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Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks (CA)
Man Bitten By Bear Near Mist Falls In Kings Canyon

A 65-year-old man was bitten by a bear in Kings Canyon National Park on the afternoon of Thursday, September 6th. The man had been sleeping on a rock near Mist Falls, a four-mile hike from Roads End in Cedar Grove. He was awakened by other visitors who were yelling to him to warn him that he was being approached by a bear. As he sat up, the bear bit his right thigh, causing numerous puncture wounds. The man yelled and swatted the bear, but the bear did not leave the immediate area. Several people helped scare it away. Ten days before the incident, warning signs were posted at the Roads End Ranger Station following reports of a small bear approaching people near Mist Falls. Wilderness rangers looked for the bear on several occasions, but could not find it. On Saturday, this yearling female bear was found, tranquilized and euthanized by bear management staff. The man’s injury was treated by park medics at Roads End. He then went to Sierra Kings Hospital for further treatment. [Submitted by Alexandra Picavet, Public Affairs Specialist]


Yellowstone National Park (ID,MT,WY)
Bear Attack Prompts Temporary Area Closure

A man was mauled by a bear while elk hunting north of the park in the Beattie Gulch area on the morning of Friday, September 14th. The Forest Service subsequently closed a portion of the Gallatin National Forest due to public safety concerns, and the park closed an abutting section of Yellowstone west of Gardiner. The northeast corner of the closed section of the park is where Reese Creek meets the park’s northern boundary west of the Yellowstone River. The closure continues southwest along the park boundary until turning due south to Electric Peak. From Electric Peak, the southern boundary of the closed area follows the Montana/Wyoming state line east back to Reese Creek. Reese Creek forms the eastern boundary of this temporarily closed area. Hikers and backcountry users are encouraged to check with staff at the Albright Visitor Center or the Backcountry Office in Mammoth Hot Springs before planning any trips into this section of the park. [Submitted by Public Affairs, Yellowstone National Park]

Thanks for sharing these....a coworker reported that her mother's place was being visited by a bear that came right up to the house, stood on its hind legs and looked in the window and was pawing the paned glass. They chased it off but it first took the trash with it. Later that day, came back again and raided the trash cans again in spite of four grown men chasing after it into the tree line with guns - no one wanted to take a shot at it or even to startle it, and it got away. They live north of Bishop.

It's that time of year, they are hungry, winter's coming and they know it; not much food to forage, and they are unafraid of humans and are used to getting the food from them now. I hope to God I never have to use it but this is also why I pack a firearm in the backcountry because I always go in alone....besides the occasional wierdo or druggie wacko one runs into now and then back there, we also have plenty of bear, and at least a couple of tagged mountain lions near up here where I hike in all the time. I would rather be responsibly prepared than dead or terribly mauled and left to die. I don't beleive in shooting the bears, either, if they can be relocated, but how far in, and how long before they are back again? This unfortunately happens too. Just more and more of us people and civilization coming up here, and the bears are not scared anymore.

There also was a recent bear attack in Washington state:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003889701_bearattack18m.html


Watchout where you hike around Tahoe:
http://www.sacbee.com/placer/story/367388.html


From this month's Backpacker magazine a story about "The World's Smartest Bears", Yosemite bears:

"So if a bear goes after your food, it's nothing personal. Bears don't want you, they want your gorp. And it's a testament to ursine grace and the apparent saintlike patience of Sierra black bears that they don't kill or eat people. After all, if Valley bears thought tourists were tasty, this place would be Jurassic Park."

"Yosemite has an estimated 350 to 400 bears. Nearby Kings Canyon has perhaps 500. Biologists say the bear population in Yosemite Valley is two or three times what natural food sources could support. People provide the rest."

Lake Tahoe is now ground zero for bear problems in the Sierras with up to 200 reports a day. Here's an odd one from a casino in Lake Tahoe. Looks like the bear headed into a room next to a kitchen, judging by the guy in the chef's hat. http://www.news10.net/video/player_news10.aspx?aid=29474&bw=

Haven't heard that any of these 200 reports per day involved bears attacking people. If there was such an attack, I expect it would be all over the news.

