Grizzly cubs from deadly mauling were malnourished

[uppityperson]

As more information is released, as the investigation goes on, I will post what I find. Below this is another interesting article on Yellowstone grizzly bear deaths for the year.

http://www.billingsgazette.com/news/national/article_302b8ed7-208a-5ac6-b651-a1d22a378123.html

Three grizzly bear cubs whose mother killed one person and mauled two others in a late-night attack at a Montana campground were malnourished and still in their winter coats.

The cubs have arrived at their new home at ZooMontana in Billings. Zoo executive director Jackie Worstell said Sunday the two female cubs and one male cub were underweight, possibly explaining their mother's unusually aggressive behavior. "It may be an indication of what happened," Worstell said. "There's obvious signs of stress and malnourishment. Maybe (the sow) was desperate."

The year-old cubs each weighed only between 60 and 70 pounds, versus a normal range of 80 to 130 pounds. Wildlife officials are investigating what caused the cubs to be malnourished. Grizzlies are omnivores and eat everything from berries and ants to fish and elk.
(clip)
The 300- to 400-pound sow was euthanized Friday after DNA tests linked it to the attacks. Wildlife officials have said she appeared to be healthy, but they intend to further study the body in hopes of explaining her behavior.
(clip)
Wildlife officials say the cubs likely participated in the attack on Kammer, and so cannot be released back into the wild having probably learned from their mother's behavior.

http://www.billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/article_6a2d0b64-902d-11df-ac2c-001cc4c002e0.html

Ten grizzly bear deaths have been documented in the Yellowstone ecosystem so far this year, a rate comparable to past years. One other grizzly death is suspected. Of the 11 deaths, humans caused eight. The count was seven at this time last year and 13 at this point in 2008.

Biologists keep close track of grizzly bear deaths because the Yellowstone population is classified as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Researchers consider the deaths of adult female grizzlies to be particularly important for the species. Two adult females have died this year, compared with one at this time last year. Wildlife Biologist Mark Haroldson, with the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, says the number of female deaths is not a worry so far. "It's a pretty normal spring," Haroldson said this week.

By the end of last year, the count of all types of grizzlies that died reached 31.
(clip)
One was killed after fatally mauling a hiker shortly after its capture and release for research outside Cody on Yellowstone's east border.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Desperate...she & her cubs were starving....sad...the entire episode...

[Brickbat]

3. I didn't see in the article that the sow was starving.

Was that from somewhere else?

[CTyankee]

4. But the sow was at a healthy weight...cubs not...what's going on? nt

[uppityperson]

5. "Wildlife officials have said she appeared to be healthy", mama doesn't look to be starving

unless you have info from elsewhere, which I'd like to see. Thanks.

[Brickbat]

2. Sounds like a sow that wasn't cut out to propagate and raise young.

It happens.

[provis99]

6. sounds like a Republican bear.

She was well fed while the kids were starving.

[jgraz]

21. Wow, Sarah Palin really did pick the right symbol for herself

[thereismore]

24. Best comment. nt

[uppityperson]

7. Bears drawn to paintballs; course closed (heh)

http://www.billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_ee5dc64e-9c35-11df-8d13-001cc4c002e0.html

Note to anyone playing paintball in bear country: turns out the smell of all those disintegrating balls can be a bear attractant. Big Sky Resort found out in mid-July after black bears, including a sow with cubs, showed a fondness for its newly opened paintball course set up on the side of its ski hill this summer. The course was quickly shut down and the resort’s management is considering its options.
(clip)
Big Sky contacted the Bozeman office of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to let them know about the situation. Kevin Frey, a bear management specialist for FWP, went to check out the situation. As he was surveying the site, he saw a sow black bear snoozing in the shade. “Big Sky didn’t do anything wrong,” Frey said. “Unsolicited, they shut the course down.”
(clip)
The bears were even eating paintballs that hadn’t been broken. When Frey looked into the balls’ ingredients, he found a type of antifreeze that, if consumed in large enough quantities, could harm animals. As a diuretic, it pulls water from cells.

Schieffer said Big Sky went out of its way to find paintballs that would have the most minimal environmental effects. “As it turns out, those gelatin capsules have vegetable oil that is serving as a smell attraction to wildlife,” he said. “For our resort, safety is first. We want to make certain we have practices that support that.”...(more)

http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/newshound/2010/07/paintballs-new-bear-attractant

Recently Big Sky Resort in Montana found out the hard way that bears are extremely attracted to paintballs. The resort set up a wooded, 2-acre wargame paintball site and after a few weeks, the bears moved in, according to Kevin Frey, a bear specialist from the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks service. Eight black bears moved in on the site and gobbled up paintballs at all hours of the day. Also, there were a few grizzly bears roaming the immediate area.

