Bear kills hiker

CODY -- Authorities are investigating the circumstances surrounding the fatal mauling by a grizzly bear Thursday of a Shoshone National Forest cabin owner. The incident occurred at a site where a bear had been captured and released earlier that day.

Erwin Frank Evert, 70, of Park Ridge, Ill., was reported missing to a member of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team who had been conducting research in the Kitty Creek drainage, about seven miles east of Yellowstone National Park.

Researchers had earlier trapped and released an adult male grizzly in the area, according to information released by Park County Sheriff Scott Steward.

A longtime friend and professional colleague said Evert was aware that researchers had been trying for several days to trap a bear in the area, and that friends and family members were unsure why he had hiked into the capture site despite knowing the risks.

“None of us understand it, and apparently never will,” said retired ecologist Chuck Neal, author of “Grizzlies in the Mist.”

Neal said he often hiked the woods around Yellowstone with Evert, a botanist, sharing a common interest in researching the region’s plants and animals.

Neal, a survivor of several close encounters with grizzlies, said Evert had called him last week asking about a sign posted at Kitty Creek warning about bear-trapping activities, and that Evert was “absolutely aware” of the risks of hiking in the area.

Neal said bear researchers were returning from the capture site when they were told by Evert’s wife, Yolanda, that he was missing.

A study team member went back to the capture site and found Evert’s body. Wardens with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and a sheriff’s deputy responded at 8:30 p.m. to the remote location, about two miles from Highway 14-16-20.

Members of Park County Search and Rescue recovered Evert’s body around midnight, with assistance from Game and Fish workers, who provided armed security, Steward said in a written statement released Friday afternoon.

Steward said that Evert, who was not armed and was not carrying bear spray, apparently wandered into the capture site sometime after the bear had been released.

Neal said he did not know how researchers returning from the site failed to cross paths with Evert while he was hiking in, unless the botanist had left the trail at some point.

The bear had not been captured before Thursday, and had not been relocated from another area, said Chris Servheen, grizzly bear coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Researchers drew blood from the captured bear and fitted it with a radio collar before releasing it, Servheen said, but it has not yet been determined whether the previously captured bear was the same one that killed Evert.

Servheen said that wildlife officials will try to compare any DNA left by the attacking bear, most likely in its saliva, with blood drawn from the captured bear.

It is uncertain whether that difficult process of analysis will prove possible, he said.

Steward said that the U.S. Forest Service had issued a closure order for the Kitty Creek drainage and that federal wildlife and law enforcement agents are searching for the bear using electronic tracking equipment.

Servheen initially said Friday morning that wildlife officials would not try to trap the bear again. But he said later that efforts were being made to recapture it.

He said the investigation of the mauling is in its early stages, and that authorities will work to try to re-create what happened.

If it is determined that the bear trapped Thursday is the one that killed Evert, federal wildlife officials will decide the bear’s fate, he said.

“We’ll try to make a decision as to whether the actions of the bear were natural aggression,” Servheen said.

“We will try to make that decision based on what we know after we put all the facts together,” he said, adding that re-creating an attack without any witnesses can prove difficult.

Some cabin owners have said they were unaware of research work being done in the area, and questioned whether wildlife and land management agencies were communicating effectively with the public about such activities. The press is not routinely notified of study team field work.

Servheen said that interagency partners including the Wyoming Game and Fish and Shoshone National Forest personnel are aware of researchers’ work in the area, and that signs are posted in areas where bears are being captured.

He said he was unaware of what other public notifications, if any, were routinely made about bear capture efforts.

“The people doing this are highly trained professionals who follow very detailed protocols. One of the most important protocols is public safety,” he said.

“We want to make sure people don’t walk into these places, so they place signs lower down on the trail” warning people to avoid the area, he said.

Servheen said “it would be impossible to enter this area” without noticing warning signs.

Neal said Evert and his wife spent summers each year for the last three decades at their Kitty Creek cabin, and that they were close family friends.

Evert was a research field botanist working for the Morton Arboretum in Chicago, and he also worked as a research associate at the Rocky Mountain Herbarium at the University of Wyoming, Neal said.

Evert had just published “Vascular Plants of the Greater Yellowstone Area,” a book offering an exhaustive catalog of native plants, including a series of annotated maps, Neal said.

“It really was his life’s work, so it’s good, and I’m grateful that he got to see that published,” Neal said.

“He just turned 70 this spring, but he was still very active and very fit,” Neal said.

Neal described Evert as “a committed man who could focus like a laser beam on his goal.”

