The 'Oldman' Bear Review
News release said Rangers used "Mouth-to-nose breathing" on an injured Glacier Park grizzly bear Aug. 14. We'd need a more detailed report to learn if anyone secured the bear's claws and held its mouth shut while that "breathing" business was going on. Whatever the circumstances, count this writer among you sissies who would never ever volunteer for that line of work.
Some years back a local person made bigtime Flathead news by giving successful "mouth to beak" resuscitation to a drowned chicken. A friend of ours brought a neighbor lady's little dog back to consciousness with same technique. Those were exciting events, BUT this grizzly thing gets the ultimate points for nerve and "olfactory tolerance."
Glacier officials have received unfair criticism for shooting the "Oldman Lake" grizzly and accidentally killing one of her two cubs with a tranquilizer dart. In possible anticipation of adverse public reaction, Park officials seemed to go out of their way to accent how regrettable and "gut-wrenching" the action was.
One out-of-state woman even wrote to the Hungry Horse News saying she might not come visit the Park again this year because, "Glacier is no longer the same place." "Oh pshaw!" he chortled. Been in Glacier three times since the "bear removal." Scenery was magnificent. Spent time watching a beautiful silvertip feeding high on the slopes of Going to the Sun. Over the Hill Gang hiked Triple Divide Pass last week without concern about "that bear" for the first time in years.
A personal comment on the Park actions is this: "They had some luck getting by as long as they did without an attack on humans in the Oldman, Cutbank areas." That opinion comes in spite of intense and expensive adverse conditioning done there in '05 and '06.
The last proven human death from bears was in a comparable circumstance involving an aggressive female with cubs transplanted in Two Medicine area. The Park counts just one of two human deaths there, in 1997 and 1998, as grizzly caused because the long missing remains of the first possible victim were not verifiable as resulting from attack by "Chocolate Legs" and her cubs.
Expressed opinions of animal rights extremists regarding removal of grizzlies are not as stringent when they have to factor in the reality of a human victim. I remember 1998 quite well. Could it be possible there are people who would like Park Policy to actually state, "It is only acceptable to remove a bear, after there are one or more proven human fatalities?" Most would like to believe no one really thinks like that. But, Shakespeare might come up with something like, "Who knows what 'ignorance' lurks in the hearts of man?"
Glacier's Chief of Science and Natural Resources, Jack Potter, summed up this latest grizzly incident precisely when he said, "Managing the Oldman bear had become an unsustainable effort with unacceptable risk to Park visitors. The Park has a responsibility to manage grizzly bear populations on a whole rather than expending limited resources on a single bear that has a long track record of purposely approaching humans. It reaches a point where we can't keep doing this year after year."
It also reaches a point where … it is not easy being Jack Potter.
G. George Ostrom is a Kalispell resident and a national-award winning Hungry Horse News columnist.