HELENA, Mont. – Wildlife officials set traps, installed wilderness cameras and scouted the woods by helicopter Thursday for the bear that attacked and killed a U.S. Forest Service employee as he rode a mountain bike along a trail outside Glacier National Park.
Brad Treat, 38, was knocked off his bike Wednesday after he and another rider apparently surprised the bear – a grizzly, according to initial and still-unconfirmed accounts – in the Flathead National Forest, authorities said. The other rider, whose name was not released, went to get help and was not hurt.
Bears that attack humans are killed if it is found that they displayed predatory behaviour, such as stalking the person, or consumed their victim.
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In this case, officials said is too soon to say what will be done to the bear if it is found. They are trying to determine if it was a mother with cubs, whether it was protecting a food cache nearby or whether it simply reacted to the surprise appearance of the bikers, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Ron Aasheim said.
“One of the things that is key to all this is whether it was a predatory act,” Aasheim said. “I don’t think there’s any sense that this was predatory.”
Wildlife officials set traps near the trail, flew low over the trees and hoped cameras would spot the bear. But finding it will be difficult because bears can range for miles and the area is dense with grizzlies, authorities said. There are an estimated 1,000 in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which includes the park.
To confirm whether they have the right bear, wildlife officials typically collect DNA from the animal to compare it with evidence at the scene, analyze bite marks and other injuries on the victim, and examine the animal’s claws, jaws and feces for human remains.
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Wildlife officials said they are testing DNA to establish whether it was a grizzly or a black bear that killed Treat. Also, an autopsy was being performed on the victim at the state crime lab, and the evidence gathered could help determine the size, age and sex of the bear, narrowing the search, Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said.
Authorities closed the area, about 3 miles from Glacier’s western entrance, as a precaution.
Grizzlies in the Lower 48 states have been designated a threatened species since the 1970s, but their numbers are increasing and so are run-ins between humans and bears.
Before Wednesday, at least six people had been mauled to death by bears in the Northern Rockies since 2010, but all those cases were in the Yellowstone National Park area, which is about 360 miles from Glacier and has at least 700 grizzlies.
Before Treat was killed, there had been 10 bear-related human deaths in Glacier since the park was created in 1910. The last was in 1998, when three bears killed and partially ate a park vendor employee while he was hiking.
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Treat, a law enforcement officer with the Forest Service, was married and lived in nearby West Glacier.
He grew up in Kalispell, where he was a standout distance runner in high school, said his former coach, Paul Jorgensen.
Jorgensen recalled that Treat would usually be among the top finishes during cross-country meets but would stick close to the finish line to congratulate all the other runners as they came in. The coach liked that so much he asked the other athletes on the team to do the same thing.
“We all have fond memories of Brad Treat,” Jorgensen said. “A lot of people really liked Brad. He was a favourite for many of the kids I coached and also as part of the high school.”
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