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Book Review, © Copyright 2000, Jim Loy
No bears had ever killed any human in Glacier National Park, until just after midnight on the morning of August 13, 1967, when two 19 year old women were killed in Glacier National Park, in Montana, by two grizzly bears, in two separate incidents. This is the absolutely terrifying story of these two deaths, followed by the deaths of five grizzly bears, one of which was shown to have killed one of the women. The author explains that deaths were the inevitable result of several factors: increasing camping and hiking in bear country, the park's allowing the dumping of garbage which attracted bears and made the bears expect food from human camps, the park's not dealing with incidents of aggressive bears, campers not sealing up and carrying out their garbage. Still the coincidence of two attacks on the same night is amazing. Since then the National Park Service has cleaned up its act. It relocates and electronically tracks troublesome bears, it enforces logical garbage policies, and it destroys aggressive bears. Disturbing as this practice of destroying bears may seem, it may be helping to preserve the wild grizzly in our parks.
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Reviewer's comments: My brother saw a mother grizzly with two cubs, in Glacier Park. Tourists were actually throwing rocks at the bears. It would have been a tragedy for the bears (not for the tourists who deserved to be punished for their stupidity, in my opinion), had the bears attacked.
I had a roommate who had a nearly fatal encounter with a grizzly bear. He saw a man shoot into a bush, apparently with no idea what was in the bush. A wounded grizzly came out of the bush, and charged my roommate, who ran up a tree. He shot and killed the bear. I understand that the man who originally shot the bear went to jail and paid a fine.
By the way, the word "grizzly" means streaked with gray or white, as in a man's beard. The grizzly (Ursus horribilis) is officially known as the North American brown bear. The black bear is sometimes brown, and is sometimes called a brown bear. And adult grizzlies have sometimes (rarely) been known to climb trees, despite what people say. Grizzlies are often much larger than black bears, and have a hump on the back.