Forests and Wildfire (Logging for Healthy Habitat?)

August , 2015:

Wildfires are Back!

More than fifty homes have been burned by a wildfire near Kamiah, Idaho. More than 100 structures have been destroyed by four fires burning near Chelan, Washington. The Cabin fire in the Angeles National Forest in California has been called a “tinderbox,” destroying homes and resulting in at least one human death. Much of the state is burning up.

And once again smoke fills our valleys here in Missoula, Montana; Wildfires surround us.

I say “once again” because this has been happening periodically during summer months for, well . . . for pretty much forever. Yet people still seem surprised. Some seem upset. I recently met a tourist who had tears in her eyes as she said, “I’ve always wanted to see Glacier, and now it’s being destroyed by fire.”  (Glacier is, indeed, being degraded, but not by fire – it is being altered by thousands of gas-guzzling tourists and a fossil-fuel-driven tourist industry pumping C02 and other greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere which is warming our planet and resulting in overall less snow, earlier snow melt, melting glaciers, more drought and, ironically, drier conditions that contribute to larger and more frequent fires in places like Glacier National Park.) 

When the U.S. Forest Service was created in 1905, there were debates among early foresters on what to do about wildfires – let them burn, as  nature intended, or fight them?  Then the “Great Fires of 1910” came along, also known as the “Big Blowup,” “The Big Burn” and “The Devil’s Broom Fire.” More than 3 million acres – an area roughly the size of Connecticut – burned throughout northern Idaho and western Montana, killing 87 people and completely overrunning and destroying seven towns and severely damaging several others. From then on, the Forest Service took a militaristic approach to stopping all fires. Fire became the enemy.

More than 100 years of fire suppression contributed to altered conditions that now result in wildfires, in some places, that are more frequent and more intense than what naturally and historically occurred. But not in all places. Various forest types evolved with and adapted to various fire regimes -- varying in the frequency and intensity of fires. In some forest types, such as high-elevation lodgepole pine forests, large, less frequent, intense wildfires were and are the natural norm. There are known, predictable risks to building homes in such places, just as there are known, predictable risks to building homes in floodplains.  

It doesn’t help that the media often describes these fires as “devastating” and “catastrophic” while rarely, if ever, helping inform people about forest ecology. I doesn't help that many politicians often simplify the issue and call for more logging as a solution -- the very type of logging that contributed to more frequent and intense wild fires. Continuing the the same policies that contributed to the problem will not solve the problem no matter how much big timber interests and their lackeys will try and persuade you otherwise with half-truths, distortions and lies.   

A lot of environmentalists I know blame climate change for the fires. A lot of conservatives I know blame forest management (or what they perceive as lack of management).  Although past logging and climate change has exasperated the frequency and intensity of wildfires in many places, our western forests evolved with and are adapted to wildfire. Wildfire is as essential to these forests as air, water and soil.  Native Americans who lived close enough to the land to understand the land knew this well. Many tribes started their own fires to alter and improve habitat conditions for the deer, elk and bison that sustained them. It was when European settlers started building permanent homes and cities that fire became a huge issue. It was around 1910 perhaps a well-intentioned but misguided war on forest fires began. It's an attitude still dangerously and unfortunately entrenched in our culture. 

So what can be done? The first step should be for people to learn about the ecology and history of the forests they live in and near; support policies and management that, in some places, allows for natural and essential processes or, in other places, mimics natural processes and restores and enhances the health of these forests, and oppose misguided policies that contribute to the problem. 

More than 50 years ago, a forester, professor and writer named Aldo Leopold put it this way: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

A version of the my following article was first published 20 years ago;  it is still pertinent today:

Steve Arno

July, 1996:
Forests and Wildfires: Logging for Healthy Habitat?

Cutting trees is a sensitive, complex issue, a difficult act to defend. It can be done well or it can be done poorly. But what is good logging? Is it logging that makes a profit? Logging that creates forage for elk? Logging that looks nice to people when it's done?

