Jury Verdict: Living with grizzlies in the Next West

A mid concerns over whether guns being allowed in national parks will increase grizzly bear killings, a Wyoming jury has set an important standard. The jury found Wyoming hunter Steve Westmoreland guilty of illegally killing a grizzly bear while hunting in 2009. Westmoreland had claimed self-defense, a common practice among hunters who have killed grizzlies in the national forests around Yellowstone and Teton national parks for decades. Teton County Attorney Steve Weichman, who prosecuted the case, told the Jackson Hole News and Guide that the jury's conviction was one of the first of a hunter claiming self-defense. Dick Knight, the biologist who studied Yellowstone's bears for two decades, spent thousands of hours around wild grizzlies. He was long a critic of self-defense claims, chiding hunters who went into grizzly habitat with a high-powered rifle expressing fear of bears...more