Parks Canada says a bear attack in Alberta’s Banff National Park has left two people dead.
Bear just out there doing real life bear shit.
Poor thing
What was hilarious was that the bear was deemed to be acting “aggressively.”. You mean it was being a bear? Imagine wild animals being just that. The disconnect is astounding. Remember Harambe.
Jumping in to try to translate from Banff Park Staff lingo.
Bears do become more aggressive once they become desensitized to humans and human activity. I think of it as territorly aggressive. It’s a powerful and wild animal either way.
When my wife and I visited Banff & Jasper back before the pandemic we encountered a park ranger at a trailhead that was enforcing a requirement that hiking groups be a minimum of three people since a black bear was known to be in the area. They apparently felt 3+ hikers in a group would make enough noise to dissuade bears from approaching.
We were also told of a bear that they had recently been forced to euthanize. They had determined that the bear had either been deliberately fed by a hiker with a backpack or had seen a backpacker drop some food. Whatever the case, the bear had associated backpackers with food and would accost almost every backpacker it saw. If you didn’t have a backpack it would leave you alone… Apparently once a bear learns about a food source it will always remember it. The park rangers had tried everything they could think of to discourage the bear, from bear spray (mace) to beanbag guns to tranquilizing it & relocating it. But it kept returning to the area and approaching backpackers, so they eventually had to put it down.
Contrary to popular belief, bears are pretty chill. Aggressive is not normal.
Grizzlies aren’t that chill. They’ll bluff charge you. I mean it’s still pretty chill in a way I guess, but as someone on the other end of that charge, chill might not be the word you choose to use.
… bluff charge is by definition aggressive behaviour. So when does it happen? Rarely. It’s not like they see you and want to bluff charge you. You have to be seriously encroaching on them or their cubs for them to even care.
And it’s even in the name: bluff charge. They don’t want to fight, it’s a bluff. They want nothing to do with you. They want you to go away. Even most of their aggressive behaviour is trying to get you to simply go away.
So returning back to normal behavior, yes they are chill.
Based on how they evolved, I’m gonna assume that occasional aggression is pretty normal, just like with any other animal
You mean how they evolved eating berries, insects, rummaging in the dirt, etc? Their time for aggression is few and far between, mainly about mating and protecting their cubs.
Bears will definitely fight each other over the best fishing spot, berry patch, or other food source. During the fall they sometimes get a little more aggressive as they really want to fatten up.
Not that I want anyone imagining this, but it’s likely the bear was interrupted having a little snack, and wasn’t very happy about it.
And they also just killed some bear. They don’t actually know if it’s the killer bear, and to the public, it doesn’t matter.
They do know it was the killer bear because it was obviously tagged … which was how authorities were notified by GPS that there was an attack happening.
They were notified by an InReach device. Which I’m 100% sure the bear wasn’t using.
Bear wasn’t tagged - GPS SOS signal is likely how they were alerted. That being said, if they found an aggressive bear in the area, I’d be inclined to trust them. There isn’t really anything to gain by lying, especially if it leads to another hiker death from the actual bear.
Parks Canada received an alert indicating a bear attack from a GPS device in the Red Deer River Valley around 8 p.m. Friday. A grizzly bear displaying aggressive behaviour was found in the area and was euthanized by Parks Canada for public safety reasons. First aid kits and knowledge, bear spray and a GPS are all important tools in case of an attack, Titchener said.
What an unpleasant way to die
I misread that as “grizzly enthused” and I was like “well yeah of course the bear would be stoked, he just had a full course meal”
Oh look! I didn’t need one but there’s another reason to embrace staying inside today
They’re was a video circulating a while back where two grizzlies followed a group of hikers down the trail for several km. I wonder if this bear was one of them
This was way back into the backcountry, and a bit of a distance from that trail in the article. I mean it’s possible, bears can travel quite a distance, but it’s also very unlikely it’s the same bear. There’s a good number of grizzlies in BNP/JNP.
Bears being bears. Not really that surprising.
It’s somewhat surprising. Bear attacks are not that common.
Unless it was the undead polar bear from Game of Thrones it probably should have been left alone.
Banff is an extremely busy park so unless they are willing to close that trail/bear’s territory to the public, there aren’t a lot of other good options. If the bear has decided people are a threat/food, relocating it would also be difficult and may introduce some liability.
It’s a busy park in the touristy areas. This was in the backcountry. It’s been a tough year for bears, it hasn’t been a very good year for the berries they so heavily rely on, and they are having to resort to mainly carnivorous meal sources. This is the time of year they are just eating like mad too, before they go into their dens, so bear encounters this time of year can go pretty sideways. Especially if it was a close surprise. I doubt we’ll ever know what happened here. It’s a tragedy, for all involved.
It’s nuanced, but the idea that a bear would suddenly just “decide people are a threat/food” is misguided. The bottom line is it’s wilderness, the odds are very high they did something careless like surprise the bear or get between it and its cubs, which wouldn’t indicate atypical behavior on the bear’s part or suggest it’d pose extra danger in the future. Bottom line I don’t agree with the general approach of tourists wandering out in the woods, doing something careless which gets them killed, and then animals being killed indiscriminately as a result, I think it’s a very arrogant approach by people in general.
Allegedly they were “experienced outdoors backpackers”. Guessing the dog being there played a role in the attack - animals can make wildlife more aggressive, and if it wasn’t on a leash, it could’ve attacked the grizzly, provoking it. Then again, its entirely possible the grizzly learned that humans have food from some past hikers, and tried to get at the food from these guys.
If Parks Canada found a grizzly in the area and stated it was acting aggressive, I’d be inclined to believe them. They know animal behaviour pretty well.
I agree with you completely. I made my guess because they usually mention if a bear had cubs present during an attack, but it is an oversimplification to say the bear decided to see people that way for sure. All I meant by it is, once a bear is triggered into overcoming that fear or wariness and attacking/killing and possibly eating a human, there is a higher risk of them doing so again (unsurprisingly, if the behaviour was successful from the bear’s perspective).
It is a very arrogant and anthrocentric approach. I don’t condone it but I also don’t expect anything better (such as reducing human encroachment into their territory) because I am rightfully(?) jaded.