To Steve Arno, good logging means working within the bounds of natural systems, emulating natural processes, maintaining all components of a healthy forest, from elk to the grasses and forbs that sustain them. And given the forestry practices of the past 100 years or more, a little good logging now may actually be necessary to restore and maintain healthy forests. This is especially so in places that evolved with frequent fires, like the ponderosa pine forest around Steve Arno's home.

Arno, a retired researcher with the Forest Service's Intermountain Fire sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana, has studied the ecology of forests and fires for more than 40 years. During that time, he's helped hone methods to restore and maintain healthy forests using logging and fire. His own land -- 60 acres in the foothills of Montana's Bitterroot Mountains -- provides a showcase for these ideas.

An open stand of ponderosa pines now towers over a forest floor covered with grass and scattered clumps of willow and Douglas fir. But Arno's land wasn't always that way. When he bought the place in 1971, it looked like some adjacent lands still do -- a thick tangle of firs and scrawny pines, with little or no grasses or shrubs poking through a dense blanket of needles and dead branches.

"This is a preservationist's Shangri-La," Arno says of the neighboring forest. "It's remained the same for years, nothing's growing. It's preserved, for a while, but in the context of thousands of years of constant change, it's pretty bizarre."

Rotting stumps of ancient ponderosas stand testament to what this forest once was a grassy savanna of giant pines, where early settlers reported riding two abreast on horseback, and where elk grazed on bunchgrasses and scattered willows. Today, it's difficult to penetrate the thicket, and tough for deer and elk to find food. Why the change? The clues lie in the stumps themselves. Turn-of-the-century high-grading -- the practice of cutting only the best, most valuable timber -- left these great skeletons to slowly decay back into the earth.

About the same time the huge pines were heading for the mills, the government began aggressively fighting wildfires. Meanwhile, settler's cattle and sheep grazed down grasses and forbs that once fueled frequent fires, ignited by lightning and Native Americans. For millennia, these fires licked through the forest in a predictable pattern still documented by thin, black scars which appear along annual growth rings in the old stumps at intervals of five to 20 years.

Like predators thinning elk herds, these fires once kept trees in check -- killing some, sparing others, recycling nutrients, rejuvenating grasses, shrubs and trees. Without fire, the trees grew dense, overcrowded, more prone to drought, insects and disease. As competition for water and nutrients increased, so did mortality. The forest grew feeble. Now few healthy pines remain. Douglas firs grow shoulder to shoulder, many dead or dying from mistletoe, bark beetles, root rot and other maladies. Forty-year-old ponderosas that should be 25 to 45 feet tall stand no higher than a person, deformed and crippled by comandra blister rust, a parasitic canker sapping life from the pines.

"These trees didn't evolve to defend themselves from this," Arno says. "Historically, fires did not allow large areas of stagnated saplings to develop. Fires thinned the saplings and did not offer a major breeding ground for the disease."

Without fire to keep stands open and reduce competition from firs, opening the forest canopy, allowing sunlight to reach the ground and replenish nutrients, pines don't have a chance.  Trees need healthy habitat. Fire is as essential as sun and rain.

"Forests are processes, not just trees and plants," Arno says. "And these forests can't survive and remain healthy without processes such as fire."

He explains it this way: "Imagine having an old grandfather clock with a glass front exposing the internal gears. You don't like the looks of one of the gears, so you remove it. Of course, you can't remove the gear and expect the clock to work, yet people expect nature to work without fire."

It hasn't. Throughout the West, fire exclusion, logging and grazing have converted open ponderosa pine forests to fir thickets. As more and more people build homes in these forests, they see the immense stumps of ponderosas that once grew there and shake their heads in wistful disbelief. But most of them intuitively reject the idea that burning and logging could actually help bring back those great pines.

