Killer Cooke City griz euthanized

Posted 8/3/10

Soda Butte is less than a mile east of Cooke City, Mont., which, in turn, is a few miles east of Yellowstone National Park.

Kevin Kammer, 48, of Grand Rapids, Mich., was dragged from his tent and killed.

Deb Freele 58, of London, Ontario, …

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Killer Cooke City griz euthanized

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The sow grizzly bear found guilty of the death of a camper and the injury of two others in Soda Butte campground just east of Cooke City, Mont., on July 28 was euthanized Friday.Her three cubs were delivered to ZooMontana in Billings on Saturday.

Soda Butte is less than a mile east of Cooke City, Mont., which, in turn, is a few miles east of Yellowstone National Park.

Kevin Kammer, 48, of Grand Rapids, Mich., was dragged from his tent and killed.

Deb Freele 58, of London, Ontario, Canada, suffered a broken bone and bite marks to her left forearm. She underwent surgery at West Park Hospital in Cody on Friday, said Joel Hunt, hospital spokesman.

The surgery went well, and Freele was discharged Saturday, Hunt said.

Ronald Singer, 21, of Alamosa, Colo., was hospitalized in Cody, treated and released.

There are approximately 600 grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

“It's sad for us to ever have to take an animal out of the ecosystem,” said Andrea Jones, information officer for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Monday.

But, wildlife officials can't risk the sow attacking other humans, Jones said.

“Bear hair, saliva and tissue samples collected by investigators and tested by a DNA identification lab in Laramie, Wyo., confirmed that the captured adult bear was responsible for the attack,” said a Wildlife and Parks news release Friday.

Evidence suggested the three cubs witnessed the killing.

“The extent of their participation is unclear,” Jones said.

Coulter and Chief Joseph campgrounds re-opened Monday, but Soda Butte campground and the riparian area between the campground and Soda Butte Creek will remain closed, said Marna Daley, Gallatin National Forest public affairs officer.

Daley said she did not know when the campground would re-open. She said those visiting Gallatin National Forest should follow food storage orders and make sure their bear spray was within easy reach.

Ditto for a nearby portion of the Shoshone Forest.

Camping restrictions were implemented in areas of the Clark's Fork Ranger District, said a Shoshone Forest news release.

Camping in campgrounds and in dispersed areas from the Crazy Creek campground to the Montana state line is limited to hard-sided recreation vehicles only. Tent camping and pop-up campers are not allowed, the release said.

The mother and two cubs were caught in culvert traps late Wednesday, and the third cub was captured early the next day, Jones said.

There was evidence that Kammer was partially eaten, Jones said.

She said she believed the cubs weighed less than 80 pounds. Yearlings (one year to 18 months in age) normally weigh between 80 and 140 pounds. The sow weighed 221 pounds. An adult grizzly sow averages between 300 and 400 pounds, Jones said.

Jones said she was awaiting results from a necropsy performed on the sow Friday to ascertain its condition. Those results will be available at a later date, but the bear tested negative for rabies, she said.

But exactly why the grizzly attacked and killed in a reportedly clean camp site left officials baffled.

“We're going to do an investigative team report,” said Chris Servheen, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator in Missoula, Mont.

The team of federal and state officials will try to reconstruct the events and unearth the facts.

The report will be out within three weeks, Jones said.

“Theories or speculation are unwarranted at this point,” Servheen said.

Jones said at this time they cannot pinpoint what spurred the bear's grisly actions.

“It was completely random from our perspective at this point,” Jones said.

Strange, too, is an arbitrary attack with no apparent rhyme nor reason.

“It's very unusual and abnormal,” Servheen said. “Very rare.”

“We may never know,” Jones said.

Odds of suffering a bear-related injury are about one in 1 million, said Jeff Welsh, of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition office in Bozeman, minutes before Fish and Wildlife addressed the crowd of mostly locals in Cooke City Thursday evening.

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