A grizzly bear attacked and killed a 38-year-old mountain biker
Wednesday as he was riding along a trail just outside Glacier National
Park, Montana authorities said.
Brad Treat and another rider were in the Halfmoon
Lakes area of the Flathead National Forest when they apparently
surprised the bear, Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said.
The bear knocked Treat off his bike, and the second rider left to look for help, Curry said.
Authorities found Treat’s body at the scene, but not
the bear. Wildlife and law-enforcement officials were searching for the
grizzly Wednesday evening.
Treat was a law-enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service.
“Brad was an integral member of our area law enforcement team and a friend to us all,” Curry said.
Treat grew up in nearby Kalispell, where was a
standout distance runner in high school, his former coach, Paul
Jorgenson, told the Flathead Beacon newspaper.
“He was a really good runner but he was also a kind-hearted person who cared about people,” Jorgenson told the Beacon.
The second rider, who was not identified, was not
injured. Authorities have closed the area, which is about 3 miles away
from Glacier’s west entrance, for public safety.
Grizzlies in the Lower 48 states have been designated
a threatened species since the 1970s, but their numbers are increasing
and so are conflicts between humans and bears.
The grizzlies in the Glacier area among about 1,000
bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which also includes
the Bob Marshall Wilderness south of the park. At least 700 more
grizzlies live in and around Yellowstone National Park, which is roughly
360 miles south of Glacier.
Six people have been fatally mauled by bears in the
Northern Rockies since 2010, but those deaths were mainly in the
Yellowstone area. Glacier officials say there are usually one or two
non-lethal encounters between bears and humans each year inside the
park.
Before Wednesday, 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.
In the most well-known Glacier attacks, bears killed
two people in different parts of the park in a single night in 1967.
Those attacks became the subject of a 1969 book by Jack Olsen titled
“Night of the Grizzlies,” and later a documentary by the same name.
