Grizzly Encounters Are On the Rise. Does That Make Yellowstone More Dangerous?

Bo Welden’s job is getting easier and harder at the same time. A wildlife guide in Yellowstone, his goal is to give guests a good time. What constitutes a good time? “Seeing a wolf is the holy grail,” explains the 33-year-old. Still, Welden offers no guarantee guests will see the elusive canis lupus. Fortunately, the next animal on most visitors’ bucket list is the grizzly bear. Recently, grizzly encounters in Yellowstone seem to happen as often as Old Faithful’s famous eruptions. “It definitely feels like we’re seeing more grizzlies than we’ve seen in previous years,” says Welden. “On a three-day trip in June I counted 44 different bears.”

But do more encounters with “Ursus arctos horribilis” mean visitors are in more danger? Not necessarily. “Many news and social media organizations definitely sensationalized my grizzly attack story,” recalls Todd Orr, a Montana man who made national headlines in 2016 after being mauled twice in the same day by a grizzly sow despite spraying her with bear spray. Still, the avid outdoorsman admits the risk of running into an aggressive grizzly anywhere in and around Yellowstone, albeit low, is real. “I avoided interviews the first few weeks following the attack,” he explains. “But I soon realized the story was not going to fade, and sharing the encounter, my experience, and vital survival information, might possibly prevent an encounter or attack on others. It may even save a life.”

Night of the Grizzlies: Glacier’s Deadliest Evening

A large grizzly staying focused and alert (Photo courtesy Ron Havard)

According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1967 was the year of the goat. But if you ask anyone who worked for the National Park Service, it was the year of the grizzly. “Mangled beyond belief,” is how Bert Gildart, a park ranger in Glacier National Park in 1967, described the body of Michelle Koons to the Great Falls Tribune. Unfortunately, 19-year-old Koons wouldn’t be the only person mauled to death by a grizzly before the sun rose in Glacier on the morning of August 13. Just a few miles from Koons’ corpse, a different bear dragged Julie Hegelson, another 19-year-old working in Glacier that summer, from her tent.

Those tragic hours—documented in Jack Olsen’s book, “Night of the Grizzlies”—appeared to have been a fluke (prior to 1967 grizzlies had never killed a human in Glacier). But, they would forever change the way the National Park Service managed its bears. Before 1967 national parks did little to prevent visitors from feeding bears, both intentionally and accidentally. As a result, bears became habituated to humans and saw them as a source of food. Visitors’ scraps and trash would suffice most of the time. But as the “night of the grizzlies” proved, human flesh wasn’t out of the question.

A black bear investigates a dumpster in Yellowstone National Park (Photo courtesy Jim Peaco/NPS)

“Black bears and grizzlies are opportunistic omnivore generalists,” says Kerry Gunther, Yellowstone National Park’s bear management biologist. Gunther didn’t start researching grizzlies in Yellowstone until the early 1980s. Still, he’s aware of the park’s negligent past. For nearly 100 years, visitors were allowed to feed bears in Yellowstone. In fact, in the 1930s the hottest seat in the park wasn’t a window seat in the new yellow buses. It was front row and center on the wooden bleachers the park set up at Otter Creek for its bear feeding shows. Here, garbage from nearby Canyon Hotel was dumped at regular intervals on a platform that could fit up to 70 bears.
Between the 1930s and 1960s Yellowstone averaged 48 bear-inflicted human injuries annually. The only fatality caused by a grizzly—the park’s second since its founding in 1872—during that period was in 1942. That’s why what happened in Glacier, just 400 miles north of Yellowstone, was a deafening wakeup call. “In 1970 we cleaned everything up,” says Gunther. “It took about a decade, but we installed bear-proof infrastructure: garbage cans, dumpsters, food storage lockers in the campgrounds.” The process, which he refers to as “sanitizing the park” worked. Between 1979 and 2023, a period that saw nearly 140 million recreational visits, bears injured 48 people. Grizzlies were responsible for 39 of those incidents.

