Trail runners a concern at Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee meeting

Of all the possible threats to grizzly bear survival, long-distance joggers on mountain trails aren't high on the list. But the reverse isn't true, according to Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee adviser Chris Servheen. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's grizzly bear recovery coordinator said trail runners are approaching photographers as the backcountry group most likely to get badly hurt in an animal encounter. "I don't think that running in bear habitat is a risk to bear habitat or population levels," Servheen told the committee during its Missoula meeting on Thursday. "But some of these people are not aware of the dangers they put themselves in. This long-term running, at dawn and dusk, at night with headlamps: These are the specific things we tell people not to do in bear habitat." While he hasn't made a survey or poll of trail running's popularity, Servheen said fellow biologists are talking more and more about encountering runners in places "where they're likely to run into something really big and covered in hair."...more