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1. Alaskans have a good relationship with wildlife. ___

2. If bears get close to a village they are shot. ___

3. Eight people have died near Anchorage this year after being attacked by bears. ___

4. Sometimes wild animals wander through the city. ___

5. All the people attacked by bears in Anchorage were jogging. ___

6. Bears can be found mostly near streams where salmon are running. ___

 

 

EAGLE RIVER, Alaska– Most times in Alaska, the bear eats you. But this summer, in a record year for maulings, Devon Rees managed a draw with the grizzly that leapt onto him as he was walking home between a stream brimming with salmon and the busiest highway in the state.

“She was moving around like a dog when it’s fighting” said Rees, 18, nursing his wounds on the couch in his trailer. Bandages covered puncture wounds on the inside of both his thighs. His jeans lay in shreds on the floor. His left eye was puffy from the swat of a massive paw.

At least eight Alaskans have been battered by bears in the Anchorage area this year, and though no human fatalities have been recorded, the summer of the bear is testing the Alaskans’ carefully calibrated relationship with wildlife.

Most places in Alaska don’t have a persistent problem with bears or moose, because if they come anywhere near the village, they shoot them, no questions asked”, said Rick Sinnot, the Alaska Fish and Game Department biologist charged with reconciling the 3,500,000 humans who reside around Alaska’s biggest city with the wildlife who live there too. “It’s the Last Frontier mentality: you don’t tolerate any risk from wild animals.”

But at least until this summer, Anchorage residents were more inclined to live and let live, many residents being from ‘outside’ and intrigued by the sight of moose wandering through the city – as well as by predators that stalk them.

The first attack, on June 29, was one of the worst. Petra Davis, 15, was cycling in a marathon bike race at 1 a.m. on a trail beside a salmon stream in the city’s Far North Bicentennial Park. In the darkness she may have careered into a mama grizzly. It chewed through her helmet, crushed her trachea and cut into her shoulder, torso, buttocks and thigh.

Suspicion centered on a female grizzly with two cubs that had been the subject of a half-dozen reports in the area over a six-week period. One jogger said he discovered the bear running behind him and pulled himself forward as its jaws snapped shut an inch from his rear end.

On August 8, four days after Rees’s encounter Clivia Feliz was attacked while jogging on the same city park trail at 5 p.m. The bear, a female with two cubs, stared at Feliz, huffing, then lunged at her head. For a few seconds, the bear simply held her captive, pushing Feliz’s head and shoulders with its paws and mouth.” Four ribs snapped, partially collapsing a lung. Her screams of pain did not faze the bear, which held her down a few more moments, then left.

“I know about bears. I’ve lived here 12 years,” Feliz said. “I’m not blaming anybody else. The bear was the bear and did what bears do.”

In Anchorage, trails placed beside streams are used both by bears and by people who often forget that a city can also be a part of the wild.

“I don’t see it any different than New York in rush hour: you just have to pay attention. Our cars just have hair and teeth,” said a fisherman in the Kenai Peninsula, where a dozen bears have been shot since May after threatening humans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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