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Is 'rogue' grizzly on loose? Not likely

ATTACKS: Biologist believes behavior in 2 incidents was normal.

By GEORGE BRYSON
gbryson@adn.com

Published: July 3rd, 2008
Last Modified: July 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 AM

Was the brown bear that crossed paths with two Anchorage runners near the Hilltop Ski Area three weeks ago a "rogue bear"?

That's what NBC "Today" show host Matt Lauer said on national TV Tuesday, while wondering whether the same bear mauled 15-year-old Petra Davis of Anchorage on Sunday morning in Far North Bicentennial Park.

"I understand that a runner actually had an encounter with a bear in this same area just a couple weeks ago," Lauer said during his interview with an Anchorage fire chief, medic and bike racer. "Do authorities think this might be the same rogue bear?"

In the first incident, a brown bear sow, accompanied by two cubs, ran over the top of one of two runners but didn't attack either of them.

"There is some concern that it may be the same bear," Anchorage Fire Department battalion chief Mike Crotty told Lauer. "But I think that's just an educated guess."

It's a guess all right, says state wildlife biologist Rick Sinnott, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game authority who oversees conflicts between Anchorage area bears and people. But he stopped short of calling it educated.

"We don't know if the sow with two cubs was involved in this mauling," Sinnott said Tuesday evening. "It could have been the same bear or a different bear. We just don't know."

In either case, nothing that occurred in the first incident would have led Sinnott to describe that bear's behavior as unusual.

"It definitely wasn't a 'rogue bear,' " he said. "When a bear defends something, that's normal." And the sow avoided the conflict. "She basically stepped over (the runner). So I certainly wouldn't call that a mauling."

Sinnott and other authorities were targets of some public criticism in local Internet chat rooms this week, including the Daily News Web site, which received more than 160 comments to its initial bear mauling story. Some faulted him for not killing the bear.

That would be hard to do, Sinnott said. At least 20 different brown bears have been documented inside Bicentennial Park in the past two summers, and no one knows which one's the culprit.

"We're not going to just go shoot a bear and bring it back into town and say, 'There you go -- there's a dead bear,' " he said. "It's just not going to do any good."

The only person to observe the animal that attacked Davis during the early morning hours Sunday is Davis herself, and the South High School student is still being treated in the critical care unit at Providence Alaska Medical Center for severe wounds to her neck, torso, buttocks and thigh.

Absent her account, Sinnott has tried to piece together what might be known about the bear that attacked her. He's almost certain it was a brown bear, since grizzlies are plentiful in the park in the summer, and the nature of Davis' wounds and the apparent ferocity of the attack rule out a black bear. He's not sure about its gender.

The time and place was ripe for surprising a brown bear, Sinnott said. By 1:30 a.m. -- as the 24-hour marathon bike race Davis was competing in entered its 13th hour -- the forest in Bicentennial Park had turned dark.

Visibility was even sketchier in the thickly forested corridor of Rover's Run Trail, where the attack occurred. The trail parallels the South Fork of Campbell Creek. The wind was blowing 20 mph and it would have been hard for a bear to hear an approaching biker, Sinnott said.

"She might have been going only 10 or 15 mph, but there was a winding trail, and I'm not sure either of them had any warning at all. It was just -- boom!"

It's characteristic of brown bears to fight back when they're surprised at close quarters, Sinnott said.

"Any adult brown bear would react in the same way. It's like you're walking down a hallway in the dark and someone leaps out of a corner. You're either going to run or you're going to slug 'em. That's the way brown bears think, and in a second they're on top of you."

Fish and Game biologists plan to remain on alert this holiday weekend to reports of any other human-bear encounters on the Hillside. And any aggressive bear in the vicinity of Bicentennial Park probably won't get the benefit of the doubt, Sinnott said.

"The clock starts ticking with this mauling."

Find George Bryson online at adn.com/contact/gbryson or call 257-4318.