When Arno looked at the monolithic old stumps on his place, he saw more than relics of a bygone era. He saw a compelling history -- and a guide to the future. Listening to the stumps, Arno began by cutting Douglas firs and sickly pines, leaving the larger, healthier pines, simulating as best he could fire's predation. In the process, he made some income, selling firewood, and pulp and saw logs to local mills. This logging and burning slash in hand-built piles reduced fuels that had accumulated during nearly a century of fire exclusion, fuels that could feed fires far larger and more intense than the frequent surface fires that once occurred, the kind of conflagrations that can damage soils, vegetation and wildlife. Then he brought back fire, torching low clumps of dead willows and stagnant aspen.  Arno's land is now green with pinegrass, bunchgrass, willows, snowbrush and aspen suckers. And elk and deer frequent his land once more.

This is the kind of logging Arno would like to see done throughout the lower-elevation pine forests on private and public lands. "Restoration logging," he calls it.

"Forests are constantly changing, dependent on periodic disturbances," Arno says. "We can mimic those disturbances with carefully designed harvesting and prescribed fire -- not recreating the original forests, but learning from nature, using nature as a guide, maintaining components and processes which these forests evolved with and depend on."

When many people think of logging, they envision denuded mountainsides webbed with roads. And they know some logging operations are still managed for short-term profit, not as part of a long-term process to restore and maintain the health and sustainability of the land. Bad logging inflames cynicism and mistrust. Many people now protest cutting trees, anywhere, anytime, no matter the reason. Passion and lack of understanding often fuel these debates. Not all logging is bad.

Good forestry and wildlife management rest on this fundamental premise: A surplus can be sustainably used by people. And we Americans do use wood products. Lots of them. The typical U.S. citizen consumes wood and paper products equivalent to what can be produced from one 100-foot tree every year. This figure includes 663 pounds of paper per person each year, as well as wood fiber in forms as diverse as insulation, rayon, oils, paints and fuels. Small trees are mulched and glued into particle board, wafer board, laminated lumber . . . the list goes on.

"We are still hunter-gatherers, we still need to make a living from the land," Arno says. "We can do so and still maintain wildlife and aesthetics."

Arno believes that the United States should rely on homegrown trees to meet its needs rather than importing timber. While U.S. timber companies export 3.3 billion board feet of timber each year, the U.S. imported 17 billion board feet of processed lumber and raw logs last year. Nearly half of all wood products consumed in the United States today come from other countries -- mostly Canada -- and such places don't necessarily practice enlightened forestry. Amo's vision of "light-on-the-land" logging -- restoring and maintaining healthy forests, employing local people -- contrasts sharply with this condition.

"We don't need to rob from other societies to support our consumption," he says, "We can, and need to, manage our own forests to improve forest health and reduce the risk of severe wildfires."

Logging for healthy forests strikes many people as an oxymoron. Others cautiously embrace it. But some loggers, foresters and timber companies have jumped aboard a "forest health" bandwagon, claiming logging can reduce fire danger and improve forests just about everywhere and anywhere, distorting science to boost unsustainable greed-based profit.

In the name of a "forest health emergency," the U.S. Congress enacted legislation in 1996 that expedited timber salvage on federal lands by exempting salvage sales from administrative appeals, limiting the time available for judicial review, and easing environmental planning procedures. The legislation was attached as an amendment to a rescission bill and became known as the “Salvage Rider.” Despite broad public criticism, several national forests invoked the salvage bill to build new roads and cut dead trees -- and live trees, too, if foresters deemed them “unhealthy.” Even trees blown down by strong winds were quickly salvaged. But dead and decaying trees are as much a part of healthy forests as fire, wind and rain. Simply removing them ignores the complexities of forest health and further alienates people, provoking controversy instead of consensus. Efforts to get people into the woods and show them sites that demonstrate good forestry are far more likely to regain public trust.

Forest health problems do, indeed, exist, with serious implications. From the Cascade Mountains of Oregon to the Front Range of Colorado, land from British Columbia to Arizona, fire exclusion, logging, grazing and human development have transformed millions of acres of ponderosa pine savannas. In fact, Wallace Covington, an ecologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, calls ponderosa pine savannas the most endangered forests in the West.

