Grizzly Tracks At Popular Island Park, Idaho Hiking Trail

We are near West Yellowstone, Montana, presently. The top headline on the front page of the West Yellowstone News says, “It’s a Town in Bear Country.”

The article relates two recent bear incidents in the area.

In one, a grizzly was a attracted by the smell of garbage on a screened in back porch – you can guess the rest. The screen on the porch didn’t keep the grizzly out. Fortunately, he didn’t make it into the cabin.

In the other incident “a bear at the KOA campground nipped a man sleeping outside his tent, leaving a bruise on his thigh.”

We’re currently at the KOA campground mentioned. We’re in a hard-side camper and won’t be sleeping outside – not that we would under any other circumstances.

Sorry, Tom, but grizzlies were not reintroduced here. Island Park is just a few miles down the road from where we are right at the KOA outside West Yellowstone. The bears have always been an attraction at Yellowstone National Park and never were eliminated from the park. Because of loss of habitat and geographic isolation from other grizzly populations, the grizzlies in the Yellowstone ecosystem were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The population has significantly recovered. The natural roaming range of the bears can take them well outside the park and many bears now may never spend any time in the park. There was a story on the news this morning about a hunter on the Idaho side of the Bitteroots that killed a grizzly believing to be a black bear. It was the first report of a grizzly in that area in over 60 years.

With the last several years of heat and drought, there is less food of value than normal for the bears. They are in the phase of the year where they are physiologically driven to bulk up for their 5 to 6 months of winter hibernation.

I do sympathize – and it is a little scary to think about the grizzlies being out there so close.

However, we do plan on taking some short hikes while we are here and we know that we are going to be in bear country.

Dana:

Let me clarify my comments. It’s sad that grizzlies are taking over popular hiking trails for two reasons: (1) Like Tom said, once you have frequent contact with grizzlies people will stop using the trails and (2) When you have frequent contact between humans and grizzlies, people are often maimed or killed and grizzlies are then tracked down and killed. It’s a bad deal for people and grizzlies.

Stay tuned. I’m going to send Tom two articles from today’s Idaho Falls Post Register to post here. There are getting to be far too many incidences like the one’s mentioned in the articles.