I have been watching videos and reading reports about close encounters of the Grizzly kind and the NPS needs to reassess the necessity to close the park for the summer season.
What is occurring with tourists is rather alarming and very different than the bold idiocy seen in Yellowstone National Park.
The Grizzlies of the USA are not rubber stamped in their behaviors. The Yellowstone species are the same DNA as the species in Alaska and Glacier National Park, but, the behaviors are all different.
Where it gets dicey with the Grizzlies of Glacier is their speed. They run all the time, especially when Spring arrives and they are hungry out of winter hibernation. The Glacier Grizzlies are challenged to catch mountain goats for a meal. They don’t amble along like Yellowstone Grizzlies or wade into streams like Alaska Grizzlies, they literally race across land in pursuit of a meal because mountain goats are very difficult to catch.
The Yellowstone tourists just do stupid things and don’t follow rules and warnings, hence, dangerous encounters with all sorts of wildlife. But, Glacier is different. Most of the tourists appear to be hikers minding their own business challenged by the terrain. When the Glacier tourist have a Grizzly encounter it is because the bear literally appears out of nowhere right into the hikers path after mountain goats have crossed there as well.
So far there have been no fatal or life threatening encounters but from what I can tell it is because the bear is singularly focused on the sheep which it has been chasing from higher elevations. Crossing the hikers path is an alarm to the hikers and the bears.
The problem as I see it is that the bears are obviously hungry and they are only learning that when they cross a hiking path there are human beings there. Up until Spring the primary use of Glacier National Park by tourists was scaling icefall. Grizzlies don’t climb ice and have no thoughts about climbers. They are also hibernating at the time the climbers are in the park.
So, one can state there is no danger and it is simply more information available, but, that is a foolish assumption.
I don’t know what the current records state about Grizzly population vs. Grizzly Prey, but, young bears without a great deal of real world experience may be unsuccessful in obtaining prey and remain hungry only to be satiated by less evasive species like people.
The National Park Service is very knowledgeable about our parks and the wildlife within them. I am sure my concerns are something they have meetings about, but, there does seem to be a growing drumbeat about the Grizzlies and hikers. Due to its merits a reassessment is in order to be sure the climate crisis is not turning into a Grizzly crisis as well.
