a tributary to the Snake. The going was tough in the aftermath of the storm. Along the trail there were numerous broken trees, the plurality snapped off about ten feet high. We camped at the edge of the giant Yellowstone Meadows. The sun peaked through as it was setting and revealed a moose to our south, a few hundred years away. We looked west and saw two lumps, a larger one and a smaller one, moving away from us at a long distance, maybe a 1,000 yards away. While my sister disputes those lumps were definitively a mom and grizzly cub, I threw on the tele converter and telephoto lens on my camera and got a better look than she did. They sure looked like grizzlies to me.
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What was indisputable bear sign occurred two days later. We had forded the Thoroughfare River, grown high and muddy from the storm, and seen three sandhill cranes, two adults and a juvenile, take flight and chase two coyotes, which were running so fast they didn’t take notice of us, passing a few feet in front of where we were. We crossed the Yellowstone, went over Two Ocean Plateau, and were heading into the North Fork of the Buffalo when that powerful and distinct smell hit us as we crossed a willow-lined creek. Bear, big bear. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, an immediate and involuntary reaction to the smell. My sister's eyes were big. Not wanting to look down, for fear of missing the danger signs and possibly seeing tracks, we made more noise and nervously scanned for motion in the willows as we hurried on. After we had that encounter, every mark in the trail became a grizzly track. We spent a near sleepless night in the tent. I was convinced the vague large shape rustling and pushing on the lower wall of the tent in the twilight was a grizzly paw. The flashlight showed it was a boreal toad on a night foray.
Gary Macfarlane was Executive Director of Friends of the Clearwater and champion of wildlife and wildlands for nearly 30 years until his retirement in 2021.
"My Grizzly Encounter"
by Kirk Robinson
There we were, face to face, a large grizzly bear and me. In two seconds I might be dead! My only hope was that he—I had been informed that a large boar was in the area—would not charge. My right hand dropped to the canister of bear spray hanging on my belt as I slowly stepped backward, my head now turned to the side to avoid eye contact. “You are very beautiful,” I said softly, “you have nothing to fear from me. Good bear.”
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Bear spray was invented to deter attacking bears. However, it only works if you can deploy it fast enough. In this case that would have been about two seconds, allowing for a slow start on the bear’s part. A grizzly bear can accelerate to 35 mph in no time. I might have been able to achieve 10 mph—a move that might trigger an attack and gain me at most another second of life. It is not good to act like prey in the presence of a large predator.
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Immediately following the initial adrenalin shock, the fact that I was still standing told me that the griz was not going to charge and that I was going to live. Despite this, my heart continued to pound for about an hour.
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Earlier that day I had set out on a hike along a trail up the Lamar River in the northeast corner of Yellowstone National Park, then up Cache Creek. It was the heyday of the resident Druid wolf pack and there were also grizzlies in the area, which put my senses on high alert. However, a couple of hours of hiking only yielded a few squirrel and raven sightings.
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After lunch I started back, intending to check out an unusual geological feature I had noticed earlier. It was a large, roughly crescent-shaped slump, about three hundred meters across, where the earth had broken away and begun slowly sliding into the Lamar River, probably because of underground thermal activity so common in Yellowstone. The upper part of the slump was covered with grass and brush, while the lower part had some pines and was steeper. Walking along the rim, I looked for a way down the escarpment. There was an animal trail running diagonally down the side, offering just enough footing for me to get down. Down I went. The ground below was hummocky and there was no trail, so I had to keep my gaze focused just a step ahead of my feet, with an occasional glance farther ahead.
I don’t remember whether I heard or saw the bear first, but suddenly there it was, standing on all fours beneath a pine tree, its small, dark eyes riveted on me. There was no chance of escape had it decided to charge and there was no one to help me if it did. Fortunately, he calmly remained standing in the shade of the tree. What went on in his mind will remain a mystery, but evidently he didn’t perceive me as a threat. Good thing I noticed him when I did or I might not be writing this!
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I continued to back up slowly, eventually reaching the escarpment on the opposite side from where I had walked down, where another game trail took me up and onto the rim above. From above I searched for him with binoculars. He was downhill from where I roused him, lying on his back, legs swimming in the air as he scratched his back on a bed of pinecones. Then he lay still, presumably resuming the nap from which I had so rudely awakened him.
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I wanted to watch him when he woke up, and since I reckoned that the prevailing winds would not carry my scent toward him, I laid down for some shuteye. As Director of Western Wildlife Conservancy and the author of a pamphlet titled “Living with Cougars and Bears,” I thought I knew what I was doing. In fact, I was quite proud of myself for having followed the instructions I laid out in the pamphlet on what to do if you encounter a grizzly bear. In retrospect, however, it was probably foolish of me to be so cavalier. Fortunately, when I awoke, I found him peacefully foraging below.
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Technically, grizzly bears are carnivores because they have carnassial teeth for shearing meat, tendon, and bone, but in practice they are omnivorous and eat mostly plant material, including roots, tubers, grass, and pine nuts. This one was doing a lot of digging.
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My grizzly encounter was tame stuff compared to some I have read about. Hugh Glass, a beaver trapper, was badly mauled by a mother with cubs in the fall of 1823 and left to die by his companions John Fitzgerald and a man referred to as “Bridges”—possibly Jim Bridger. Also in the fall of 1823, mountain man and explorer Jedediah Smith had his scalp and an ear ripped off by a grizzly, which were crudely sewn back on by his companion, Jim Clyman. These attacks were the result of sudden meeting of bear and human. But there have been other cases where the bear was after food.
