Visitors to the national park face potentially deadly encounters

While many of the 63 national parks spread across the United States offer unparalleled opportunities to see all kinds of rare animals in their natural habitat, getting that close to wildlife also comes with certain dangers.

Early last summer, an 83-year-old woman was relieved when a bison snuck up behind her on a hike on Yellowstone’s Storm Point Trail and lifted her more than a foot off the ground with its horns. its. While she survived her injuries, there are occasional reports of deaths from human interactions not only with bison, but also with elk, wolves and mountain lions, snakes, crocodiles and bears.

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In recent months, the latter animal has been behind several attacks in national parks in the north, where they are common. In late September, a 35-year-old visitor to Montana’s Glacier National Park was attacked by a bear a mile into a hike on the park’s Highline Trail.

“Hike in groups, make noise and take bear spray”

A subsequent investigation by the National Park Service (NPS) found that the attack came from grizzly bear species that are more likely to wander through different parts of the park than their black counterparts.

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Although the man’s injuries were not life-threatening, the incident served as an illustration of how easy it is to be caught off guard in remote parts of the park.

“Hikers are encouraged to hike in groups, make noise when hiking, and have bear spray accessible and know how to use it,” the NPS wrote about the incident.

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Other bear incidents in recent weeks

Although no humans were directly involved, another incident in Alaska’s Katmai National Park delayed the start of the annual Fat Bear Week celebration, in which park visitors and fans vote on which bear they think will win the most in preparation for winter hibernation.

The fight, in which a male bear known as 469 and “Patches” and an older female bear, known in the park as 402, were captured “fighting, biting and beating each other” , resulted in the female’s death and prompted a park-wide investigation into the cause.

“We love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and abundant body fat,” naturalist and Bear Week organizer Mike Fritz said in a statement. “But the ferocity of bears is real, the risks they face are real, their lives can be hard, and their deaths can be painful.”

Another recent incident occurred in May in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, when Massachusetts resident Shayne Burke came to the area with his wife Chloe to look for a particular type of owl. They were hiking the park’s Signal Mountain Summit Road when they were caught off guard by a “surprise encounter with two grizzly bears, one of the bears contacting and injuring the visitor.”

“I heard her kind of huffing and puffing when I went down to the ground,” Burke described after being released from the hospital. The injuries, which he mitigated by covering the back of his head during the attack, were described as serious but not life-threatening.

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