Covington studies ponderosa pine forests in Arizona, comparing current conditions to pre-settlement times. On the Coconino National Forest, where pine and bunchgrass coexisted with fire for two to five million years, there were once about two dozen trees per acre -- a wide open pine stand with a grassy understory. Today, roughly 850 trees choke each acre. Where 1,000 pounds of grasses and forbs once flourished in each acre of land-sustaining great herds of deer and elk, only about 350 pounds per acre now grow. As the profusion of trees compete for moisture, nutrients, sun and space, they become increasingly stressed. Burning won't solve the problems, Covington says. In the absence of fire, a thick, sterile carpet of duff has crept up the bases of trees. A fire now would not be like the periodic, low-intensity ground fires that once thinned forests. It would be a large, intense fire, reaching high into the crowns and deep into the soils, killing mature pines along with the crowded understory.

That's precisely what happened in a former pine savanna much farther north. On August 19, 1992, a dozen lightning strikes in the foothills east of Boise, Idaho, sparked a blaze that burned 257,000 acres of forests and rangelands, including large pines. The fire scorched one stream to bedrock, wiping out a population of increasingly rare bull trout. Efforts to protect homes cost more than $24 million. One area, however, didn't burn. When it reached Tiger Creek, the blaze lay low and merely burned off the underbrush in a 2,500-acre stand of ponderosa pines -- the only survivors within miles. The Tiger stand had previously been logged to remove the understory of fir and reduce fuels, and prescribed fire had been used to restore and rejuvenate grasses.

Like the pine savannas, great stands of aspens grew in what is now Arizona and New Mexico. But in the past century, more than half the aspen forests that existed in pre-settlement times have disappeared. Now, efforts to log tangles of pinon, juniper and fir -- combined with prescribed fire -- are helping restore the aspens that are synonymous with elk country in the Southwest. And in the moist Sitka spruce and hemlock forests along the West Coast, when conditions were just right every few hundred years, intense fires created expansive openings of grasses and forbs, providing forage for deer and elk. Here, too, logging and fire may be essential to maintain healthy elk habitat.

But few logging operations occur without heated debate these days. If nothing else, forest health issues may serve as a catalyst to bring people together.

"There hasn't been much effort in the past to explain forestry practices," said Seth Diamond (a friend of mine who was a wildlife program director for the Intermountain Forest Industry Association before his tragic death in a plane crash in 1996.) "The public has evolved from not being involved, to reacting and criticizing, to where they are now getting out in the woods, learning about forestry and sharing their ideas and concerns. Unfortunately, logging has polarized and alienated a lot of people--but we need those people to help us find solutions to complicated problems. People need to be aware of the consequences and tradeoffs of different options. Yes, there were large fires historically, but is that acceptable today in all places? And if not, what do we want to do? These ecosystems evolved with disturbances like fire, and logging can create similar circumstances."

While logging can reduce fuels and allow managers to safely restore fire, Arno is quick to point out that logging alone cannot replicate fire. Tom Atzet, a Forest Service ecologist for southwestern Oregon forests, agrees.

"Some people say logging is a wholesale substitute for fire," Atzet says. "It isn't. We don't yet understand all of the physical and chemical properties of fire, or the effects fire has on organisms within the environment. Logging can help in some places, by reducing fuels, but as far as nutrient cycling, fire certainly does things that logging doesn't."

Biologists have demonstrated over and over the critical link between fire and countless species of birds, mammals and insects. Even some lichens, which cling to trees and rocks and take their sustenance from air and rain -- coincidentally serving as key indicators of air quality -- may require fire to survive. Atzet says recent research suggests lichens may inhale nutrients from wildfire smoke. In the big picture, we still know very little about the millions of intricate relationships between fire and forest organisms, but we do understand this much: fire is essential to healthy forests.

For many, though, fire conjures images of charred homes and Bambi fleeing a wall of flames. Some people aren't willing to accept the risk of prescribed fire, or simply don't want to choke on smoke lingering in valleys. Just as many don't want logging occurring near their homes. But there is risk in doing nothing as well.

