BILLINGS, Mont. — Authorities said Friday that a 72-year-old man in Montana who was picking huckleberries was attacked by a grizzly bear and hurt so badly that he had to go to the hospital. He then shot and killed the bear.
Thursday, the woman charged the man while he was alone in a national park. Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks officials say he was seriously hurt before killing the bear with a pistol.
Agency spokesman Dillon Tabish said it was likely that the bear was acting defensively to protect the kids.
Wildlife officials set up game cams in the area to see if any cubs were there. He said that if cubs are found, it’s not clear if they would be caught because it’s hard to find places that are licensed to take them.
Tabish said, “Depending on how old they are, we might leave them in the wild instead of putting them down because they have a better chance of living.”
Our state’s wildlife office says the attack happened in the Flathead National Forest about two miles north of Columbia Falls, a city of about 5,500 people in the northwest of the state.
The victim’s name and more information about his health were kept secret.
Fish, Wildlife, and Parks officers shot and killed an adult female grizzly bear on Thursday. The bear had become used to breaking into homes and looking for food in and around Gardiner, a town of about 800 people just north of Yellowstone National Park.
A statement from the department said that pet food, trash, and barbecue grills left outside where bears could get to them all added to the problem. Before it was shot in the Yellowstone River, the bear did not hurt anyone.
Grizzly bears that are known to bother people are sometimes caught and moved by wildlife workers. But they will kill ones that attack people out of fear or if they think the person is likely to keep making trouble even after being moved.
The bear from the Gardiner area was killed about 300 miles south of the attack in the Columbia Falls area, which was not connected. About 2,000 grizzlies live in western Wyoming, eastern Idaho, and western Montana. Another 5,000 live in the Canadian Rockies and Alaska.
Under the Endangered Species Act, grizzly bears in the entire U.S. are named as threatened. Politicians in Rocky Mountain states are urging the federal government to remove the animals’ protected status. If this happens, hunters might be able to go after them again.