North American Bear Attacks on the Rise

Ava Watkins says she has fellow motorists to thank for saving her from becoming a bear’s roadside dinner in northern British Columbia.

The retired secretary had stopped her camper on the Alaska Highway on May 16 to take a picture of a black bear just out of hibernation when the animal turned on her, dragged her into the brush and mauled her repeatedly.

“I wasn’t two steps out of the van. I didn’t realize the danger I was in. It grabbed me by the shoulder and dragged me about 30 feet. . . . I was grabbing onto every little tree I could to hold on,” she said in a recent interview from Anchorage, Alaska.

Watkins, 70, received 40 puncture wounds during the attack, which lasted more than five minutes. “I received 100 stitches, and the doctor said it would have been 200 or more if he had sewn them (the wounds) all up,” she said.

Wildlife experts say Watkins is one of a growing number of bear attack victims in the Pacific Northwest where increasing populations of the shaggy, unpredictable predators appear to be treating tourists with diminishing respect.

So far this year, bears have killed at least four people and injured at least 10 others in a dozen attacks in British Columbia, Alaska, Alberta and Montana.

Watkins says the bear only stopped savaging her when five passing motorists drove it off with everything from an umbrella to a piece of a tree.

“One time the bear came back and took my head in his mouth and clamped just enough to break the skin. Then he turned me loose again. I lay there and I didn’t move an eyelash,” she said.

The injuries suffered by retired seafood executive Peter Block were more serious. Block, 54, lost his right eye in an encounter with a grizzly bear Aug. 28 while hiking in Yoho National Park in eastern British Columbia.

The Seattle man suffered a broken arm, a dislocated wrist and elbow and cuts to his face, scalp, arms and legs, requiring 400 stitches and two operations. “One more bite and I think it would have been over,” Block said in an interview.

Block says he and a friend survived their mauling because they played dead. “It was obvious after the attack the bear was not out for a meal. But you don’t know that when he’s on you, chewing up parts of your body,” he said.

He said the “stark terror” he felt as the young male charged at him soon turned into anger. “There was just anger at having to die in this manner. We were fully prepared to die,” he said.

Other hikers have not been so fortunate. One was killed and partly eaten Oct. 3 by a grizzly with two cubs in Montana’s Glacier National Park, just south of the Canadian border.

Another was killed and his wife severely mauled by a male grizzly Sept. 15 while hiking in Jasper National Park in Alberta. Park wardens shot the bear after finding it devouring the man’s leg.

A 6-year-old boy walking with his mother down a road near King Cove, Alaska, was snatched July 10 by a grizzly, hauled into the bush and eaten.

A Washington state woman was killed and partly eaten by a black bear July 8 after being dragged from the roof of a cabin near Alaska’s Glenn Highway.

British Columbia wildlife control officer Dennis Pemble, 40, said last year he had to remove 40 black bears and two grizzlies that posed a threat to humans in and around the West Coast Canadian city of Vancouver.

This year, he has removed 60 black bears and five grizzlies. “We definitely have a bear problem. We are pushing into their territory, and they are coming down into ours,” he said.