Recalling Western Exposure’s posts earlier this summer on the various bear attacks in the Rocky Mountain West, we wonder if the bears of Canada and Alaska have heard about the Bear Wars coming their way:
- In southern Alberta, a three-year-old bear with no apparent fear of people, which had been living in and among the people of Canmore, was killed in downtown Fort St. John by the RCMP. “A lot of us were pretty discouraged,” Alberta senior wildlife biologist Jon Jorgenson told Canwest News Service. “We worked with this bear quite a bit. We knew the bear quite well. He didn’t seem to mind being near people.”
- Hiking upslope in the dark through a thicket of hemlock near Sitka, deer hunter Karl Wolfe ran smack into a grizzly that promptly gave him two chomps on the arm. Wolfe smacked the bruin with his rifle and, while lying down, chambered a round and fired it. Then he managed to escape. Wildlife officers on Baranof Island in southeast Alaska are on the lookout for a brown bear, possibly wounded. Wolfe isn’t sure if his shot hit the bear.
— Robert McClure
