A search for proof that grizzly bears still live in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.

Second Edition with postscript by Ed Wiseman. Outfitter Ed Wiseman was attacked by a grizzly bear on September 23, 1979. He was able to kill the bear with a hand-held arrow and to survive freezing temperatures until his rescue the next morning.

For more than half a century, grizzly bears roamed free in the national parks without causing a human fatality. Then in 1967, on a single August night, two campers were fatally mauled by enraged bears -- thus signaling the beginning of the end for America's greatest remaining land carnivore. Night of the Grizzlies, Olsen's brilliant account of another sad chapter in America's vanishing frontier, traces the causes of that tragic night: the rangers' careless disregard of established safety precautions and persistent warnings by seasoned campers that some of the bears were acting "funny"; the comforting belief that the great bears were not really dangerous -- would attack only when provoked. The popular sport that summer was to lure the bears with spotlights and leftover scraps -- in hopes of providing the tourists with a show, a close look at the great "teddy bears." Everyone came, some of the younger campers even making bold enough to sleep right in the path of the grizzlies' known route of arrival. This modern "bearbaiting" could have but one tragic result…

Examines early 20th-century fact and myth surrounding Old Mose, the feared grizzly bear of Black Mountain, in Fremont County, Colorado.

A 25-year-old backcountry wanderer, a man happiest exploring wild places with his dog, Dan Bigley woke up one midsummer morning to a day full of promise. Before it was over, after a stellar day of salmon fishing along Alaska’s Kenai and Russian rivers, a grizzly came tearing around a corner in the trail. Dan barely had time for “bear charging” to register before it had him on the ground, altering his life forever. “Upper nose, eyes, forehead anatomy unrecognizable,” as the medevac report put it. Until then, one thing after another had fallen into place in Dan’s life. He had a job he loved taking troubled kids on outdoor excursions. He had just bought a cabin high in the Chugach Mountains with a view that went on forever. He was newly in love. After a year of being intrigued by a woman named Amber, they had just spent their first night together. All of this was shattered by the mauling that nearly killed him, that left him blind and disfigured. Facing paralyzing pain and inconceivable loss, Dan was in no shape to be in a relationship. He and Amber let each other go. Five surgeries later, partway into his long healing journey, they found their way back to each other. The couple’s unforgettable story is one of courage, tenacious will, and the power of love to lead the way out of darkness. Dan Bigley’s triumph over tragedy is a testament to the ability of the human spirit to overcome physical and emotional devastation, to choose not just to live, but to live fully. Visit Dan Bigley's site or Beyond the Bear.

The fascinating story of a trial that opened a window onto the century-long battle to control nature in the national parks. When twenty-five-year-old Harry Walker was killed by a bear in Yellowstone Park in 1972, the civil trial prompted by his death became a proxy for bigger questions about American wilderness management that had been boiling for a century. At immediate issue was whether the Park Service should have done more to keep bears away from humans, but what was revealed as the trial unfolded was just how fruitless our efforts to regulate nature in the parks had always been. The proceedings drew to the witness stand some of the most important figures in twentieth century wilderness management, including the eminent zoologist A. Starker Leopold, who had produced a landmark conservationist document in the 1950s, and all-American twin researchers John and Frank Craighead, who ran groundbreaking bear studies at Yellowstone. Their testimony would help decide whether the government owed the Walker family restitution for Harry's death, but it would also illuminate decades of patchwork efforts to preserve an idea of nature that had never existed in the first place. In this remarkable excavation of American environmental history, nature writer and former park ranger Jordan Fisher Smith uses Harry Walker's story to tell the larger narrative of the futile, sometimes fatal, attempts to remake wilderness in the name of preserving it. Tracing a course from the founding of the national parks through the tangled twentieth-century growth of the conservationist movement, Smith gives the lie to the portrayal of national parks as Edenic wonderlands unspoiled until the arrival of Europeans, and shows how virtually every attempt to manage nature in the parks has only created cascading effects that require even more management. Moving across time and between Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier national parks, Engineering Eden shows how efforts at wilderness management have always been undone by one fundamental problem--that the idea of what is "wild" dissolves as soon as we begin to examine it, leaving us with little framework to say what wilderness should look like and which human interventions are acceptable in trying to preserve it. In the tradition of John McPhee's The Control of Nature and Alan Burdick's Out of Eden, Jordan Fisher Smith has produced a powerful work of popular science and environmental history, grappling with critical issues that we have even now yet to resolve.

