When asked, the bears said that the PETA followers were a little thin and stringy but tasted just like chicken.
Posted on 08/29/2002 2:16:41 PM PDT by wallcrawlr
WEST YELLOWSTONE (AP) — A 38-year-old man was in fair condition Monday after a grizzly bear attacked a group of animal rights activists hiking eight miles northwest of here.
Gallatin National Forest officials said they were worried hungry bears are coming out of the mountains and immediately closed the area to hiking and tent camping. The victim, who was not identified, and three other members of Buffalo Field Campaign surprised a grizzly sow and two cubs Sunday afternoon. One hiker said the person in the lead dropped to the ground but another ran and the bear attacked him.
Clarke Ball, who was behind the other hikers, said he heard but couldn’t see what happened because of the thick forest, but it was only momemts before he found his companion bleeding from his face and legs. “He got his face mangled,” said Ball. “He had two puncture wounds on his knee and two on his right-hand side below the kidney.”
The hikers, part of a group of activists who annually monitor and occasionally disrupt Montana’s efforts to keep bison from entering the state from nearby Yellowstone National Park. The activists maintain state livestock and wildlife officials needlessly kill some of the trespassing bison as part of a controversial disease-control program.
The hikers said the attack occurred too quickly to determine exactly what happened, said Claude Coffin, acting district ranger for the Hebgen Lake Ranger District.
“They said it happened with lightning speed,” said Coffin. “Before they knew it, it was over with.” The other three were not injured. One of them climbed a tree, but the bear quickly retreated into the woods, Coffin said.
Ball said the attack was not the bear’s fault. “That area was known to be frequented by bears and we were not following protocol,” he said, because the group was walking too quietly.
The victim was airlifted to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls, where a hospital spokeswoman said he was in fair condition Monday night. Biologists have been worried attacks would rise as a key food source for bears — nuts from whitebark pines — dries up. They say a poor nut harvest forces the bears to seek food at lower elevations.
“This is bad news,” said Kim Barber, a grizzly bear biologist with Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. “Research has shown that when whitebark pine cone numbers are low, human-bear encounters increase. Bears are hungry and looking for food wherever they can find it.”
A 750-acre section of land where the attack occurred has been closed for up to a month. A nearby campsite has been closed to overnight camping in tents. “We have no interest in removing the bear, so we’re going to keep people out for a while,” Coffin said Monday.
“This is a wake-up call,” he said. “Starting about now or the next week or so, bears are going to be actively feeding, trying to put pounds on.”
The bear was looking for nuts and found them.
When asked, the bears said that the PETA followers were a little thin and stringy but tasted just like chicken.
-PJ
Grizzly: Well, it depends on the sauce.
Well, the guy who was attacked is named Clarke Ball.
Darn, I was going to make a joke about the activists apologising to the bear, but they actually did. Maybe they should be put down so that they can't molest other bears.
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