- The Power of Parks
Famous Grizzly Bear ‘Back From the Dead’—With a New Cub
A popular grizzly who once mauled a hiker was said to have been killed by a hunter, but she remains at the center of a controversy around the fate of the species.
For a long, anxious stretch this spring, Bernie Scates staged a stake-out in a rural corner of Jackson Hole, hoping rampant speculation about Grizzly 399’s possible death was a Twainian exaggeration. Nowhere to be found, the legendary mother grizzly bear was running late in emerging from her den after five months of winter slumber.
Then, on Tuesday, May 10 at exactly 10:13 am—Scates remembers looking at his wristwatch—he became startled by what appeared to be a massive brown boulder moving down the flanks of Pilgrim Creek. It was this precise moment, Scates says, when he became the first to witness the most famous wild living bear in the world wandering out of the Bridger-Teton National Forest into Grand Teton National Park,