“The bears are eating the paint balls and licking up the goo. The smell is overwhelming … somewhere between petroleum product, paint and cooking grease. After a half hour on site, I was still not use to the smell. One female bear with 2 just went over to the shade and took a nap, waiting for us to leave,” Frey says.

[uppityperson]

8. THESE sorts of people really really really DON'T help

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/99664569.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:U0ckkD:aEyKUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

CODY, WYO. - It was a "bear jam," a common scene in Yellowstone National Park: Cars and RVs slowed and stopped along the highway above the Yellowstone River as plump tourists clutching cameras and pulling their children jumped from vehicles and loped along the road, trying to catch up with a grizzly bear 100 yards up a hillside.

You might almost forget that 36 hours earlier, a hungry grizzly had rampaged through a campsite outside the park boundary, killing and partially eating a 48-year-old camper from Michigan and seriously injuring two others.

We are weird about bears.

[BrklynLiberal]

9. You are right....

[AspenRose]

17. Oh for the love of Pete

:banghead:

STOP FEEDING THE BEARS stupid people! :nuke: *heavy sigh*

[uppityperson]

20. People can be damned stupid.

"omg look! there's a bear like the one that attacked and ate someone a couple nights ago let me get it's picture hey you take it with me next to it I'll take it a hot dog and you can take a picture of me feeding it!!1111"

[Curmudgeoness]

10. A bear with three cubs is rare. Finding food for that many at one time

would have been hard. She was a great mother to have had all three cubs survive this long.

[givemebackmycountry]

11. Speaking of sows

Maybe it's time for little miss sippy straws to ease up on the whole "mama grizzlies" theme she's been mouthing off about.

[AspenRose]

18. ROFL, right?

"little miss sippy straws" :rofl:

[uppityperson]

12. one kick for the evening crew, will kick for monday morning people tomorrow

and then let it sink.

[melro52]

13. Grizzly Bear

We'll probably never find out now if mama was underweight too. The decision she was a deranged bear and killed before the cubs were determined to be underweight is questionable. Why did it take a zoo to determine that? This was a one time mauling for the mother bear too. If she was attempting to feed 3 cubs, she was not deranged.

This bear and cubs should have been moved to open forests in Canada not far away where there would have been more food and no people. I hate the "Kill It" mentality we have in the U.S. Too late now. They're opening the bear up to look for signs of mental impairment, yeah right. Authorities that lump all instances of human attack into the "deranged" category are menatally impaired. They should spend more time figuring out why so many cubs, and why they were malnourished or there may be problems with bears down the road.

[Evasporque]

14. teen bear pregnancies are on the rise in the inner forest....

I'm just sayin'....bears are people too.

:sarcasm:

[uppityperson]

15. They weighed, measured and will dissect her, determined she wasn't underweight.

(edited to add another link)

It took capturing the cubs to determine they were underweight because they were not considerate enough to step onto the scales that were put out in the campground.

"Wildlife officials have said she appeared to be healthy, but they intend to further study the body in hopes of explaining her behavior." "They should spend more time figuring out why so many cubs, and why they were malnourished or there may be problems with bears down the road."

Yes, they are going to dissect her to see if perhaps she had rabies or trichinosis or some other type disease which yes, bears in the wild do get. They are trying to figure out why she attacked sleeping humans and ate on one since this is atypical behavior for bears. Killing a bear is not done lightly and trying to figure out what happened is to protect other bears as well as people in the future.

You want them to figure out WHY this happened yet also want them to dump this bear and her cubs without understanding why "to open forests in Canada not far away where there would have been more food and no people."

I do not know where an "open forests in Canada not far away where there would have been more food and no people" might be. Where were you thinking?

You seriously want to take a mama bear with 3 starving cubs and put her in an unfamiliar place, where she doesn't know where food is, where water is, etc? IF, perchance, you found a place that has more food than the USA mountains, do you think there might be other bears there who might take exception to having mama bear with 3 starving cubs dropped into their area?

