In turf war, cougar and Grizzly Man lost

THE grumblings of animal-rights activists over the shooting death of that predatory mountain lion last week in Rancho Santa Margarita came just about the time I finally got around to seeing the documentary film “Grizzly Man.”

It’s about an extreme adoration of animals and, in its way, creates a contrast to the incident of the cougar whose life ended because he had invaded human territory. The film reveals the death of an activist because he had invaded animal territory.

Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were killed by grizzly bears three years ago in Alaska’s Katmai National Park & Preserve.

The tragic incident is also recorded in two books, “The Grizzly Maze” by Nick Jans and “Death in the Grizzly Maze” by Mike Lapinsky, the maze being tunnels forged by bears through an area of thick underbrush. It may have qualified as the most dangerous place in Alaska for a human to be.

It was in that maze that the remains of Treadwell and Huguenard were found. The rest of them was inside a 1,000-pound grizzly that was shot and killed by rangers who found him near the bodies.

What brings me to write of them long after their deaths is the unanswered question of what Treadwell was doing there in the first place. His continuing presence among dangerous animals, already an anomaly, is still open for debate.

Defenders say he was an environmental activist working to protect the bears from poachers. Detractors call him a publicity-seeking con man who morphed into an emotional form of shape-shifting, referring to reports that he crawled around on all fours among the grizzlies, snorting in an ursine manner and making hostile bear-like gestures to frighten tourists away.

A sort of kick-about ex-bartender from Malibu with surfer-type good looks, Treadwell discovered bears while hitchhiking through Alaska in the late 1980s. For 13 summers thereafter, he returned to the area around Kaflia Bay as a kind of “bear whisperer,” creating what he considered to be a close relationship with animals that can weigh 1,500-plus pounds and stand up to 9 feet tall. He gave them names like Booble and Mr. Chocolate.

Although extreme, his behavior wasn’t inconsistent with a growing tendency among environmental activists to stress the “activist” part of their label. Cases of arson and bombings have been attributed to them, and the comments of Jerry Vlasak, a spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front, that the killing of humans would be justified in defense of laboratory animals takes it to a new plateau.

One can easily dismiss Treadwell as a rootless loser who discovered a gimmick for making money. Colorful, daring and good-looking, he became a media darling on national television and a hero among eco-groupies. Grants and donations followed. But if it was a con, there are a lot safer ways to shake down the public than by trying to be pals with large carnivores.

That’s the dilemma of the Grizzly Man, a guy who had changed his name, created a new background, invented a country of birth and for a while adopted a fake Australian accent. Why’d he do it? Had gimmick become obsession in the fire of his own imagination? Had he predicted his own fate by telling an interviewer, “It would be an honor to be eaten by a bear”? Was this the element of a death wish, a subconscious desire to be martyred as a savior of wildlife, or simply a flash of ego-bloated bravado?

One can sense a touch of Treadwell in the spirit of those who can be reduced to tears over the death of a squirrel, or a mountain lion prowling an area where children play -- in proximity to the site of at least one fatal cougar attack. I wonder whether it’s true compassion, a desire to “belong” or a kind of madness that drives them to the brink.

Eco-terrorism takes its advocates across the same kind of line that Treadwell crossed, risking the lives of others in pursuit of an obsession. Amie Huguenard lost hers indulging his monomania.

Given a tendency to create his own persona, Treadwell lived in a fantasy world. His habitation among animals that came to view him as food was an innate element of the make-believe existence he had carved out for himself.

The audio portion of his video camera was on during the last terrible moments of his life and the life of Huguenard. Therein lies the final mystery in Treadwell’s drama. Why was the sound portion on and the lens of the camera capped, thereby allowing audio but no video? No one knows, and no one now will ever know.

What we do know from both books about his death is that the open microphone recorded the dying screams of a man to whom only this kind of violent reality could ever end his self-created fantasy. His death, in its irony, has probably elevated Treadwell to status of hero among activists and, sadly, shines as an example of their extremes.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez @latimes.com.