August 24, 2009, 2:50 pm
The deaths of two grizzly bears in Glacier National Park last week has caused a stir in western Montana as bear biologists evaluate the park’s decision to remove a mother and two of her cubs.
Biologist Charles Jonkel of the Great Bear Foundation in Missoula disagreed with the killings and reported numerous phone calls from concerned residents.
“The level of anger down here, oh my God, it’s unbelievable,” Jonkel said. “All kinds of people are calling me and they are mad.”
The reaction is in response to Glacier Park official’s decision to kill a 17-year-old female grizzly bear that had become too familiar with humans and often occupied campgrounds near her habitat around Oldman Lake.
Glacier Park Superintendent Chas Cartwright said the bear and her yearling cubs had displayed “overt conditioned behavior” toward humans in recent years.
“Park resource personnel worked to keep this bear and her offspring in the wild for five years, but given her most recent display of over-familiarity in combination with her history of habituation, we determined that the three grizzlies posed an unacceptable threat to human health and safety,” Cartwright said in a press release.
After rangers shot the mother 300 yards from the Oldman Lake Campground on the evening of Aug. 17, they went back to tranquilize her two yearlings cubs. One of the cubs died after being darted, despite ranger efforts with mouth-to-nose CPR. An animal autopsy in Bozeman is pending.
The surviving female yearling, which park rangers estimated weighed 80 to 100 pounds, was transferred from the park on Aug. 18, on its way to the Bronx Zoo in New York.