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One such incident occurred at Rainbow Point Campground near Hebgen Lake, west of Yellowstone, in the summer of 1983. A camper was torn from his tent at night, killed and eaten by a male grizzly. The grizzly was later destroyed and some of the remains of the hapless camper found in its stomach. Then there was grizzly bear fanatic Timothy Treadwell. He and a woman friend were killed by a huge, hungry grizzly in Alaska in 2003. Again, the grizzly came in the night and ripped open the tent to get at them. The sound recorder of Tim’s movie camera recorded their screams as they were being eaten. Filmmaker Werner Herzog made an academy award-winning documentary, Grizzly Man, about this weird, tragic incident using some of Treadwell’s own footage. Fortunately, such occurrences are exceedingly rare.
Not long after my grizzly encounter, I met a woman who had gone to Yellowstone to “get close to” a grizzly bear. She had come to have the strange opinion that so long as she was not afraid of death, nothing could touch her. After all, hadn’t she miraculously recovered from a terrible automobile accident? She spotted a grizzly somewhere along the highway between Lakeside and Sylvan Pass, peacefully foraging in a meadow, and followed it for a couple of hours. Like Treadwell, she had convinced herself that she had developed some sort of mystical bond or sympatico with the bear so it would not feel threatened and would not attack her. And luckily for her, it did not.
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I am glad to have had my grizzly experience but prefer not to have another one like it and certainly don’t think I can make friends with one. There is a vast gulf between their world and ours and we do well to respect it by allowing them the wild space they need to live and flourish in peace.
Kirk Robinson, PhD, is a former philosophy professor who founded Western Wildlife Conservancy in Salt Lake City in 1997. He is on the Advisory Board of Wildlife For All and on The Rewilding Institute Leadership Council. He enjoys backpacking, river trips, and exploring for Native American rock art.
"Perfumed by a Grizzly"
by Stephen Stringham
As usual, I spent June 2003 camping out in Alaska’s Katmai National Park to study grizzly bear behavior and ecology. After a couple of weeks of constant rain or overcast, the sun finally began to shine. By then, I smelled like an old billy goat. So, down to the creek and rub a dub dub. I bathed myself and scrubbed my clothes. After hanging the laundry on bushes to dry, I figured I’d settle down for a nice snooze. But no such luck. Out of the surrounding forest came an adult female grizzly who apparently thought I hadn’t done a good enough job. After giving my underwear a sniff and snort, she pulled each pair off the bushes and dropped it onto the grass. Thoroughly rubbing the laundry with her head apparently didn’t cover the man-stink well enough, so she rolled on everything until it was thoroughly anointed with her own God-given perfume. Finally satisfied, she ambled off into the nearby trees and plopped down for the night. Waiting until she was snoring gently, I crept up and retrieved my clothes. Later that night, when I contacted my wife by sat phone, I told her this story. To my surprise, she asked why I hadn’t left well enough alone and put up with smelling like a bear – perhaps as camouflage? What could I say? This female was looking for love. Getting chased by a dozen randy boar griz might have been the female’s idea of fun, but it wasn’t mine!
Video footage of the event can be viewed on YouTube under the title Secrets of Living in Harmony With Bears
Dr. Stephen F. Stringham is a pioneering bear behaviorist, wildlife ecologist, and author who lives in coastal Alaska. He is Director of the Bear Viewing Association and Bear Communication & Coexistence Research Program.
"Why Grizzly Bears Matter"
by Harry Rissien
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This video of Harry Rissien was recorded during July 2023 at the Great Bear Campout on Idaho’s Lochsa river. The gathering consisted of scientists, lawyers, activists, and passionate citizens focused on developing strategies to protect the grizzly bear. The highlight of the weekend was hearing everyone’s ‘why’—why grizzly bears? Among the most inspiring was Harry's exposition on how grizzly bears, ecosystems, and humans are inextricably connected.
Harry is 11 years old and, at least for now, loves fly fishing. He lives with two proud parents (Adam and Leah) in Missoula, Montana. Adam works for WildEarth Guardians as the ReWilding Manager.
"Room to Roam"
by Phil Knight
Muscles roll under silvertip fur
Her walk is both shuffling and sure
Searching for roots, grubs and berries,
An occasional squirrel she harries.
Two playful cubs tag along
Growling a young grizzly’s song
Watching their mother for example
What she eats they’re eager to sample.
She’ll protect them as well as she can
From dangerous bears or from man
She’ll teach them the ways of the hills
And encourage their natural skills.
But the cubs’ very future is clouded.
By humankind they are being crowded
Will they always find room to roam?
Will we leave them a wilderness home?
‘Cross the West the bear once wandered
But her habitat’s been squandered
By the creature that calls itself wise
and is but a quarter the grizzly’s size.
Wide country and wild she needs
for safety from vile human deeds
To roam unhindered and free
and pursue her own destiny.
Humankind now owns most of the West
and it seems that our race will not rest
‘til we’ve plundered every square acre
Not a giver; always a taker.
Can’t we leave room for another?
For the grizzly cubs and their mother?
For the wolf, badger, eagle and bear?
For all that lives wild out there?
This planet is not ours to ruin
We share it with feline and bruin
With forests, with insects, with birds
With life wonderful beyond words.
Keep it WILD! Keep it GREEN! Keep it FREE!
Open your eyes and see
We are playing a dangerous game
For the Bear’s fate and ours are the same!
Phil grew up in New England and fled for the wilds of the Rockies as soon as he could. He has spent 40 years in the Yellowstone area and has spent a lot of blood sweat and tears defending grizzly bears, wolves, wild forests and other worthy living things. As a Yellowstone Park tour guide Phil is lucky enough to experience Yellowstone's incredible wildlife year round. He and his wife Alaina live in Bozeman.