So A Man Went Hiking In Yellowstone And Was Killed By a Bear...And Now They Are Going To Kill The Bear And Her Cubs

WaPo - Park officials may never know for sure what happened between Lance Crosby and the bear that attacked him in the backwoods of Yellowstone. There were no witnesses to the incident that left the 63-year-old veteran hiker dead amid pine needles and dirt half a mile from the nearest trail, so it’s unclear what could have pushed a normally reclusive mother grizzly to maul him and leave his body “partially consumed.”  The attack was a tragedy for Crosby’s family and friends, and for the park, where Crosby had long worked as a summer employee. It also seems likely to end sadly for the bears. Park officials have captured the sow believed to have killed Crosby along with one of her two cubs. If DNA evidence matches her to the killing, she will be euthanized and her cubs offered to a rehabilitation center or zoo. If they can’t be placed, the baby bears — members of a federally protected threatened species — will also be put down. For park officials who have dedicated their lives to the protection of wilderness, cases like this are painful and deeply unsettling. On the one hand, they have 3.5 million yearly park visitors to protect. On the other, all 3.5 million of those visitors, along with park employees themselves, are interlopers on the bears’ land. Grizzlies are the most feared of North America’s bears, helped in no part by their name: Ursus arctos horribilis, or “horrible bear.” Unlike the more docile black bears in the East, grizzlies have trouble climbing and give birth to just a handful of offspring. That means that grizzlies, particularly mothers defending their young, have learned to stand their ground. Visitors to Yellowstone are about as likely to be killed by a lightning strike as a bear attack. But park officials serve their human patrons, not their ursine charges. Sometimes a bear has to be killed in order to “err on the side of human safety,” Yellowstone wildlife biologist Kerry Gunther told Slate in 2012.

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You mean to tell me a man went hiking in Yellowstone, was mauled by a bear, and now they are going to kill the bear? Fuck outta here. I mean obviously it’s sad he died and all that, but that bear didn’t go crazy, that bear went bear. If you go into the wilderness, take shits in a bear’s house, eat all his porridge, and then the bear eats you for 4th meal, that’s on you. That’s the risk you take for being outdoorsy.

Now I guess the argument the Park gives is “that bear now see humans as food, so it’s unsafe”. UHHHHH NO SHIT. IT’S A BEAR. All of a sudden it sees humans as food? Like that’s some sort of shocking development? You know where I don’t go? The hood in DC where people are shot every day. You know why? Because I don’t want to get shot. You know where else I don’t go? Fucking Bearland in Yellowstone. You know why? Because I don’t want to get eaten. Look, I don’t want people to die, but if bears could go to trial, no judge would find this bear guilty. “Your honor, I was just being a bear”. Case fucking dismissed.

 

h/t @zippychance