Published May 9, 2026 05:07AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Hikers in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks are constantly reminded to be cautious of bears, and for good reason. Outside of Alaska, these two Rocky Mountain parks have the highest concentration of grizzly bears out of any other National Park Service (NPS) site.<\/p>\n
On May 6, Glacier National Park reported<\/a> its first fatal bear attack in 28 years. Just two days earlier, a grizzly bear attacked<\/a> two hikers 400 miles away in Yellowstone.<\/p>\n The attacks struck a chord with me. Growing up in Alaska, only to wind up in Montana, I\u2019m no stranger to grizzly bears. Glacier is my backyard national park. And if you\u2019ve ever seen a grizzly on the trail\u2014or in your front yard\u2014you understand the profound respect and fear that arise when you come face-to-face with one of the world\u2019s most powerful predators.<\/p>\n After the recent tragedies, I found myself asking: Are the two bear attacks the result of some environmental trend, or were they just random? So, I called a bear expert to ask.<\/p>\n Chris Servheen, the former national grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said that two attacks in one week at two nearby national parks, though tragic, are purely coincidental.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re unfortunate random events, and that\u2019s all there is to it,\u201d Servheen said.<\/p>\n On average, Servheen said, there is less than one grizzly fatality every year in the contiguous United States, excluding Alaska. Nearly every attack is considered an act of natural aggression. This typically involves a hiker surprising a bear on the trail, encountering a defensive female with her cubs, or finding a bear defending its food source. Most often, grizzlies attack a hiker during a surprise encounter.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are literally millions of people interacting with thousands of bears across the landscape every year. We end up with less than a handful of attacks and, on average, less than one death annually,\u201d Servheen said. \u201cWith millions of people on the landscape every year and around 2,200 grizzly bears south of Canada, the fact that we have so few attacks is pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n An attack is a terrible thing, Servheen says, but it\u2019s also an inherent risk of recreating in the backcountry. Even so, a person is more likely to get injured in a car accident on the way to the park than they are to suffer an attack.<\/p>\n In general, bears want to avoid people. But that\u2019s not always been the case.<\/p>\nAre Bear Attacks the New Normal?<\/h2>\n
Bears Use Trails Like Humans<\/h2>\n