"It's like holding your hand over a dripping hose," Atzet says. "For a while, you can keep the water from coming out. But the pressure builds and builds. Eventually, the water bursts out with far more power and intensity than if you just let it, drip. We've held it back for awhile, but now fuel loads are high, and forests are ready to explode."

Unfortunately, land managers tend to meet the most resistance to logging and burning where people are building homes. This also happens to be where ponderosa pine forests are most in need of thinning and burning, where elk and deer spend harsh winters and require grasses and forbs that can only be restored and sustained by burning and logging, and where elk and deer have already lost millions of tons of forage to human sprawl. Only by working together will people solve such dilemmas.

Atzet has a disabled son, who has been in and out of hospitals for years. At times, Atzet grows frustrated with doctors who leave him to fidget in waiting rooms, uninformed.

"They have my son's best interest at heart, but treat me like an outsider," he says. "Yet I have more interest in my son than anyone else in the world. It can be that way with forestry. People have a deep interest in forests, and land managers can be like doctors."

On one occasion when Atzet took his son in for a spinal tap, doctors parted the heavy curtain of professional medicine and allowed him to join them in the operating room to watch and help.

"We were working together toward the same goal," he says. "It can work the same in forest management, by letting people who care join in the process, to watch and help.

"It's not the science. We're not lacking the science to do a good job in managing ecosystems. It's the human element--getting people to work together toward common goals."

July, 1996:
What's Good For The Goose May Kill The Gander

 

The great pitfall of "forest health" lies in people's tendency to overgeneralize. What works in one forest may prove disastrous elsewhere. For example, high-elevation forests like lodgepole pine evolved with less frequent, more intense wildfires. These burns created a patch of grass here, a small stand of young lodgepole there, and some dense old-growth nearby to form a classic mosaic, supporting everything from elk and deer to pine martens and owls. But years of fire exclusion and logging have allowed lodgepoles to grow into larger, more uniform stands with little diversity. Pine beetle epidemics and large wildfires are on the rise.

But thinning and burning the understory would be absurd here. Scattered clearcuts and more intense prescribed burns would more closely follow historic natural patterns of fire. In the high country of Idaho's Selway Bitterroot Wilderness, for instance, large hot fires occasionally burn dry, south-facing slopes creating huge brushfields, while sparing the spruce and fir on moist north slopes. Viewed from above, the patchwork of trees and openings is difficult to distinguish from clearcuts in adjacent logged areasexcept for the roads.

Foresters prescribe distinct treatments to different forests. Clearcutting ponderosas can be like amputating the leg of a heart attack victim. So can thinning lodgepole. But when economic and social pressures transcend genuine forest health considerations, land managers may prescribe the wrong treatment in the wrong place. That's why clearcuts have a bad name, and why folks think selective cuts are always best. Clearcuts assault people's senses, while a selectively thinned forest seldom draws attention. But aesthetics don't always equate to good forestry. Selective logging has become synonymous with good forestry, yet if only large, valuable trees are selectively cut, it's nothing more than high-grading.

Of course, logging plans must account for social and economic factors. Modern technology allows for logging that's lighter on the land than past practices, but not without tradeoffs. Helicopter logging can eliminate the need for roads in some areas, but to make a profit, loggers may have to cut bigger, more valuable trees, like mature ponderosa pines and larches -- often the very fire-adapted, fire-dependant species foresters are trying to restore. More traditional equipment like grapple skidders and feller bunchers costs less, but requires roads and skid trails.

Some state-of-the-art machinery, like harvesters and forwarders (that together form a "cut-to-length system" that cuts, limbs and loads trees on the spot) can range far from roads, reducing the number of roads required. Equipped with wide, rubber tires, the machines cause less erosion and soil compression than traditional equipment, and they can process small-diameter fir thickets that may be impractical to log otherwise. But together they cost about $700,000.

