Welcome to TheOhioOutdoors
Wanting to join the rest of our members? Login or sign up today!
Login / Join

FARWIDE ALERT: FATAL GRIZZLY ATTACK IN MONTANA

Wildlife

Denny
Supporting Member
5,248
191
Ross County, Ohio
FARWIDE ALERT: FATAL GRIZZLY ATTACK IN MONTANA

5e66b21aee649.image.jpg


July 7, 2021

UPDATE: JULY 6 AT 2:20 P.M.

All roads into Ovando have been reopened, according to the Powell County Sheriff’s Office. However, the bear has not been found.

The sheriff’s office says they received a call around 3:30 a.m. that a woman was being pulled out of her tent by the bear.

The woman was alone in her tent, but there were other people in the campground.


UPDATE: JULY 6 10:55 A.M.

A security camera belonging to a local business recorded video of the grizzly bear Monday night, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

FWP said the bear also got into a chicken coop.

FWP biologists, conflict specialists and game wardens are in the area of the deadly attack Tuesday to look for the bear.


HELENA Mont. (AP) — A grizzly bear attacked and killed a person who was camping in western Montana early Tuesday, after previously wandering into the campsite, the Powell County sheriff said.

The attack happened between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. in the area of Ovando, a town of fewer than 100 people about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Helena, said Greg Lemon, a spokesperson with 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 has been assembled to track down the bear, officials said.

An initial report said the victim had been riding a bicycle at the time of the attack. That is not the case, Roselles said.

The identity of the victim was not immediately released and further circumstances surrounding the attack were under investigation.

“Our first concern is the community’s well-being. The next step is to find the bear,” Lemon said.

Officials did not say exactly where the attack occurred, but Roselles said there were other people camping in the vicinity of the attack.

Lemon said his understanding is that the victim was part of a group on a bike trip.

Leigh Ann Valiton, who owns the Blackfoot Inn and a general store, said the people of Ovando were “absolutely devastated” by the fatal attack.

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 backcountry guide was killed by a grizzly bear while fishing along the Yellowstone National Park border in southwestern Montana.

Ovando is on the southern edge of a huge expanse of 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 U.S. The area includes Glacier National Park.

In 2016, an off-duty U.S. 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 U.S. since 1975, allowing a slow recovery in a handful of areas.

———

Brown reported from Billings.

By AMY BETH HANSON and MATTHEW BROWN Associated Press

Credit to: MontanaRightNow.Com

Source: https://www.farwide.com/farwide-alert-fatal-grizzly-attack-in-montana/
 

Mike

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
15,840
223
Up Nort
I don't why this story showed up in my inbox today. I've never received an email from them before.
 

Wildlife

Denny
Supporting Member
5,248
191
Ross County, Ohio
Another source of several, and I have camped in the same general area many times decades ago. I have had a few bear encounters in Montana and Wyoming, but years ago.
_________________________________

Authorities search for grizzly bear that killed bicyclist camping in Montana​

saloon-ovando-montana-ap-210_hpMain_20210707-052135_16x9_992.jpg

Law enforcement and wildlife specialists are trying to track down the bear.

July 7, 2021, 5:59 PM

A grizzly bear attacked and killed a bicyclist who was camping in western Montana early Tuesday, triggering a search for the animal, authorities said.

The fatal encounter occurred before dawn at a remote campsite in Ovando, a town with fewer than 100 residents, some 70 miles northwest of Montana's capital, Helena. First responders attempted to save the woman but she died from her injuries, a spokesperson for the Powell County Sheriff's Office told ABC News.

The victim was identified Wednesday as 65-year-old Leah Davis Lokan of Chico, California.

The Powell County Sheriff’s Office said the bear entered the camp and woke those who were sleeping, but ran away. The campers removed food from their tents, but the bear returned and attacked the woman, the sheriff's office said. The bear was chased off with bear spray, but first responders from the Helmville and Ovando fire departments, as well as a life flight helicopter, were unable to revive the woman.

"Traps have been set in the area and searching will continue by ground and in the air with the priority of keeping the public safe from another encounter," the Powell County Sheriff's Office said in a statement on Tuesday evening. "Campsites in Ovando have been closed until Sunday and we encourage anyone in the area to be cautious and aware that as of now the bear in question has not been located."

A video camera from a local business caught footage of a grizzly bear on Monday night. A bear also got into a chicken coop prior to the deadly attack at the campsite, according to a statement from the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Grizzly bears are common in Ovando, which is nestled in a valley between the Blackfoot River to the south and mountains to the north that stretch into the vast Bob Marshall Wilderness. Adult males typically weigh between 400 to 790 pounds, while adult females weigh approximately 290 to 400 pounds.

In 1975, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the grizzly bear as threatened in the continental United States under the Endangered Species Act, after population numbers dwindled from more than 50,000 to fewer than 1,000 due to habitat loss, hunting and conflicts with humans.

With federal protections still in place that make it illegal to harm, harass, or kill the bears, except in cases of self-defense or the defense of others, grizzlies have flourished in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem in northwestern Montana, which includes a designated recovery zone spanning from Glacier National Park to Missoula. The massive area is now home to more than 1,000 grizzly bears, making it the largest population in the country outside Alaska, according to data released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in March.

Source video news report: https://abcnews.go.com/US/authoriti...d-bicyclist-camping-montana/story?id=78704594