A wounded male grizzly bear along a remote stretch of the Idaho-Montana border last Friday, then died after the hunter’s companion shot it. Steve Stevenson and Ty Bell were hunting black bears when Bell misidentified the grizzly and shot it, sending it into a deep thicket. As Stevenson and Bell approached, the bear charged and fatally mauled Stevenson, collapsing on his body as Bell fired again. Grizzlies, a threatened species in the lower 48 states, are illegal to kill except in self defense. Stevenson is the third person killed by a since July; grizzlies have not killed multiple people in the area since 1967. 鈥淭here are a lot more bears today than there were 30 years ago, and there are a lot more visitors. So there is a higher encounter frequency,鈥 said聽Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service.聽In response to a rise in encounters over the summer, Idaho that would make it easier to shoot a grizzly in defense of a human life.
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