This summer, a grizzly cub in Grand Teton National Park gained international fame after an adult male bear killed the yearling’s two siblings. The sole survivor of the attack, dubbed “Miracle,” then separated from its mother to fend for itself, sometimes hanging around a busy area of the park.
As Miracle’s story spread, the cub became the object of fascination for thousands of people. Perhaps that’s no surprise, as many of us are intrigued by the grizzly’s power and strength, along with the reality that it’s an apex predator, like us.
Miracle’s survival is precarious. Since she left the protection of her mother so early, she’s on her own finding food before hibernating. Seventy-seven grizzlies died in the Yellowstone area last year—the highest number yet. As of September 2025, 63 bears had been killed; at this rate, the number of dead bears will surpass last year’s record. What’s going on?
You could say that grizzly bear recovery in the Lower 48 is a success story. Prior to European settlement, an estimated 50,000 bears roamed throughout the Lower 48. By 1970, though, only about 800 remained, with perhaps 130 of them in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
In 1975, grizzlies were listed under the Endangered Species Act, which ended their indiscriminate slaughter, and bear numbers slowly rebounded. Today, the Forest Service says an estimated 700 grizzlies live in and around the Yellowstone area, with maybe 1,000 more in the Northern Continental Divide region of Montana. Despite the increase in numbers, mortality rates are on the rise.
Most wildlife managers say the current rate is not a matter of concern. They say the species is stable.
And yet, is it? Roughly 200 cubs are born in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem recovery area each year, but of those, only around 40 survive. Wildlife managers assure us bears are doing well, but is this sustainable—especially when the mortality rate keeps inching upward year after year?
The most obvious reason for bear deaths is us. We are everywhere. 2024 marked the second-busiest year in Yellowstone National Park’s history with more than 4.7 million visitors. In August of 2025, the park was on track to see a 2% visitor increase over 2024.
On top of increased visitation, the human population in the Rocky Mountain West where grizzlies roam is growing steadily. Teton County, Wyoming has seen a 10% increase in residents over the last decade. The population in Teton County, Idaho is up 74% since 1990. Gallatin County, Montana has grown about 40% in the last 10 years.
On the ground, you can’t miss the impacts of growth: Trails are crowded. Parking is at a premium. You need reservations at restaurants, and the traffic is often stop and go. Not surprisingly, bear-human conflicts are more frequent: Vehicle collisions kill bears, interactions with landowners kill bears.
Grizzlies might do fine with more people if their habitat were intact and healthy, but much of their home ground has been in moderate to severe drought for several years, according to U.S. Drought Monitor. This year’s berry crop was dismal. Whitebark pines, whose seeds are an important food source for bears, are threatened by beetles and blister rust.
All this forces grizzlies to search out new food sources, and some of the best ones turn out to be ours. Our cows and sheep. Our apple trees. Our bee hives.
Wyoming U.S. Representative Harriet Hageman has introduced legislation to take away endangered species protections for grizzly bears, which would be a major blow to their survival. “People shouldn’t have to live in fear of grizzly bears rummaging through their trash or endangering their children,” Hageman said. Such comments are deliberately inflammatory.
I have heard three people describe surviving a bear attack decades ago. All three insisted that the bear was only acting in self-defense. One even remembers how awed he was by the diamond-like glint of water droplets on the bear’s fur as she ran toward him.
I’m not sure what would happen if I faced a charging bear. I just want enough wherewithal to pull out my bear spray. While I hope I never have to deploy that spray, I am willing to take the risk to know wild bears roam the landscape. If grizzlies were gone, something vital would be missing from our world.
While grizzly bear mortality may not yet be alarming wildlife managers, I hope we’ve gotten a wakeup call.
Molly Absolon is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She hikes and writes in Yellowstone bear country.
