Bear researchers gamble with lives of citizens

One June 17, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team gambled that nobody would happen upon a trap site near Yellowstone Park where a 430# male grizzly had just been caught in a foot snare, tranquilized, and released. Wrong. The bear killed 70 year-old botanist Erwin Evert. The government gambled. A citizen lost. Evert, a prominent botanist from Oak Park, IL, had a summer cabin on Kitty Creek, roughly seven miles from the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. There were 13 other cabins in the area. A U.S. Forest Service road ends just beyond the cabins, then trail # 756 leads up Kitty Creek into the Shoshone National Forest. The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team (IGBST) gambled there was no need to warn cabin owners it was trapping grizzlies up Kitty Creek. The IGBST gambled there was no need to post warning signs at the trailhead. The IGBC gambled that all it had to do was post sign warning signs in the immediate area surrounding the bear trapping site. The IGBST gambled, Erwin Evert died. The IGBST could easily have prevented Evert's death by closing the Kitty Creek trail and drainage. Instead, the IGBST gambled that it could just close a tiny trapping site--now Erwin Evert is dead. A July 16 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service report says that after releasing a grizzly at bear trapping site #3, IGBST employees took down their warning signs and left. That fatal mistake cost Erwin Evert his life. But even if signs had been left up at the trapping site, why would the IGBST gamble by allowing citizens to get so close to grizzlies?...more