Good grief, did you not read the links?

http://www.yellowstoneinsider.com/20100801654/news/articles/should-killer-griz-been-allowed-to-live.php

For the authorities, putting down a killer grizzly responsible for a Soda Butte Campground rampage was a no-brainer: any time a bear kills euthanasia is virtually automatic. But a surprising number of Internet commentators wanted to see the bear live -- though, as one official pointed out, the farther away they are from Cooke City the more likely they are to argue for clemency.

If the reaction on our Facebook page is any indication, there was a lot of sentiment to let the grizzly bear live. Before we get to those comments, let's review what happened. A grizzly sow weighing over 300 pounds and her three cubs went to the Soda Butte Campground early Wednesday morning, located seven miles east of the Yellowstone National Park East Entrance past Cooke City, and tore apart a tent containing Kevin Kummer, 48, of Grand Rapids. He was killed in the tent; his body was dragged 25 feet or so and then partially eaten by at least one griz. After that she and the cubs went after two other tents, biting Deb Freele of London, Ontario to the point where she required surgery to repaid the broken bones in her arms; Ronald Singer of Alamosa, Col. was bitten on the calf before fighting off the griz. (Our full coverage can be found in the links at the end of the article.)

All in all, this was a particularly vicious attack, both in its randomness and outcome; it certainly was not normal grizzly behavior. Chat with the locals at the Bear Claw Bakery or Miners Saloon and for the most part they're happy the griz was put down: it's been policy in wildlife-management circles for decades to put down a bear that's killed a human. Bears are creatures of habit; the thinking is that the chances would be pretty good that the bear would kill again. And that seems to have been borne out by what the mother griz did: after doing damage Wednesday she and the cubs returned to the scene of the crime Thursday, presumably to cause more havoc.
(clip)
Of course, Internet rhetoric is cheap, especially when you don't need to live with the consequences of what you preach; most of the residents of Cooke City we informally chatted with were just happy to know they could walk home from the bar or bakery and not worry about grizzly issues. But we don't think these commentators were totally on the fringe: there are a lot of people who love Yellowstone who questioned why the bear was put down, as opposed to living a life in captivity. (Releasing or relocating, we think, were not viable options here; no way the authorities would have released a killer back to the wild.) The cubs ended up in captivity at Billings' ZooMontana; surely that could have been considered for the mother griz.

That said, zoos do not like to take adult bears that have killed and eaten a person. I am sure if there were such a place they would have contacted them.

[uppityperson]

23. UPDATE, she was underweight. See post below for new info.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8861180&mesg_id=8865652

[AspenRose]

16. Thank you for posting these updates

I appreciate it :kick:

[uppityperson]

19. Thank you, will continue to do so as it is a sad story and figuring out how to keep bears & people

safe is an interest of mine. This story strikes me from several directions, personal from camping and being scared of bears as a child and as living with bears as an adult, people I know who have been mauled and 1 eaten, advocating for responsibility as humans and, as I said, trying to keep bears and humans safe.

[uppityperson]

22. Mama bear was light, plenty of food around. Investigation continues.

http://www.kulr8.com/news/local/Mother-Bear-was-Underweight-99771279.html

Wildlife experts say tests on the euthanized bear responsible for killing one camper and injuring two others provide few details about the reason for the attack.

A physical exam was conducted Friday and wildlife officials said the sow was greatly under weight. The bear was at least ten-years-old and weighed just 225 pounds, far under the average for a bear that age. She also still had her winter coat on. But officials said there were no signs of rabies, obvious injuries or tumors and they still have no clue why she went on the rampage Wednesday.

"It's somewhat like a lightning strike," said Ron Aasheim with the Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks. "They don't happen very often. You tell people what the proper etiquette and procedure is and what the regulations as far as food storage is and they did everything right. We're just still looking for answers and again we may never have them."

Aasheim said there is plenty of food in the habitat the bears were living in so it shouldn't have been a hunger issue. They are still waiting for some lab results but say they may never understand why the bear went on the deadly rampage.

[Catherina]

25. Poor darling. This is sad all around. n/t

[inthefurwest]

26. i guess their is

some debate on Aasheims statement:
"Aasheim said there is plenty of food in the habitat the bears were living in so it shouldn't have been a hunger issue. "
with the number of keystone predators that are now in and around the park the pressure on the normal food sources has reached a breaking point according to the game biologist i spoke with. he noted that all the mountain lions and bears that have left the park are showing signs of malnutrition, normally this time of year they are putting on as much weight as they can for winter. but with the drought and over population of keystone predators it just is not possible to fatten themselves up the last two years.