A grizzly bares its teeth in Yellowstone. Photo Courtesy Taylor Wright via Unsplash
This column was published in the following newspapers:
| 10/17/2025 | Wyofile | WY | |
| 10/18/2025 | Herald-Journal | Logan | UT |
| 10/16/2025 | Whitehall Ledger | Whitehall | MT |
| 10/15/2025 | Montrose Daily Press | Montrose | CO |
| 10/15/2025 | Wenatchee World | Wenatchee | WA |
| 10/17/2025 | Yahoo | sunnyvale | ca |
| 10/17/2025 | Idaho Statesman | Boise | ID |
| 10/16/2025 | Aspen Daily News | Aspen | CO |
| 10/16/2025 | Explore Big Sky | Big Sky | MT |
| 10/15/2025 | Ravalli Republic | Hamilton | MT |
| 10/16/2025 | Las Cruces Sun News | Las Cruces | NM |
| 10/15/2025 | Kemmerer Gazette | Kemmerer | WY |
| 10/16/2025 | Parker Pioneer | Parker | AZ |
| 10/17/2025 | Billings Gazette | Billings | MT |
| 10/16/2025 | MSN.COM | Seattle | WA |
| 10/14/2025 | Bridger Valley Pioneer | Lyman | WY |
| 10/17/2025 | Idaho Mountain Express | Ketchum | ID |
| 10/17/2025 | Sterling Journal-Advocate | Sterling | CO |
| 10/19/2025 | Steamboat Pilot | Steamboat Springs | CO |
| 10/17/2025 | Fort Morgan Times | Fort Morgan | CO |
| 10/17/2025 | Taos News | Taos | NM |
| 10/17/2025 | Vail Daily | Vail | CO |
| 10/17/2025 | Denver Post | Denver | CO |
| 10/17/2025 | Delta County Independent | Delta | CO |
| 10/21/2025 | Las Vegas Sun | Las Vegas | NV |
| 10/22/2025 | Laramie Boomerang | Laramie | WY |
| 10/21/2025 | KVNF Radio | Paonia | CO |
| 10/21/2025 | Montana Standard | Butte | MT |
| 10/15/2025 | Durango Telegraph | Durango | CO |
I am an ethical pessimist. So, when I hear an obviously rhetorical question such as “Can we learn to co-exist with grizzlies”, my obvious reaction is to roll my eyes and say, “YES, of course, we can! But, will we? Of course not!” Molly’s article does a great job of laying out the issues facing grizzlies; and could be applied to so many other native predators. And then she hits on the crux of the matter with, “Grizzlies might do fine with more people if their habitat were intact and healthy”. The problem with that sentence is it is trying to be all things to grizzlies AND humans. If we want intact (aka large scale connectivity) and healthy habitat (that means no multi use in or on that habitat), then we cannot have “more people” encroaching on said habitat, whether that is via development, multiple uses (logging, mining, grazing, etc.), trophy hunting, or recreation. But, like I said, will we? Not when troglodytes like Harriet Hageman are in office. My response to her is “Grizzlies shouldn’t have to live in fear of humans killing them and endangering their children,”
Bam!
Ah yes, the prototypical arrogant, self-righteous liberal who’s full of hatred for this or that “troglodyte.” Do you ever stop and listen to yourself, let alone anyone else? Congratulations for doing your little part to elect Donald Trump, by being who and what you are. I know, you don’t care.
In my younger days, I was a significant (for me) contributor to environmental groups. Well over $100,000 to Earthjustice, which still sends me mailers. I stopped doing that about 15 years ago when it became clear to me that they were unhinged. I regret having helped to enable them.
Bears do not have “children.” They have litters. Children are human, and human only. And humans outrank grizzlies, except when (foolishly) unarmed in the yonder. Not that I want to exterminate grizzly bears, but they exist at our sufferance, and we will make sure that they stay where we allow them.
Kumbaya.