Every technique has benefits, each has faults. Much depends on the types of trees to be cut, when they are cut, the nature of the terrain where they grow, the going price of lumber and pulp, and whether the trees are on public or private land. Logging on private lands tends to have a more singular focus. Expensive, time-consuming thinnings and prescribed burns don't boost the bottom line of timber company ledgers. And timber companies are in business to make money. If they don't, a lot of their forests could be (and have been) sold and used for other profit-making ventures -- like subdivisions and resorts.

In contrast, agencies charged with stewardship of public lands may view logging to restore and maintain healthy forests as essential, even if they have to do it without making a profit. Like prescribed fire, logging can be an important way to restore natural vigor to a forest.

Why I Choose Not to Carry Bear Spray in Wild Grizzly Country

I've spent most of my life roaming around in and as part of the wilds -- not like a visiting alien (or photographer) who is just there to visit and observe life around me, but like a part of it all that belongs there. I have had very close encounters with wild grizzlies in remote, wild places, including having been bluff charged once. When the sow was assured I presented no threat to her cubs, she left. I think in that situation bear spray may have conveyed fear, a possible threat, and perhaps escalated the situation. No telling. But it's as valid an assumption as those who assume bear spray will always save them, despite their obvious lack of experience and knowledge.

In my 35 years roaming the wilds it's the closest call I've had with a bear and it's doubtful it will happen again. I've learned a lot more about wild bears, their behavior and how to safely travel through bear country since then.

I don't need or want weapons or potential threats with me when I enter the wilds -- I believe (from experience) that they bring about a false sense of security and convey a nervous sense of potential danger to wild animals who are pretty attune to such things. I prefer to rely on my brain, knowledge and senses. Thus far, it has served me well. I respect bears too much, and trust them too much, to feel I need to carry a weapon or potential threat into their home.

When my friend Bud Moore was still alive he told me about several grizzlies that regularly roamed his land in the Seeley-Swan Valley of Montana. Once, some biologists from the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks requested to catch collar the bears as part of a study. He refused. "I came to trust those bears and they trusted me," he says. "I gave them their space and they gave me mine. We had an understanding. I did not want to violate that trust."

Bud never carried bear spray.  

Bear spray has been shown to be a possibly good, non-lethal deterrent to bear attacks but can be adversely affected by wind, rain, temperature, and even how close the bear is when it charges. When a bear is sprayed with the canned mixture of capsaicin and related capsaicinoids it will affect the eyes, nose, throat and lungs of a bear. In the actual incidences of its use against bears it seemed to make a difference, but the researchers involved admit that they have no clue as to what the results may have been if the people involved did not have bear spray. There are several incidences in which people used bear spray and the bears kept charging, more angry for it.

In most incidences in which people were attacked by bears and responded using knowledge of bears and their behavior, people (and the bears) survived. Lance Crosby, a Billings, Montana man who was recently killed by a grizzly in Yellowstone National park, was not killed because he was did not carry bear spray -- as many sanctimonious people like to claim -- he was killed because he unfortunately stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time and responded in the wrong way by allegedly running and fighting a grizzly who just wanted to ensure her cubs were safe. Unfortunately, the Park Service chose to kill the bear in response and send her cubs off to a live of confinement in a zoo. (See To Kill a Grizzly or Not to Kill?) Would bear spray have saved him and the bears? Maybe. We'll never know.

I do not judge those who carry bear spray. If they lack knowledge, experience and confidence then perhaps it can help save lives of people and bears. But I choose not to carry something extra that I don't need or want that may convey something to wild animals contradictory to how I feel.When I hike alone in grizzly country I keep alert at a level I have rarely experienced outside of the wilds. I feel more alive and connected than I have ever felt outside of the wilds. Bears intimately know their world -- most of the time I am sure they can hear, smell and sense my presence. Sometimes I can hear, smell and sense them. When I do I go to full alert, I back off, I act as non-threatening as possible and I give them the space and respect they demand and deserve. I feel less-threatening without the can of spray; I feel safer and more attune without it.

I also don't wear a lightning rod or life jacket, or carry a defibrillator, even though I am far more likely to get hit by lightning, drown or have a heart attack in the wilds than be charged by a wild animal.