How Likely Are Bear Attacks in Yellowstone?

Grizzly bear-inflicted injuries run the gamut. “They range from very minor bruises and scratches to severe injuries to fatalities,” explains Gunther. Recently, it appears there are more attacks right outside of Yellowstone than in the park itself. Daniel McHugh, Bear Management Specialist at Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks says he can’t pinpoint exactly why. “There’s a lot of expansion of bears outside of the park, and it could be that people are less aware of grizzly bears outside of parks; also most national parks don’t allow hunting, and a lot of attacks are on hunters.” In September, 2023 a Navy veteran guiding some hunters about 50 miles north of West Yellowstone was life flighted to Utah after a grizzly bear ripped off his jaw. He survived, but Amie Adamson, who encountered a grizzly bear on a hiking trail eight miles east of West Yellowstone in July, 2023 wasn’t as lucky. Still, Gunther and other bear biologists say what happened to the 48-year-old hiker is an anomaly.

“Fatalities are pretty rare,” notes Gunther. Since Yellowstone’s founding, grizzlies have killed just eight people out of 207 million recreational visits. “From the 80s to present most years we’ll see at least three or four people injured by bison but only an average of one person per year injured by bears. And then some years elk injure more people than bears.” After crunching numbers for a 2024 report titled “Risk of Bear-Inflicted Human Injury in Yellowstone National Park,” Gunther says the combined risk of being injured by a bear for everyone who visited Yellowstone between the years of 1979 through 2023 was just one in 3.6 million visits. The key word there is combined. The actual risk is much lower. “Most of our visitors just stay in the front country developments and along the roads and the front country trails,” Gunther explains. “For the average visitor that doesn’t leave the front country, the risk was one in 69.7 million visits.”

Your greatest risk of being injured by a grizzly comes when you camp in the backcountry. Still, it’s relatively low: just one in 1.9 million overnight stays. For perspective, according to the National Safety Council, you’re 22 times more likely to die from being struck by lightning, 43 times more likely to die from a dog attack, and 20,000 times more likely to die in a car crash. Plus, those odds are for death, not injuries. In terms of grizzly bear-human conflicts, it’s never been a safer time for Yellowstone. “On a per capita basis, we’re at the lowest level we’ve ever been,” says Gunther.

Are Grizzly Encounters On the Rise?

Tourists cause traffic jams to capture a grizzly sighting from the road (Photo courtesy Ria Kock/Flickr)

Still, Gunther admits bear sightings do appear to be increasing. “This year (2024) we did have a record number of ‘bear jams.’” Bear jams are traffic jams caused by tourists stopping to see bears foraging in meadows next to Yellowstone’s roads. It’s not uncommon to see as many as 30 cars backed up on the road. Others pull off and park, encroaching on the bear’s personal space. Bear jams are currently managed by members of the park’s interpretive division that runs the visitor centers, law enforcement, park rangers, campground hosts, and volunteers. Still, these “roving rangers” can only manage about 70-80% of bear jams.

“The other 20-30% [of] visitors are just on their own with the bear,” says Gunther. “The proportion that we can manage is probably going to decrease as visitation keeps increasing.” Indeed, Gunther doesn’t necessarily associate the increase in grizzly encounters with an increase in the number of bears. “We have a lot more people. So there’s more people that can see bears.”

Yellowstone saw 3.29 million recreational visits in 2022. The following year, it saw 4.5 million, and as of December, 2024, that number was approximately 4.74 million. Guides like Welden are also noticing an uptick in amateur photographers hunting for Instagram gold. “They’re the reason bear management has a headache all spring,” he laments. The photo you see in your Instagram feed is a close up shot of a grizzly. “But what you’re not seeing behind the lens is people cutting bears off from a food source or their natural corridors.” In Yellowstone, you’re required to stay 100 yards away from bears and wolves. Welden, who also works as a wildlife photographer, says the best way to ethically take photos of grizzlies while staying safe is to invest in a range finder, a handheld instrument used to measure the distance of a far away object. Most NPS bear management carry them, and according to Welden, “you can find a used one pretty cheap—especially compared to camera equipment.”

