HELENA (Montana, US), July 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A grizzly bear attacked and killed a woman at a western Montana campground early on Tuesday, the Powell county sheriff said.
The attack happened between 4am and 5am in the area of Ovando, a town of fewer than 100 people about 60 miles north-west of Helena, said Greg Lemon, a spokesman for Montana fish, wildlife and parks.
“There was an earlier contact with the bear prior to the event,” Sheriff Gavin Roselles said. “The bear basically came back into the campsite. It wandered into a campsite a couple different times.”
A team of law enforcement and wildlife specialists was assembled to track down the bear, officials said.
“Our first concern is the community’s wellbeing. The next step is to find the bear,” Lemon said.
The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks said in a release that details surrounding the attack indicate the bear entered the town of Ovando on Tuesday morning and came to an area near a post office at about 3 a.m. local time (1000 GMT), where the victim was sleeping in a tent.
The bear initially woke the victim and another couple who were sleeping in a tent nearby but then ran away. The three campers removed food from their tents, secured it, and went back to bed. About half an hour later, the two people in the tent adjacent to the victim were awakened by sounds of the attack, exited the tent and sprayed the bear with bear spray. It has not been seen since, according to the agency.
After two days of searching by helicopter and on the ground, the grizzly bear has not been found, said the agency, adding that the search even included the use of infrared technology.
Bear experts believe the bear was an approximately 181 kg male, judging by behavior and footprints.
Officials said efforts to find the bear are now focusing on traps near Ovando as bear specialists and wardens are continuing to monitor culvert traps set in the area.
The victim of the attack was identified as 65-year-old Leah Davis Lokan of California, reported The Great Falls Tribune, a Montana newspaper.
Montana has been the scene of at least a dozen serious grizzly bear-human interactions in the past year, said the paper.
An Ovando saloon owner, Tiffanie Zavarelli, said it was the first fatal bear mauling she knew of in the community. She said residents are accustomed to living in proximity to bears and know the risks.
“Everybody’s pretty shaken up right now,” Zavarelli said. “The population here is 75 everybody knows everybody. The people from Montana, we know how to be ‘bear aware.’ But anything can happen.”
Grizzly bears have been getting into increasing conflicts with humans in the northern Rockies as the federally protected animals expand into new areas and the number of people living and recreating in the region grows.
In April, a back-country guide was killed by a grizzly bear while fishing along the Yellowstone national park border in south-western Montana.
Ovando is on the southern edge of a huge wilderness that stretches to the border of Canada and is home to an estimated 1,000 bears the largest concentrations of the bruins in the contiguous US. The area includes Glacier national park.
In 2016, an off-duty US Forest Service law enforcement officer was fatally mauled in the region after he collided with a grizzly while mountain biking in the Flathead national forest.
Grizzly bears involved in attacks on humans are killed if they are considered a continued public safety threat. But bears involved in non-fatal attacks are often spared in the cases of surprise encounters or if they are protecting their young.
An estimated 50,000 grizzlies once inhabited western North America from the Pacific Ocean to the Great Plains. Hunting, commercial trapping and habitat loss wiped out most by the early 1900s.
Grizzly bears have been protected as a threatened species in the contiguous US since 1975, allowing a slow recovery in a handful of areas. — NNN-AGENCIES