If by some very, very slim and unlikely chance I were to ever be killed by a grizzly, it is unlikely anyone would know what happened, investigate the incident, publish it in the news, or want to kill the bear involved -- I also tend to avoid hiking in popular places, get way off trail into the most remote places I can find, and I rarely tell people where I am going or when (or if) I will be back.

I don't like human-created "protocol" -- I immerse myself into the wilds to get away from societal-created norms, expectations and "protocol."

I feel pretty damn comfortable in the wilds. I try and rely on a brain fed by knowledge and experience, not capsaicinoids in a can.

To Kill a Grizzly or Not to Kill?

Photo courtesy of U.S. Park Service

"No doubt about it, the presence of bear, especially grizzly bear, adds a spicy titillation to a stroll in the woods. My bear-loving friend Peacock goes so far as to define wilderness as a place and only a place where one enjoys the opportunity of being attacked by a dangerous wild animal. Any places that lacks GRIZ, or lions or tigers, or a rhino or two, is not, in his opinion, worthy of the name 'wilderness.' A good definition, worthy of serious consideration. A wild place without dangers is an absurdity, although I realize that danger creates administrative problems for park and forest managers. But we must not allow our national parks and national forests to be degraded to the status of mere playgrounds. Open to all, yes of course. But -- enter at your own risk."  -- Edward Abbey

A 63-year-old man named Lance Crosby of Billings, Montana, was killed and partially-consumed by a grizzly bear (or two) in Yellowstone National Park last Friday, August 7, near a popular trail in the Lake Village area. Crosby was an employee of Medcor, an urgent care company, where he worked as a nurse within the Park. By all accounts, he was an experienced hiker who loved the wilds, including wild grizzlies. The suspected bear is a sow who had cubs with her. Those who have pieced the incident together surmise this: Crosby was hiking alone near the Elephant Back Trail when he likely startled the sow and her cubs while the bears were resting. The sow responded as mother grizzlies often naturally do -- aggressively defending her cub. Extensive wounds were found on Crosby's arms, probably from trying to fend off the attack.

Three bears have been captured in the area, a sow and two cubs. If the adult bear's DNA matches those of hair and other evidence gathered at the scene the park service says it will "euthanize" her -- a less harsh way of saying they will kill her. They may kill the cubs, too, if they can't find a zoo or some other captive future for the poor young grizzly. (A fate worse than death. Live free or die, I say.)

Doug Peacock -- author of Grizzly Years, who has spent more time around and knows wild grizzlies and their behavior better than anyone else I have ever heard of -- has been pleading for sparing the bear. He also rightfully points out that the sow who apparently killed Crosby is not necessarily the same bear that partially consumed him. She likely defended her cubs and got out of there; another grizzly, maybe a lone boar, could have come along and found the dead body and took advantage of an easy meal. That's what wild animals sometimes do in wild places.

Some folks speculate that once a bear has tasted human flesh it is likely to kill and consume people again. There is absolutely no evidence to support such a prevailing myth. But the Park Service says it can not take the risk. "Park managers do not take the decision to kill a bear lightly," says Yellowstone National Park Supervisor Dan Wenk. "We need to balance the protection of Park resources and public safety." Then again, there is also risk in losing a healthy, breading female grizzly within a population of grizzlies already experiencing threats and stress from the continued demise of wild places and growing impacts from climate change.

Some are criticizing Crosby, saying he could not have been too "experienced" if he was hiking off trail, alone and not carrying bear spray.  I, and many other experienced wilderness hikers and advocates I know, often hike off trail, alone and do not carry bear spray. When I roam the wilds I do not see myself as a "tourist" visiting what little remains of wild places set aside for human enjoyment; I see myself as attempting to immerse myself in what little remains of the real world and remain connected to my wild, natural roots. Predators are part of that real world. Risks are part of that real world.  If I were to be killed by lightning, or drowning, or falling off a cliff (which I've come close to, and which kills far, far more people than bears do) or die of a heart attack, I would not want federal land managers to require me to carry a lightning rod or a defibrillator, or wear a life jacket, or fence off rivers and cliffs, or sanitize the wilds in any way to make it more safe for humans who have already altered and dominate most of our sick planet.

