Vintage Video: Grizzly Attacks Bear Researchers
OutdoorHub Reporters 06.29.16
Imagine waking up in your comfy bed only to find a group of strange people trying to pierce your ear for some unwanted jewelry. You’d naturally be more than a little upset.
The grizzly bear in this vintage video had that very experience and understandably took out its frustrations on whatever it could find, including the research team’s station wagon. Perhaps the bear didn’t get a full dose of tranquilizer, or maybe it wore off before the men completed their work. Whichever the case, the situation turned into a dangerously close encounter, and it was fortunate that the bruin was still under-the-influence enough for team to make an escape.
John and Frank Craighead were pioneers in grizzly bear research and began this study in Yellowstone National Park in 1959. By 1971 the National Park Service estimated there were just 136 grizzlies in the entire Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Since then their numbers have grown, and recent estimates put the population at somewhere between 675 and 840 bears.