Currently, there are around 2,000 grizzly bears living in the Lower 48. Approximately, 1,030 reside in the Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Demographic Monitoring Area which includes Grand Teton National Park, five neighboring national forests, and nearby private and state lands. That population in 2022 was 965. In 1975, it was just 136, which led to grizzly bears being classified as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. After decades of stable population growth, both Wyoming and Montana petitioned the Federal Government to delist grizzly bears in 2021 and 2022, respectively. In January 2025, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected their petitions and proposed not delisting grizzly bears in any state until the population in the entire Lower 48 is recovered. As many as 50,000 grizzly bears once roamed as far west as California, as far east as Missouri, and as far south as Mexico. While Gunther isn’t allowed to share his personal opinion on the controversial decision, he acknowledges the rise in population, and just as importantly, occupied range. “Many people who are not used to living with grizzly bears are now experiencing them and having encounters and conflicts,” says Gunther.

If You’re Prepared, Grizzlies Aren’t As Scary as Many Think

A leisurely swim leads to a tender moment between grizzly mom and cub (Photo courtesy Eddie Parham)

Of course, Native Americans were the first to coexist with Ursus arctos horribilis. Because of its size and strength, the grizzly was regarded as a deity by many Indigenous peoples. The Blackfeet—who would rather starve to death than eat meat from the sacred grizzly—referred to black bears as kyaio. Nitakyao was their name for the grizzly. It translates to “real bear.”

These days, no one knows nitakyao behavior better than Dr. Bruce McLellan, author of Grizzly Bear Science and the Art of a Wilderness Life: Forty Years of Research in the Flathead Valley. McLellan, 70, spent 32 years tracking a grizzly bear from birth in British Columbia. More than half of Canada’s grizzly population—estimated to be around 26,000—lives in British Columbia. McLellan began his career in ecology researching elk, mountain goat and caribou before transitioning to his favorite animal to study: the grizzly. “As individuals they’re very interesting because they have such varied ways of making a living,” explains McLellan. “And they live for such a long time you can see a lot of learning that goes on in their lives.”

While the general public doesn’t spend a significant amount of time with grizzlies, or get to see them up close, they still have an innate respect for them. That said, many fear them more than they revere them. “My experience is that a lot of people think grizzlies are an active predator of people,” says McLellan. “That’s just not true. If they were, people would be getting killed every hour.” On the few occasions McLellan has bumped into a bear, it’s been when he was hunting and intentionally being quiet. “Three-quarters of grizzly bear attacks are mothers with cubs being surprised,” he notes.

Still, bear experts acknowledge more people are having grizzly encounters these days. But they’re not ready to say it equates to more attacks, at least in Yellowstone. McHugh says there are “multiple things at play.” And Gunther stresses, “When somebody does get injured, the press often makes it sound like injuries are increasing.” He’s working with his team to calculate risk and share those results with the public. As for Orr, he doesn’t need to know the numbers to know that he’s still going to recreate alone in Greater Yellowstone, despite his close calls. “My life revolves around the outdoors, both in work and play, so I couldn’t imagine not facing my fears and enjoying what Mother Nature has provided.”

Tips for Navigating Bear Country Safely

In bear country, always hike in groups of three or more.
Make noise: the human voice is more effective than bells, so sing, yell or talk loudly.
Try not to hike at dusk, dawn or after dark when bears are most active.
Pack bear spray (every member of your party needs their own can), and know how to use it.
Wear your bear spray on your belt or have it in a holster attached to the outside of your backpack so you can access it within seconds.
Never run if a grizzly bear charges you, instead, slowly back away.
If a grizzly bear does attack, play dead: face down, belly in the dirt with legs spread wide.
If a black bear charges you and attacks, make yourself as big as possible and fight back; do NOT play dead.

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