As Doug Peacock says, bear spray can give people a false sense of security and keep them from being attune to and aware of their surroundings. When I hike alone in grizzly country I keep alert at a level I have rarely experienced outside of the wilds. I feel more alive and connected than I have ever felt outside of the wilds. Bears intimately know their world -- most of the time I am sure they can hear, smell and sense my presence. Sometimes I can hear, smell and sense them. When I do I go to full alert, I back off, I act as non-threatening as possible and I give them the space and respect they demand and deserve.

But sometimes, in the wild, unfortunate things happen.

If I am ever by chance killed by a grizzly I have made it clear to family and friends that I would not want the bear to pay the price for acting naturally in its own home. I respect the wilds, and respect wild grizzlies, too much for that. I am willing to take the risk.

Doug Peacock says Crosby likely felt the same. Perhaps. Regardless, he entered the home of the bear and likely knew the risks. He likely felt that wild adventures and wild risks make life worth living.

So what to do? Here's Doug Peacock's idea: Put an ear tag and radio collar on the bear and let her go, so her movements and activities can be closely monitored. But don't kill her. Seems fair enough.

Keep it wild! 

Here is what Doug Peacock recently wrote of the incident:

"We need to honor this hiker and let the mother bear roam wild. The reason: Mother grizzlies never intentionally kill humans; they don't care about us, only the safety of their cubs. The hiker surprised the sow grizzly. We will never know exactly how but likely she was on a day bed and he got too close. The hiker had wounds on his arms, indicating he probably fought back, an understandable but bad reaction to a mother bear to whom resistance means her cubs are still in danger. We don't know why she made contact; close proximity possibly made worse by running. Running or trying to climb a tree after a mother grizzly with cubs is the worst choice, followed by fighting back. Apparently, the hiker's body was cached and fed upon. This most disturbing of consequences needs to seen in context of the natural world of the bear. Anything dead out there is Yellowstone this time of year is seen as a most valuable food source during the lean times of summer. Witness past bison carcasses in Hayden Valley where humans got too close, then in turn were eaten too. Once dead, a human is like any other animal. If several grizzlies are around, the most dominant animal, often a big male, will appropriate the carcass. So if a mother bear killed a human in perceived defense of her cubs, that doesn't mean she cached or fed on the body. The salient point here: This mother bear is no more likely to repeat this most natural of aggression -- kill, or consume a human -- than any other mother grizzly bear in the world. The feds are more nervous about litigation and bad press than public safety. The only way to totally protect the public from wild bears and ensure safety for park visitors is to kill off all the grizzlies. The federal agencies don't want that any more than we do. Help them clarify their thinking. This was a defensive natural act for a wild grizzly. It will probably never happen again to this mother bear, though of course it might--and that is the great value of wilderness and their risky animals. The hiker was experienced, knew the area well and loved to take this hike. His now missing opinion is what would have mattered to me: What would he have wanted for the fate of this bear?"

Please let the Park Service know how you feel by contacting Kerry Gunther, head bear manager at Yellowstone, at (307) 344-2162 or email him at: Kerry_Gunther@nps.gov 

UPDATE (August 13, 2015, 12:30):  The Park Service has decided to kill the sow and maybe the two cubs. From Doug Peacock: "The news is that Yellowstone Park officials will kill this mother bear, as they said they would from the beginning. Despite all your pleas for logic, fairness and humane treatment of this grizzly family, a mother and two cubs of the year, they will be killed."  For more, click here: Murder in Yellowstone: Grizzly Family is Sacrificed for Fear of Litigation. 

UPDATE (August 13, 2015, 4:00): Park Service officials killed the adult sow grizzly today. Arrangements have been made to transfer the two cubs to a facility accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.