When they re-emerged seconds later, they’d lined up along the crest of the pass we were hiking toward. They looked as if they were poised to attack.

Then … nothing happened. Once the wolves figured out what we were, they turned around and vanished. But for those few anxious moments, I tingled with adrenaline, fearing the worst even as I thought how thrilling it all was.

I knew, and I hope most people know, that wolf attacks on humans are extraordinarily rare. In fact, even minor attacks by predatory animals are rare, yet it doesn’t take much to get our imaginations to run wild with fear of fangs and blood. It’s the realization that we aren’t always at the top of the food chain — that we could end up as some other animal’s dinner.

Years ago, on a camping trip, I participated in a predator-prey game that gave me a taste of that vulnerability. I played a mouse, and everyone else in the game was out to eat me. I spent most of the time slinking between hiding places, worried that any movement might get me spotted. Ecologists call this unease the “landscape of fear,” when everything is suffused with hyper-awareness and a sense of vigilance.

But the evidence doesn’t support that kind of fear of wild animals. Yellowstone National Park has, on average, some 4 million visitors annually. According to park data, just one person is injured by a bear each year on average. Since 1892, bears have killed only 18 people in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

That doesn’t make the attacks that do happen any less terrifying or tragic, though. This summer, a woman in Montana was attacked and killed in her tent by a grizzly bear; in April, a grizzly killed a man near West Yellowstone, Montana; and in Alaska this June, a sleeping couple was mauled in Alaska’s Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. This is the stuff of nightmares. 

During our hunter-gatherer days, wild animals truly posed a danger, and we were right to fear them. But these days, attacks by predators — gruesome and terrifying as they are — cause only a handful of deaths around the planet. Yet there are lots of other animals we should worry about, but usually don’t.

According to a 2019 report by researcher Michael Conover, 47,000 people seek medical attention each year after being attacked or bitten by wildlife, and roughly eight of them die. Most of the culprits are snakes, birds, rodents and raccoons: 27,000 rodent bites — meaning mice, rats and squirrels — versus less than one bite annually by wolves.

Elk attacks resulted in three injuries that required medical treatment, while grizzlies were responsible for 0.8. Alligator attacks were more common, with an average of 9 bites per year and one fatality. Meanwhile, some 30,000 Americans die in car crashes every year.

Still, most of us don’t think about dying when we get into the car, while a lot of us worry when we hike in grizzly country. It’s built in. And encounters with wildlife are increasing as we compete with them, in their own habitat, for limited space and food.

The recent increase in mountain lion attacks is likely due to the blurring of the urban-wildland “interface.” In Colorado, the Parks and Wildlife agency has documented 25 mountain lion attacks since 1990, with four since 2019.

But in our national parks, rangers report a different problem: Tourists get into trouble when they treat wild animals like pets. Tom Smith, biology professor at Brigham Young University, told National Geographic that most bear attacks are avoidable if people just remember that bears react instinctively.

“Bears don’t have a unique response for humans,” Smith said. “If we unwittingly trigger that bear-on-bear response, then it’s full-on, and you’d better be ready.”

I don’t ever want to be attacked by a wild animal, but I appreciate the intensity and humility I feel in their presence. It’s humbling to know that these wild, beautiful animals don’t care who we are or what we do. We have entered their turf, after all, and it’s up to us to watch our step.

Molly Absolon is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She loves to explore the West from her base in Idaho.

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The poem, Mary Oliver’s Spring, describes the emergence of a black bear from its winter slumber. Oliver writes: “There is only one question: how to love this world.”

This spring, as bruins emerged across the American West, I found myself wondering about the secret lives bears lead. As their hunger grows, do they imagine eating trout from a Rocky Mountain stream?

Is it hunger pangs or some deeper yearning — perhaps to experience the new world – that drives bears from the comfort and warmth of their dens?

I’ve been thinking about bears and how to love their world because bear-management-practices have been in the spotlight recently, a light that intensified after two people were killed by bears, one in Montana and one in Colorado.

The death of those people was tragic. Yet, we must remember that fatal attacks remain rare. A bear does not wake up in the morning, pack a rifle, and set out to kill a human being. Bears struggle to survive in an increasingly diminishing wild that brings them in contact with humans more frequently.

Humanity’s mission, I believe, is not to kill them but to find ways to coexist. 

On April 30, Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill that allows hunters to use hounds to hunt black bears in the spring, when they’re with cubs and ravenous for food. This is the same governor who illegally trapped and killed one of Yellowstone’s iconic wolves.

One of the bills’ key sponsors, state Sen. Tom MacGillivray, offered a consistent refrain about bears: “Over the last seven, eight years we’ve seen a dramatic decrease in the whitetail population, and, interestingly enough, a dramatic increase in the black bear population,” he said. “This bill helps to balance that out.”

Not a shred of science supports this contention. There’s a long-standing war on carnivores and blaming bears is a convenient excuse for what ails the deer and the deer hunter’s world. In reality, a complex host of factors including habitat loss due to sprawl, climate change and other dynamics are to blame.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, a federal judge struck down a controversial plan supported by the state’s wildlife agency, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Department, to “study” whether killing black bears  —  and mountain lions — would benefit mule deer. Sadly, the judge’s ruling denying federal funding of the bear-killing plan came too late for the dozens of Colorado bears that were killed in the study, one the agency’s scientists had to know was laden with anti-carnivore bias.

Though Colorado and Montana are worlds apart on the political spectrum, the hostility towards bears and other carnivores is a tie that binds, whether it originates in a state legislature or in the state agency charged with managing wildlife.

At a time when the attitudes of most Montanans, Coloradans and Americans at large are shifting dramatically to favor greater coexistence with fanged creatures, those in power over the lives of wild animals are digging in their heels. Instead of figuring out how to live with them, Montana and Colorado are making it easier to kill bears.

The word poetry comes from the Greek poetes, meaning “to create.” Whenever possible, I believe we should attempt to create opportunities for all life to thrive. It pains me that often those at the state level responsible for overseeing the management of wildlife seem to take more pleasure in the destruction of bears than in figuring out better ways for humans to coexist with them.

Wildlife management needs a new reason to exist, one that isn’t based on killing. Its mission might read like this: We aim to protect wildlife, making no distinction between predator and prey. We aim to enhance that sense of wonder most of us experience when we see animals in the wild.

And instead of taking more courses in traditional wildlife management, the profession might consider including reading some of the best American poetry inspired by nature and the creatures that depend on still-wild places.

They could start with Mary Oliver’s Spring.

John Horning is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is the executive director of WildEarth Guardians.

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