2y ago

Two killed in bear attack at Banff National Park, grizzly euthanized: Parks Canada

calgary.ctvnews.ca

Parks Canada says a bear attack in Alberta's Banff National Park has left two people dead.

29 comments

Bear just out there doing real life bear shit.
Poor thing
- What was hilarious was that the bear was deemed to be acting "aggressively.". You mean it was being a bear? Imagine wild animals being just that. The disconnect is astounding. Remember Harambe.
  
  Jumping in to try to translate from Banff Park Staff lingo.
  Bears do become more aggressive once they become desensitized to humans and human activity. I think of it as territorly aggressive. It's a powerful and wild animal either way.
  
  Contrary to popular belief, bears are pretty chill. Aggressive is not normal.
  
  Not that I want anyone imagining this, but it's likely the bear was interrupted having a little snack, and wasn't very happy about it.
  
  And they also just killed some bear. They don't actually know if it's the killer bear, and to the public, it doesn't matter.
What an unpleasant way to die
I misread that as “grizzly enthused” and I was like “well yeah of course the bear would be stoked, he just had a full course meal”
Oh look! I didn't need one but there's another reason to embrace staying inside today
Bears being bears. Not really that surprising.
- It's somewhat surprising. Bear attacks are not that common.
They're was a video circulating a while back where two grizzlies followed a group of hikers down the trail for several km. I wonder if this bear was one of them
- This was way back into the backcountry, and a bit of a distance from that trail in the article. I mean it's possible, bears can travel quite a distance, but it's also very unlikely it's the same bear. There's a good number of grizzlies in BNP/JNP.
I’ve been to Banff multiple times. This was my biggest fear the entire time I was there lol.
Unless it was the undead polar bear from Game of Thrones it probably should have been left alone.
- Banff is an extremely busy park so unless they are willing to close that trail/bear’s territory to the public, there aren’t a lot of other good options. If the bear has decided people are a threat/food, relocating it would also be difficult and may introduce some liability.
  
  It's a busy park in the touristy areas. This was in the backcountry. It's been a tough year for bears, it hasn't been a very good year for the berries they so heavily rely on, and they are having to resort to mainly carnivorous meal sources. This is the time of year they are just eating like mad too, before they go into their dens, so bear encounters this time of year can go pretty sideways. Especially if it was a close surprise. I doubt we'll ever know what happened here. It's a tragedy, for all involved.
  
  It's nuanced, but the idea that a bear would suddenly just "decide people are a threat/food" is misguided. The bottom line is it's wilderness, the odds are very high they did something careless like surprise the bear or get between it and its cubs, which wouldn't indicate atypical behavior on the bear's part or suggest it'd pose extra danger in the future. Bottom line I don't agree with the general approach of tourists wandering out in the woods, doing something careless which gets them killed, and then animals being killed indiscriminately as a result, I think it's a very arrogant approach by people in general.

29 comments