Note that we will continue to get reports of exceedingly rare attacks on humans. They are news because they are rare. We will get many more reports of fatal airline crashes. Fatal car crashes don't get as much attention because they occur so often.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/09/ap/national/main3244952.shtml?source=search_story
"The number of visitors injured by bears in Yellowstone is down from an average of 45 yearly in the '60s to about one a year."
( ...and they have grizzlies in addition to black bears.)

Dry winter and less than normal summer thunderstorm activity has led to reduced backcountry food sources for the bears. With winter approaching, they will search out alternatives - including risking more contact with humans.

Seems like normal bear behavior in response to a natural weather cycle.

In bear country you always have to be aware of possible encounters and options available to minimize the damage - to both you and the bear.

Just a suggestion, I was up on Whitney at 2AM on Sept 6. Knowing it was getting cold and the bears are getting really hungry when I started out from the trailhead I did not use the hip belt of my backpack until at least 1/2 mile up.In case the bear smelled the food in the pack and grabbed it, at least I would hopefully just fall away from the pack. If I was attached to it the bear might think you are fighting him for it and it might get pretty ugly. Bear-1, me-0.

Don't forget the June bear attack in American Fork Canyon in Utah, near Mt. Timpanogous....when a black bear came into the tent and pulled an 11 year boy out killing him.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/06/18/national/a071140D93.DTL

My brother, who serves as a forest ranger in the area during the summer, said he has never seen a bear in over 15 years. Follow up news reports said the boy was playing a hand held pokeman game, which noise could have attracted the bear. Apparently the bear did not kill the child for food. Though not common, black bear attacks still happen.

and here is another story today.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20870622/

I wonder what his dogs were doing while he was being attacked? There seems to be some more details to this story that need to come out.

Memory Lapse, I have wondered the same thing (what were the dogs doing?)

There are many people (not saying this person, since I don't really know) who believe having a dog with them gives some sort of additional protection from wild animals or deranged men. Personally, I doubt the validity of this belief.

Dogs can serve as an 'early warning system' for bears, mountain lions, etc., but have also been known to lead a bear right back to you (bears DO chase dogs), after they get scared off of their point position and seek protection from you.......

Warning: This video is pretty grizzly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_VlVckrUgY&mode=related&search=

BOB, That is a classic !! Now, where do you think that fishing bear learned the Ali-shuffle? And, do bears need fishing licenses?

Another mountain bike rider was attacked this summer. Could a bike rider hunched over the handle bars look like an aggressive bear-like creature to the bears?

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.co...ery=bear+attack


Sometimes it’s smart to play dead. The Yellowstone attack on Sept 14 was the 4th bear attack this summer around Yellowstone.

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.co...ery=bear+attack

I am pretty sure the latest advice is to play dead (fetal position, protecting back of neck and head) if it's a Grizzly attacking, but to fight back if it's a Black Bear..............steve
anyone else with the latest?

The one thing sorely missing from all these reports is detail. In the case of the biker, just a guess, maybe he and his dogs startled the bear coming upon it very quickly or maybe it was a sow protecting some cubs.

I imagine there is some validity to bears being a little more aggressive given reduced food sources but there is always much more to these stories than is reported.

I would wager that the vasy majority of incidents where bears have reportedly broken into approved storage containers is more from people not using the canisters properly but noone is going to admit to that.

These attacks are very sad but it does not mean any bear encounter will have similar results.

In this latest Kitsap/WA instance, the guy was pretty adamant that it was a male bear and not a female. I gather he had an opportunity to observe anatomical features!!! There were reports of a female with a cub/cubs and locals did not want her killed if she were protecting them. They never actually captured any bear although traps were set for about a week. It was in our local news pretty much daily when it happened.

