Residents of idyllic mountain towns have been left looking over their shoulder after the population of grizzly bears soared.
Since being put on the Endangered Species List in 1975 when there were just 700 of them patrolling the lower 48 states, grizzlies have made a comeback.
Places including towns, farms and ranches across the Northern Rockies where they hadn’t been seen in more than a century are reporting sightings.
Biologists say they believe the population has now climbed to at least 2,000, and the bears now regularly roam outside Glacier and Yellowstone National Park.
Cecil and Bridget Gallagher, who live in Clark, Wyoming, just outside Cody, harvest sweet corn on their farm, which they say now provides them with an adrenaline rush.
The animals started showing up near their ranch around a decade ago, causing them to put up an electric face.
Since then, the bears have managed to come into the cornfields, with four being trapped by state game managers last year.
With harvest looming, the Gallaghers say they fear for themselves and their kids walking through the fields as they try to generate enough noise to ward off bears.
Bridget told the outlet: ‘I do a lot of praying. We start picking sweet corn next week. Saw our first set of bear tracks around the field a couple days ago. Luck’s job begins again.’
While Elliott Lee awoke one morning to frantic squawking coming from his backyard chicken coop, and after rushing outside discovered a grizzly bear.
Lee, 78, told the outlet: ‘The fence had been smashed down and I looked up and a grizzly bear was 25 to 30 feet away.’
‘He had killed four chickens and was in the process of eating them. ‘
Dana Darlington who runs a ranch on the Montana prairie, where grizzlies hadn’t been seen in at least 100 years said he found the remains of a 120-pound calf in April.
State biologists then later confirmed to Darlington that the calf had been attacked by a bear.
The 60-year-old told the outlet: ‘I never thought I’d see a grizzly kill out here in my life. I’m just bewildered by what is going on out here.’
Carnivore biologist Luke Ellsbury said his ‘holy c***’ moment happened last year when a grizzly appeared in the Bighorn mountains.
Ellsbury told the outlet that the animal had to have crossed the Bighorn Basin, an expansive plateau some 100 miles wide.
He told the outlet: ‘We thought it would be a few more years’, adding his Game and Fish department had to euthanize it after it killed livestock.
In a rare moment last year, Ellsbury also scared off a grizzly along the Shoshone River near a busy nature trail by firing blanks.
His office supplies locals with bear spray and even lets people practice on a Robobear, a remote controlled grizzly that charges.
Ranch manager Mark McCarty has reported losing 50 to 75 calves yearly to the bears and other predators.
He told the outlet that the state compensates the ranch but not all the costs, adding that stressed out cows breed less.
McCarty said: ‘I don’t want to see the bears eliminated, but they’ve gotten to be so many they tend to get in trouble. It’s like a glass of water and the bears are pouring over the top.’
In May of this year, Shayne Patrick Burke, 35, suffered serious injuries as a result of an attack in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
He revealed in a post to Instagram how he was in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’ when a mother grizzly bear attacked him.
The full-grown animal had been protecting her cub, he said – resulting in a vicious attack the combat veteran said was the ‘most violent’ thing he’s ever experienced.
He credited a can of bear spray with saving his life, administered as the beast was gnawing on his hands, legs, and the back of his neck, nearly ending him then and there.
Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are all now pushing for the grizzly to be taken from the protected list to manage the amount of them by hunting.
Samantha Justice, 25, told the outlet that she wants the bears to be open to hunting saying: ‘They need to be scared of us.’
Justice had been booking rafting trips on a river where grizzlies have charged two boats and always carries a rifle when in the woods.
While Grizzly advocates are fighting to have their protections held, saying the population is nothing compared to the 50,000 that roamed the Western US two hundred years ago.
David Mattson, a retired federal wildlife researcher, added: ‘We are talking about an icon of our Western heritage and the last of the last.’
Mattson believes that bears and humans can coexist as long as safety precautions are taken.
Despite the comeback and concern among those in the area, human fatalities are still rare.
Since 1992, there have been 165 recorded injuries to humans which includes 10 deaths.
In Yellowstone, there is just on average one grizzly attack a year due to bear-proof garbage bins, wide use of bear spray and other safety measures.
But around the park, the number of conflicts with the animals has risen from 50 annually in the 90s to over 400 in more recent years.
The animals are known for burglarizing buildings, taking down livestock, pet dogs and tangling with people, according to Frank van Manen, supervisory research wildlife biologist for the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.
The team have also found that a bears’ range has now climbed to 27,000 square miles since 1990.
Van Manen told the outlet the biggest increase in conflicts is areas reclaimed by the bears that are full of humans.
He added that grizzlies have learned it is easier to prey on cattle or steal trash than to hunt in the foods, saying: ‘They’re incredibly intelligent and resourceful animals.’
Due to the resurgence, the US Fish and Wildlife Service decided to remove grizzlies from the Endangered Species List in 2017.
But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020 agreed with a lawsuit from environmental and tribal groups that the bears should remain protected
Montana and Wyoming have petitioned the case to again take the grizzly back off the list.
The outlet reported that Wyoming spends around $2 million a year on bear conflicts, which includes $500,000 for losses like livestock.
Officials with Fish and Wildlife say they are looking into the status for all the lower states, not just for Yellowstone with a decision due next year.