Albino bear paid visit to high school before relocation

A 4-year-old albino black bear is exploring his new home in Glacier National Park.

Late last week, grizzly bear management specialist Tim Manley responded to a caller reporting a "blonde grizzly bear" in Olney.

Manley set a trap, and a few days later caught the animal. But it wasn't a gri.

Residents urged Manley to find a new home where the bear wouldn't be hunted. So he contacted Glacier National Park biologist John Waller.

Waller got the approval to release the animal at Packer's Roost — prime bear habitat in the McDonald Creek drainage.

Margaret Beck of the Stillwater State Forest said the bear, the product of recessive genes in both parents, has blue eyes with pink rims.

"His eyes looked like people eyes," she said.

Waller said the bear is the first albino he's seen in 25 years of trapping and handling bears.

Manley said he'd never seen a live one, either.

But the bear isn't the first albino spotted in recent years. Hunters shot one a few years ago near Teakettle Mountain.

When Manley first caught the bear, it was so docile, he took it over the Columbia Falls High School so the cast and crew of the Young Americans could view it. Manley had six members of the cast living with him at the time.