Posted on 06/19/2010 2:35:42 AM PDT by SLB
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.
Bear not relocated
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.
“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.
“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.
Close friends
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.
“We walked many miles and spent many days together,” he said.
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’s a magnificent book. It weighs about five pounds,” he 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.”
“I’m thinking it had to be a close-range, surprise encounter,” he said.
Neal said bear spray or a gun “may not have done any good” in such an attack.
“Evert, who was not armed and was not carrying bear spray”.
What else can you say? When big critters lose their fear of man it’s a dangerous state of affairs.
There’s a reason why the premier makers of monster single-action revolvers are here in Wyoming (Freedom Arms and John Linebaugh).
Even in the Big Horns, where we aren’t supposed to have anything bigger than cats, black bear and moose... I take a .45 while hiking or hunting.
/
I was raised near Wheatland, but still have a couple of bear stories. A local farmer heard his cattle in a feed lot bawling one morning. Went out and there was a black bear up a utility pole. He called the Game Warden to come and get the body.
I went elk hunting by Pinedale in about 1965 with my dad and a friend of his who had lost an arm in WW2. The friend came back to our little camp one day and started packing. He told my dad that a bear had followed him all day. He would walk and the bear would walk. He would stop and the bear would stop. The bear would loop around some and be waiting for him to pass through an area. He said that a man with two arms had little to no chance against a bear so what chance did a one armed man have? We did not get an elk that year.
Local Killed by Bear Placed in his Yard by Government
Lucky for him he was mauled and killed; if he’d defended himself, he’d be in real trouble.
Drat those government bears.
Neal said bear researchers were returning from the capture site when they were told by Evert’s wife, Yolanda, that he was missing.
Oh.. SNAP!
Now I'll be thinking of Pulp Fiction all day and Jules (Samuel L Jackson) telling Yolanda to be cool, just like Fonzie.
If they knew what they were doing it wouldn’t be called research.
I would suggest a .44 magnum at the minimum.
Were they periodically interviewing the bears?
Why can't they regulate these bear's. So much anger, so much hate, Dang that rap music.
Regulations do not allow it at this time.
No gun. No bear spray. Grizzly country. Not a good combination.
Prayers for the gentleman.
35 years ago my husband and I were backpacking the continental divide and were in southern Colorado when we came upon sheepherder and his sheep. He told us some of what we already knew - that there were black bears in the area and that we should hang our food in the trees. He also told us that we would probably be okay because we had a dog with us. We thought that was pretty funny since our dog was a dachshund (although a 30 pound one) but he said it wasn’t the size of the dog but his smell. He had a sheep dog who sat calmly at his side and hardly even looked at our dog. Anyway, we heard the sheep through that night but by morning they had moved on. We never encountered any bear. Years later, camping in the boundary waters with our kids, we smelled bear - no mistaking it - large predator poop. And a friend who lives close to Yellowstone up on the side of a mountain, has had a grizzle leave claw marks on the outside of her bedroom window on the second floor. She sleeps with a gun and pepper spray now.
If you read the story you’ll see the bear had just been released by researchers who tagged it.
So the bear was probably looking for a little revenge.
What kind of spray does one use with a big bear?
The wife told the crew he was missing and they went back to the trap site, where they found the remains of the hiker.
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