Arctous rubra, a great man and a grizzly tragedy

When I first learned of the tragic news that botanist Erwin Evert had been killed by a grizzly bear on June 17th near Yellowstone Park, my mind flashed immediately on Arctous rubra, red alpine bearberry, Greater Yellowstone’s rarest shrub, which Erwin had introduced me to on a summer day in 1989.  Erwin was the first to document the location of this shrub, a boreal relic, whose nearest neighbors were in southern Alberta and British Columbia. 

That day, Erwin and I were wandering around Swamp Lake, a high elevation limestone bog, “botanizing.”  Erwin, fit and agile, was flush with excitement as he showed me a number of the nearly 30 rare plant species in the area, including Amerorchis rotundifolia, the delicate round-leaf orchis (in its southernmost location in this very spot), as well as Salix myrtillifolia, blueberry willow, another tiny island shrub population separated by many miles from the boreal forests in Canada where it is common.

To be truthful, I’m an enthusiastic but half-assed botanist—for example, to me, most of the 30 plus willow species in the Rockies I record as simply “Salix spp.”  But Erwin got me caught up in the plant hunt, wet up to our calves in the bog on a spectacular day, framed by the magnificent north Absaroka Mountains, and the distinctive Pilot and Index Peaks that early explorers used as navigational beacons.  Having missed the opportunity to be the first to venture across these great mountains 200 years ago, here, to me, was the next best thing: to be discovering rare plants in Yellowstone through the eyes of a master. 

Unlike most botanists who stick to the roadsides, Erwin made his plant forays for 40 years on foot, off the beaten path, in the wilderness and in the company of bears.  So it was no surprise when he told me that almost every time he went out, he set some kind of new record for a plant location, at least at a county level.

With this memory of a rarified day with a man of rare talent, I read the papers.  And then the shock hit me.  Erwin’s body had been found about two miles from his family’s cabin up Kitty Creek, east of Yellowstone Park, an area thick with grizzly bears (a fact I can personally attest to), at a site where a male grizzly had just been trapped and tranquilized for research purposes.  Erwin was hiking near his cabin on one of his regular routes.  According to one article, when Erwin did not return home at the expected time, his wife Yolanda walked up the trail and flagged down the first people she saw, who happened to be members of the grizzly research team, on their way out from a bear trapping site.  According to newspaper reports, her question prompted one of the researchers to wheel his horse around and gallop off.  He returned minutes later, exclaiming, “He’s gone, he’s gone.”  The next day, a sharpshooter killed a bear from a helicopter.  According to newspaper reports, the DNA of bear tissue found on Evert matched the grizzly bear that was killed.  It was a roughly 430-pound male, with no previous history of being trapped or of being a problem bear. 

Subsequent newspaper articles revealed major discrepancies in the “facts” of this incident. For example, it appears unclear whether the area was posted at that time with signs warning that bears were being trapped in the area and to stay away.  A recent conversation about the incident with a mutual friend of Erwin’s and myself, Cody-based bear expert Chuck Neal, raised more questions than it answered.

Further, it was unclear whether the entire capture and immobilization experience had prompted the bear to become aggressive after waking up. An investigation of the incident is now underway, and, in the meantime, the mouths of agency officials are shut tight as coffins.

After I finished reading the scanty news, a flood of questions hit me -- questions first about the facts of the case, and apparent discrepancies about what actually happened on June 17. Questions too about the effects of the whole drug-induced experience related to being trapped and handled for the first time, which could have left a bear confused and aggressive.  (A few friends formerly involved in trapping grizzlies have told me some hair-raising stories of male grizzlies waking up and charging them and their trucks; and one drug-irritated grizzly bear attacked a parked tractor in Wyoming in 1999, according to one article I read.)  

I have had other friends and acquaintances killed by bears or in climbing accidents over the years, and this incident opened the door to that place inside me that has long struggled with a series of broader questions as well, related to our collective relationship with wild nature and our relationship with each other in events involving death (especially violent death from predators). The aftermath of Erwin’s death also made me wonder, again, why we humans feel so compelled to frame values issues as if they were matters of science – like whether we should be radiocollaring animals, versus using other less intrusive census techniques, such as DNA. Because how and whether we study bears and other wildlife has a lot to do with how we as a public want to treat wild animals and what kinds of information we need to know and why.

In the upcoming weeks, I want to explore this complicated and highly emotional terrain more fully, using the numerous articles and comments that were prompted by Erwin’s death. I realize I am stepping into treacherous waters in doing so – one Chicago Tribune article on this issue has generated 77 comments so far, many of them not very nice, to say the least.

In future blogs on this topic, I want to empathize that I do NOT intend to second guess what happened on June 17, or prejudge the outcome of the investigation of this tragic event, which may take many months. My real aim is to take a step back and to examine how people are reacting to this situation and why, and to explore whether we can find new ways to do better in terms of management of bears, and to improve our relationships with these creatures and with each other in a civil society. 

But for now, it’s enough to extend all my sympathy and compassion to those who knew and loved Erwin, the researchers involved in this tragic incident -- and the bear’s mom too, who spent years teaching him how to make a living in the world.  A world that still has wilderness, places where Nature is the driving force, not us.  Where we are not in control, and are reminded, continually, of our own vulnerability and mortality.

Side Bar

Vascular Plants of the Greater Yellowstone Area: Annotated Catalog and Atlas, by Erwin Evert.  Published by Erwin Evert, 2010,  Park Ridge, Illinois.  This spring Erwin Evert published the fruits of his life’s work, a catalog of the 2,082 vascular plants in the Greater Yellowstone area.   The last time that a comprehensive catalog had been completed was more than a century ago in 1900.  On the cover page he quotes a poem called the “Botanist” by Ernest Jesse Palmer (1958).

“If only he could find some tree,

Some shrub or flower or grass or weed

 That’s rare or new or strange,

Or growing somewhat out of range,

He has reward indeed.” 

In his preface, Erwin notes, in his classically understated way:  “Botanical research in the region will continue undoubtedly into the future, and many new discoveries will be made, both floristic and phylogenic, requiring additional revisions.  I hope that in the meantime, the present work will be of some utility.” 

We can be sure of that, Erwin!  You have already straightened me out on a willow species, or at least I think so…