Coyotes are pretty routine, an occasional urban deer, bears in the suburbs and a number of years back a cougar in a large but urban area Seattle park (took authorities a while before they believed that sighting) and the occasional eagle sighting.

Hiking alone in the Trinity Alps, I came around a bend and encountered a female bear with a cub. We formed a triangle and we were about ten feet apart. For about 20 seconds we all froze with the bears sitting on their haunches staring at me. I was carrying a fishing rod in an aluminum tube, which made a loud rattle when I shook it. Deciding that a good offense was my best strategy (it once worked on a bull moose in Alaska), I jumped up and down, yelling and rattling the tube. The eyes of both bears widened and then they somersaulted backward and went crashing into the brush. Whew! Recently I learned that I was not in danger. I've had other bear encounters, especially around Yosemite. Now I'm about 5'6'', not too terrifying (maybe the bull moose thought I was an deformed wolverine). That's my bear story.

Greatest misconception: The greatest misconception about black bears is that they are likely to attack people in defense of cubs. They are highly unlikely to do this. Black bear researchers often capture screaming cubs in the presence of bluff-charging mothers with no attacks. Defense of cubs is a grizzly bear trait. About 70 percent of human deaths from grizzly bears are from mothers defending cubs, but black bear mothers have not been known to kill anyone in defense of cubs.
http://www.bear.org/Black/Black_Bear_Facts.html

I don't mean to downplay the potential for bear problems, but just to put things in perspective, last week I returned from 25 days on the John Muir Trail, from Yosemite Valley to Whitney Portal, and I didn't see a single bear the entire journey.

I passed through a couple places that were supposed to be bear hot-spots but didn't have any encounters. In fact, from conversations with fellow hikers on the trail, I didn't hear from anyone who had any encounter with a bear.

I fully expected I would have some kind of bear encounter. I followed all the "rules", keeping all food and "smellables" in a bear cannister, parked yards away from my sleeping area. Never found the cannister to have been disturbed in the night.

Prior to leaving on my hike, the number one question from friends and relatives was "What about bears!?" Other common questions: "You bringing a firearm?", "What kind of defensive weapon are you bringing?" To these latter questions I'd answer by explaining that John Muir hiked for days at a time in the Sierras with not much more than a coat, some bread and tea.

On the flip side of the issue, in the 1980s I met a young teen boy (in fact interviewed him for a local newspaper) who, while camping outside of California (I forget which state) woke up with his head inside the mouth of a bear (not a grizzly). He had about 18 stitches on the side of his face to prove it. He had gone to bed with candy tucked inside his sleeping bag, and probably had sticky remnants on his face. But, being that the bear was in a position to easily kill him but didn't, it goes to show that bears are after the "fast food" and not human flesh.

I took this picture last Wednesday 9/19/07. There was a guy fishing from the wooden pier and he was quite surprised when he finally noticed the bear about 20 feet away from him. After the bear left the pond and was walking through the brush we watched as several people walked along the road between the portal store and trail head, they were all within 40 feet of a bear and will never know it because they didn't see it.
bear pic

Don't know if this was Randy T's bear or not, but ...

In the middle of the night of Sept. 26-27, while sleeping in my tent at Whitney Portal campground, I came about half awake to the sound of a clanking I couldn't identify, presently followed by a sort of snuffling sound. I wondered if it might be a bear ... but I didn't wonder enough to wake all the way up and look outside. When I rolled out in the morning, the coffee pot I'd left on the picnic table was knocked over -- the clank, evidently -- and there was dirt scattered around the table top.

While I was eating breakfast, the camp host/ranger came by and asked, "Did our bear bother you overnight?" I told him I wouldn't exactly say "bothered", but I was glad to hear that it was really a bear and not an overactive imagination that woke me up.

A few minutes after that I got even better confirmation when I started lugging stuff to the car: a very distinct, muddy bear paw print on the driver's door of my Jeep, just below the window. I took a picture of it with my cellphone camera and vowed never to wash the Jeep again.