Officials at Yellowstone National Park say they euthanized the grizzly bear that killed and ate a hiker. It was more like an execution.
The bear was killed on Thursday, six days after the body of Lance Crosby, 63, was found partially consumed, with the mother bear and her two cubs nearby. The cubs, which are thought to be 7 or 8 months old — too young to survive on their own in the wild — will be spared and moved to the Toledo Zoo this fall.
Their mother was sedated, then shot in the head with a captive bolt pistol, a Yellowstone spokesman said. Park officials say it was necessary to kill the bear because “a significant part of the body was consumed and cached with the intent to return for further feeding.”
Although grizzlies are omnivores, they do not typically attack and eat humans. Since the first fatality was recorded in the park in 1916, there have been seven other fatal bear attacks within its 2.2 million acres. Visitors have more violent altercations with bison than with bears.
Grizzlies typically weigh 200 to 400 pounds, and this one weighed 259 pounds. Although the spokesman conceded the bear may have been hungry, she said the park can’t afford to let bears live when they come to “equate people with food.”
The threat of lawsuits may also enter into the park service’s thinking. In 2010, the family of a man who was fatally gored by a mountain goat sued Olympic National Park in Washington state, saying it was negligent for not killing or relocating an animal known to be aggressive.
Exterminating the grizzly was a tough decision, but Yellowstone officials made the wrong call. In doing so, they have perpetuated a dangerous idea: that humans can obliterate risk when they wander through the woods.
Yellowstone is not Disney World. It is a wild preserve where dangerous animals, including an estimated 800 to 1,000 grizzlies, roam. It’s their home, and humans encroach on their territory when they visit.
The death of Mr. Crosby was a tragedy. The death of the bear was too.
First Published August 15, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
