Forest, Wildlife, and Climate News

UPDATE: 1 dead, 2 injured in bear attack at MT campground

By Q2 KTVQ News Staff, Jul 28, 2010 [here]

COOKE CITY, MT - UPDATE: Montana wildlife officials are investigating a bear mauling in the Cooke City area that claimed the life of one person.

FWP spokesman Ron Aasheim says one man is dead and two other people are injured after a bear attacked the campers at the Soda Butte Campground a half mile east of Cooke City early Wednesday morning.

Authorities say the incident happened between midnight and 2 a.m. and believe that only one bear is involved.

Aasheim says the man who died had been dragged from his tent and was found at the western edge of the campground.

A female suffered severe lacerations from bites on her arms, while another male was bitten on his calf. Both are being treated for their injures at a Cody, Wyoming hospital. Their injuries are not life threatening. Fish Wildlife and Parks officials say the man was able to drive himself to Cody, while the female was transported by ambulance.

FWP says it appears the victims were attacked separately and were not camped in the same area of the Soda Butte Campground. Wildlife officials did not release the identities or ages of the victims.

A response team was being sent to piece together what happened.

“We don’t know if it was one bear, two bears, a black bear or grizzly bear,” Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Ron Aasheim said. “Obviously, the bear’s gone now. Will it come back tonight? That’s the question.”

The Soda Butte campground is in the Gallatin National Forest near the northeastern entrance of Yellowstone National Park, about 125 miles southwest of Billings.

The same campground was the site of a 2008 attack in which a grizzly bear bit and injured 59-year-old Steven Bartley of Springfield, Oregon while he was sleeping in a tent. A young adult female grizzly was captured in a trap four days after the attack and transported to a bear research center at Washington State University in Pullman.