When my family first moved to Cody in 2017, we made the most out of being close to Yellowstone, cruising the park and discovering the beauty of the North Fork.

We also ran into all the tourist traffic — and the signs noting grizzly bear territory.

So, when we decided to go camping the next year, we instead looked east to the Bighorns and wound up camping in our tent in the Leigh Creek Campground outside Ten Sleep. There are certainly still tourists that way, but it’s not near the level. And, more importantly as I closed my eyes in a flimsy tent, no grizzly bears.

Of course, that was probably a naive thought. There has been anecdotal evidence through the years of grizzly bear sightings where only black bears are supposed to roam in the Bighorn Mountains.

Then, a few years ago, Game and Fish captured a griz near Byron east of Powell. That sure raised our eyebrows more — now we have a hard-sided camper.

So, while the news of Game and Fish killing a grizzly bear for cattle depredation near Ten Sleep is certainly big news — it’s the clearest evidence yet of the bruins in the Bighorns — it’s really only further confirmation of what we have seen in an easterly pattern of movement. After all, our Game and Fish has said time after time how the Yellowstone area population has expanded over the years — clear evidence the bears should not be on the Endangered Species Act list — and bears need a lot of space, so naturally they’re expanding.

Actually, my first thought after seeing the department’s report of a grizzly caught and killed near Ten Sleep was, if they’re at the stage now where rumblings of griz sightings have turned into more concrete proof, the anecdotal evidence I’ve heard over the years of people spotting grizzlies down around our old family cabins in the Laramie Mountains near Douglas could be just a few years away from being verified as well. Now, I know grizzlies south of Casper would be a whole other level of spread, but if they’re crossing the Big Horn Basin, why not?

All of this shows to me that it’s time to take the same precautions in at least the Bighorns as are taken in the Absarokas and Beartooths — many of which should already be taken for black bears — and it’s time to find a way to get Yellowstone area grizzlies once again delisted, and this time for good.