Widow Blames Fatal Bear Attack on Serial Errors by Federal Workers

The widow of a botanist says her husband was killed by a grizzly bear because a federal Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team laid bait to attract bears, but never warned them of what they were doing on hiking routes near their cabin near Yellowstone National Park. Yolanda Evert says her husband, Erwin, was fatally mauled by a grizzly "approximately twenty-one yards from where bear #646 was left to recover unmonitored from the effects of chemical immobilization and other intrusions, and almost directly under a tree where the IGBST crew had hung bait." Evert says that after the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team (IGBST) trapped, drugged and tagged the adult male grizzly, No. 646, the team violated protocol and left the bear as it "began showing limited signs of recovery by holding up and swaying his head," instead of waiting, as they should have, for the bear to be "ambulatory." She claims the crew again violated "long-established procedures, policies, orders and permit requirements" by removing warning signs stating: "Danger! Bear trap in the area. The area behind this sign is temporarily closed. The closure is effective from 6-11-10 to 6-20-10." The widow says: "Shortly after the crew took down the warning signs, Erwin Evert walked on the trail, a decommissioned road, without knowledge of warning that he was walking in the same location of a trap site or a recently trapped and recovering bear." She says the recently sedated bear killed her husband. The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team is a joint effort of the U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of Interior. They are studying grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The only defendant in the federal complaint is the United States of America, but Evert says the mistakes were made by grizzly bear captors Chad Dickinson and Seth Thompson, overseen by Team Leader Charles Schwartz, on June 17, 2010...more