A 72-year-old man fought off and killed a grizzly bear that attacked him while he was picking huckleberries in Montana.
Montana Fish and Wildlife Department officials said the man, whose identity has not been released, was alone in the national forest on Thursday when he was attacked and seriously injured by an adult female wolf.
During the struggle, he fired his handgun, killing the bear and was transported to a local hospital.
Dillon Tabish, a spokesman for the department, said the bear was likely a mother trying to protect her cub. Wildlife conservationists have begun searching the area for the cub, but it’s unclear whether the orphaned animal, if found, will be captured and placed in captivity.
“Depending on their age, they may have a better chance of survival if left in the wild rather than euthanized, so we may do that,” Tabish said.
The attack happened in the Flathead National Forest, about two miles north of Columbia Falls, a city of about 5,500 people in northwest Montana, according to the state wildlife department.
On the same day that the man was attacked, the Fish and Wildlife Service shot and killed an adult female grizzly bear that had been breaking into homes and stealing food near the town of Gardner, just north of Yellowstone National Park.
No one was injured by the bear, which was shot and killed in the Yellowstone River, about 300 miles south of the attack in the Columbia Falls area.
The department said the bear had become accustomed to finding food in trash and barbecue grills left outside.
Wildlife managers sometimes capture and relocate grizzly bears known to cause problems for humans, but they also kill bears that have attacked people or that are deemed likely to continue causing problems if relocated.
About 2,000 grizzly bears live in western Wyoming, eastern Idaho and western Montana, with several thousand more living in the Canadian Rocky Mountains and Alaska.
Grizzly bears, which can grow to weigh up to 700 pounds, are listed as threatened in the continental United States under the Endangered Species Act.
Legislators from Rocky Mountain states are pressuring federal officials to remove the species from the protected list, which could allow hunting in the future.
With post wire
