Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks confirmed on Friday that wildlife wardens shot and killed a large grizzly that had been causing trouble for weeks in and near the tiny Yellowstone gateway town of Gardiner, Mont.
The bear was killed early Thursday, after it broke into a home in Maiden Basin, north of Gardiner, according to a statement from the agency.
The bear had become accustomed to garbage and other food from humans. It had been tearing up homes on food raids in and around Gardiner since June 6.
Gardiner resident Angela Tempo previously told Cowboy State Daily that she had caught the grizzly trying to break into her house on July 1 as she was returning home.
The bear smashed a window and was crawling though it, when she said she scared it away by driving her vehicle toward it, Tempo said.
The bear’s death was the sad, but inevitable outcome of people irresponsibly letting it get accustomed to raiding garbage, pet food bins and the like, Evan Stout of Gardiner told Cowboy State Daily early Friday.
“If people are upset about the removal of an animal, it comes down to a matter of personal responsibility,” said Stout, who runs the Bear Awareness Gardiner program.
Bear Was Shot In River
Gardiner sits at the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park in the middle of prime grizzly habitat. Most locals consider it a blessing to watch the bears “doing grizzly stuff in the wild,” Stout said.
“There’s a bear on every hill all the way around Gardiner,” he said.
But when a bear gets conditioned to going on food raids in town, things go sideways, he said. It puts people in danger, and almost certainly ends badly for the bear.
The grizzly that FWP killed on Thursday had been lurking around town mostly at night, frustrating wardens’ efforts to catch it.
“On Wednesday night, FWP grizzly bear specialists and game wardens conducted a patrol with partner agencies in search of a grizzly bear that has frequented Gardiner and nearby communities,” the agency said in a statement.
Wildlife wardens responded to the report of the bear’s attempted home invasion in Maiden Basin early Thursday and “dispatched the bear while it was in the Yellowstone River,” according to the agency.
“They recovered the carcass from the river Thursday afternoon and confirmed that the same bear had been involved in many recent conflicts,” FWP stated.
During its raids, the bear had broken into coolers, vehicles, camp trailers and storage sheds.
There were no reports of the grizzly hurting people, according to FWP.
Not The Time To Relax
Stout said that even though the bear that had been raising hell in recent weeks is gone, now isn’t the time for residents to let their guard down, he said.
“One of my hopes is that the town of Gardiner doesn’t slip into the belief that now that this bear is gone, we can relax,” he said.
Gardiner is hosting its annual live music and beer festival on July 27 with proceeds from tickets going toward the bear awareness program – to help pay for such things a bear-resistant garbage cans, he said.
As to whether there will be a repeat episode of a grizzly encroachment that ends in similar sad fashion, Stout said that’s in locals’ hands.
“That’s up to Gardiner, that’s up to the residents. There’s no shortage of grizzly bears in our area, and we’re just one unsecured garbage can away from this happening again,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