Persistent windy conditions around Cody over the last week made it a particularly dangerous time for hiking in grizzly country, Neal said.

Bears are unable to easily hear or smell people approaching under such blustery conditions, and are more likely to be surprised, eliciting a defensive response.

Although bear encounters around Yellowstone are not uncommon, including ones that result in serious injuries to people, fatal bear attacks are relatively rare.

Neal said the incident was the result of “incredible bad luck, and also bad judgment.”

Neal said bear spray or a gun “may not have done any good” in such an attack.

Researchers drew blood from the captured bear and fitted it with a radio collar before releasing it, Servheen said, but it has not yet been determined whether the previously captured bear was the same one that killed Evert. Servheen initially said Friday morning that wildlife officials would not try to trap the bear again. But he said later that efforts were being made to recapture it. “If we get a chance to trap it, we will trap it,” he said. He said the investigation of the mauling is in its early stages, and that authorities will work to try to re-create what happened. If it is determined that the bear trapped Thursday is the one that killed Evert, federal wildlife officials will decide the bear’s fate, he said.

Who ARE these people? They trap a wild animal , draw blood, tie a radio collar around it , release it and maybe it kills a human and now they want to recapture it to see if it actually killed this man. They aren't even sure if they can figure it out and then what, decide it's fate? what does that mean? Why is the govt capturing and tagging animals? Why are humans taking walks in the woods where bears live? What station was the radio collar tuned to? So many questions. Just leave the animals alone and stay out of the woods where the big animals are.

“Evert, who was not armed and was not carrying bear spray”.

Evert may well have been disarmed by law, unConstitutional though that law may have been. As an American, Evert had a Right, codified in the Constitution, to be armed so that he could protect his life.

Man has the right to protect his life, yet in a National Forest, an American can still not carry a gun. Thanks to President Bush’s support, Americans can once again be armed in a National Park. But, the socialists in the Department of the Inferior are, to this very day, stripping Americans of their right to defend their lives by being armed.

The Federal laws MUST be changed to allow all Americans to once again be “at all times armed”. As Thomas Jefferson said, “for in such manner is tyranny kept in check”, even the tyranny of grizzly bears.

Whoever “Neal” is, either he knows nothing of firearms, or he is lying to protect the bear programs which pay his salary. To claim that a gun would not have made any difference is a bald faced lie, something all too many scientists on the government payrolls are all too good at.

Had Evert been armed, one of the world’s better scientists would be alive and that bear on the way to the taxidermist to become a rug.

Now, thanks to the faulty premises of scientists afflicted with horrific premises, the horror of their failed attempt to create a “Garden of Eden has been visited upon a 70 year old American In their doomed try to recreate the Edenic Myth, a place where dangerous predators live peacefully alongside men, their attempt to play God has failed.

The price of their failure was paid not by a professional Predator Panderer (like a “Grizzly Bear Expert”), but a 70 year old botanist. A major scientific mind became bear scat, so that minor minds, and a host of bureaucrats, could be paid a salary for doing jobs that didn’t need to be done.

The price of socialist make-work is high. Too high.

Indeed, the AgencyPersons are busy, indeed - and lying fast and furiously to cover their faulty premises and avoid liability and enraged citizen rejection of their programs.

“The people doing this are highly trained professionals who follow very detailed protocols. One of the most important protocols is public safety,” he said.

The above statement is an active joke! It is precisely because of such “professionals”, that America has had the basic Right to protect human life stripped away to protect the bears these “professionals” depend on for their cash flow. What we are seeing here is enviro-socialism’s basic premises in full failure mode.

Worse yet, the predator Panderer class is in full voice, frantically defended their “Agenda Uber Alles” positions and chattering loudly and egregiously as they play the usual “Gimme My Check Syndrome”.

This time, the wretched record of their failure is written in the blood of an American citizen, who was disarmed and sacrificed upon the alter of enviro-socialism.

No predator is worth a human life.

No Predator Panderer accepts this premise

Anyone who lives where dangerous predatory beasts are quartered by the government is placed in an untenable place by that government.

For any who disagree with my admittedly harsh dismissal of Predator Panderers, do a Google search for the photos of a bear being released by the “Armed & Rangerous”. Note that these “professionals” are so “highly trained” that the bear left the trap and then climbed up on the trap and munched down on the leg of the ParcMan who released him.

America’s “Armed & Rangerous” have managed to reach the same level of incompetence that is on display at youTube’s “How Not To Release A Leopard”.

Fire them all,
Fire them all,
the Short, the Fat, and the Tall!
Fire them ALL!

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