It’s always important to be cautious when hiking in an environment where bears have been spotted. However, when a visitor to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park saw a bear on Laurel Falls Trail earlier this month, he crept in to get a better shot with his camera.
Unsurprisingly, this young bear took his approach as a threat and attacked, taking a chunk out of the man’s foot. After the incident, park rangers went on a search to find the bear. Using visitors’ photographs and behavioral signs, the rangers captured the bear the next day. Park policy states that when bears that have attacked humans must be euthanized. However, as the internet caught wind of the story, a Facebook group (with now over 5,000 followers) was created in an attempt to save the bear, which they named “Laurel.”
Patty Lanke, the group’s creator, claims that “(the hiker) was wrong for doing what he did, whether the bear approached him or not.” Followers of the group incorrectly claimed that Appalachian Bear Rescue would rehabilitate the bear in custody. Unfortunately, because of the circumstances (human attack), even after rehabilitation, the bear would not be allowed back into the wild.
Despite the Facebook group’s opposition, the bear was euthanized. Nancy Gray, a parks spokeswoman says this decision reduces the risk for future attacks. Jack Burgin, president of the ABR, even agreed that the park rangers made the correct decision. Citing studies the organization performed at UT, Burgin said that reverse conditioning with bears exposed to humans were “uniformly unsuccessful.”
Park rangers are faced with these difficult decisions on a regular basis–education about bear safety is important and necessary for the continued safety of both humans and bears. To read more about bear safety, check out our article Bear Safety While on the Trail.
via Wend and Knoxville News Sentinel.