So, why did you give so much money to the “unhinged” Jake? What was your expectation for giving that money and what did want in return? What WAS your true motivation? Because it surely doesn’t seem like it was to stop or undo any of the damage wrought by humankind on the planet and its non-human inhabitants. Sounds to me like you did it for purely selfish (self-righteous, perhaps?) reasons and, I assume, for the tax breaks. And “humans outrank grizzlies”? Who says? Oh right, we do, because we “know” what’s best for them and “we will make sure that they stay where we allow them.” Now, who is being arrogant, self-righteous? Keep your precious money, Gollum, because nobody wants assistance from a sad, pathetic excuse for a human.
I expected nothing in return. Charitable donations don’t work that way for the common man. The most you get is a sense of satisfaction, like I do now for my donations to the local food bank of homemade bread and home-grown produce, my volunteering on a crisis line, and the money I am about to throw to a group that builds stoves in the third world. Did you know that a couple billion people live in houses where food is cooked indoors on wood stoves without a chimney? Kills more people than anything else. Oh, but wait. You don’t care about people.
I quit Earthjustice when it became clear that fealty to the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis pretty much killed the environmentalism that I believed in. And no, it wasn’t for the writeoffs. I don’t quite understand why any ordinary individual would think so. If you’re in the top tax bracket and Uncle Sucker covers one-third of your contribution, guess who contributes the other two-thirds?
Quick, Eric. Squirrels on calculators. Tell us. Any individual who makes a charitable contribution for “the writeoff” is either dumb or dishonest. The writeoff game is much more involved for corporations and billionaires, but sadly I am neither, nor have I been. At the individual level, all a writeoff does is maybe cause you to write a bigger check. but never to write one to begin with. My guess, Eric, is that you have never contributed enough to even think about that, or anything at all.
I don’t claim to know what’s “best” for grizzly bears, but yes, we do outrank them. At this juncture, homo sapiens is the globe’s apex predator. You can get all gooey about how terrible that is, but your anger and hatred don’t outrank that fact. Grizzlies and every other creatures exist at our sufferance. It’s a fact, and will keep being a fact.
Kumbaya. Oh, and work on that there empathy of yours, or whatever your crew calls it these days.
Quick Jake, Squirrels on your keyboard, because the subtext of your diatribe above was “blah, blah, blah, I’m a great person, blah, blah, blah, you’re a misanthrope, blah, blah, blah, because I think I know what you are all about”. You don’t know me. And, your guess as to my philanthropic contributions and volunteering are stupidly wrong. Unlike you, I don’t need to wear what I give (or do) on my sleeve, or announce it to the world, in order to boost my sense of self or “outrank” others. But, hey, kumbaya (wtf?), it sounds like you give and do some good work, good on ya. And as far as empathy and caring for people, again, you don’t know me. I care for a lot of people, I just don’t give a rats-fucking-arse for anyone that (1) that thinks they outranks any animal, (2) believe that “anthropogenic climate change” is a hypothesis, and (3) use the word “gooey” to describe “empathy” for all non-human life. Seems like you could do with working on that empathy of yours as well. Kumba-fucking-yippee-ki-yay Jake.
And you don’t know me, but you felt free to call me “a sad, pathetic excuse for a human.” Oh, but wait! You are better and smarter than everyone else. And that justifies your anger and hatred. Good luck, little guy. And yes, anthropogenic climate change IS a hypothesis. Anyone who understands the scientific method, which you do not, knows it. Poor you.
No, just better and smarter than you.
Eric, are you a “furry,” by chance? Dress up as a grizzly and re-enact “The Revenant?” It would explain all that anger. Grrrrrr. Let it out! LOL
Seriously? Dude, what an absolute wanker, you are. But, I guess your comment just goes to prove that you got nothing. That, and possibly a secret desire to be a “furry”? Best of luck there.
Fabulous essay, Molly Absolon! Thank you! I keep looking for USGS’s updated numbers, but with the government shut down, there are none. Yet, we’re in the hunting and hyperphagia seasons, a really deadly time for bears.