With a new introduction on Werner Herzog’s film entitled The Grizzly Man Timothy Treadwell, self-styled “bear whisperer” dared to live among the grizzlies, seeking to overturn the perception of them as dangerously aggressive animals. When he and his girlfriend were mauled, it created a media sensation. In The Grizzly Maze, Nick Jans, a seasoned outdoor writer with a quarter century of experience writing about Alaska and bears, traces Treadwell’s rise from unknown waiter in California to celebrity, providing a moving portrait of the man whose controversial ideas and behavior earned him the scorn of hunters, the adoration of animal lovers and the skepticism of naturalists. “Intensely imagistic, artfully controlled prose . . . behind the building tension of Treadwell’s path to oblivion, a stunning landscape looms.”—Newsday

A gripping graphic novel adaptation of Lauren Tarshis's bestselling I Survived the Attack of The Grizzlies, 1967, with text adapted by Georgia Ball. No grizzly has ever killed a human in Glacier National Park before... until tonight. Eleven-year-old Melody Vega and her family come to Glacier every year. Mel loves it here — the beautiful landscapes and wildlife make it easy to forget her real-world troubles. But this year is different. With Mom gone, every moment in the park is a reminder of the past. Then Mel comes face-to-face with a mighty grizzly. She knows basic bear safety: Don't turn your back. Don't make any sudden movements. And most importantly: Don't run. That last one is the hardest for Mel; she's been running from her problems all her life. If she wants to survive tonight, she'll have to find the courage to face her fear. Based on the real-life grizzly attacks of 1967, this bold graphic novel tells the story of one of the most tragic seasons in the history of America's national parks — a summer of terror that forever changed ideas about how grizzlies and humans can exist together in the wild. Lauren Tarshis's New York Times bestselling I Survived series comes to vivid life in graphic novel editions. Perfect for readers who prefer the graphic novel format, or for existing fans of the I Survived chapter book series, these graphic novels combine historical facts with high-action storytelling that's sure to keep any reader turning the pages. Includes a nonfiction section at the back with facts and photos about the real-life event.

In the summer of 1823, a grizzly bear mauled Hugh Glass. The animal ripped the trapper up, carving huge hunks from his body. Glass's fellows rushed to his aid and slew the bear, but Glass's injuries mocked their first aid. The expedition leader arranged for his funeral: two men would stay behind to bury the corpse when it finally stopped gurgling; the rest would move on. Alone in Indian country, the caretakers quickly lost their nerve. They fled, taking Glass's gun, knife, and ammunition with them. But Glass wouldn't die. He began crawling toward Fort Kiowa, hundreds of miles to the east, and as his speed picked up, so did his ire. The bastards who took his gear and left him to rot were going to pay. Here Lies Hugh Glass springs from this legend. The acclaimed historian Jon T. Coleman delves into the accounts left by Glass's contemporaries and the mythologizers who used his story to advance their literary and filmmaking careers. A spectacle of grit in the face of overwhelming odds, Glass sold copy and tickets. But he did much more. Through him, the grievances and frustrations of hired hunters in the early American West and the natural world they traversed and explored bled into the narrative of the nation. A marginal player who nonetheless sheds light on the terrifying drama of life on the frontier, Glass endures as a consummate survivor and a complex example of American manhood. Here Lies Hugh Glass, a vivid, often humorous portrait of a young nation and its growing pains, is a Western history like no other.

What causes bear attacks? When should you play dead and when should you fight an attacking bear? What do we know about black and grizzly bears and how can this knowledge be used to avoid bear attacks? And, more generally, what is the bear’s future? Bear Attacks is a thorough and unflinching landmark study of the attacks made on men and women by the great grizzly and the occasionally deadly black bear. This is a book for everyone who hikes, camps, or visits bear country–and for anyone who wants to know more about these sometimes fearsome but always fascinating wild creatures.