It is a very sad deal, and I feel so very sorry for his family.
I support delisting and management by the state, but is like clockwork, that following an attack such as this, folks come out of the woodwork blaming high griz populations,mismanagment, etc. Alluding to a premise that if only we managed them, this wouldn't have happened.
Maybe, maybe not, but I think context is important. Griz are thick in the GYE and Crown, and exist in lesser numbers everywhere east of the Little Belts. Millions of tourists come to MT every year (11.3 million in 2020), and of those millions hundreds of thousands at the very least spend time in griz country outdoors -maybe millions. Throw in residents who spend dozens of days a year in the wilds of griz country, and then juxtapose that against the fact that of the maybe dozen griz attacks per year, one or two of those are fatal in the state.
I'm not saying it is something I don't think about or am not aware of, but there is this unreasonable focus on the risk, curiously further, by people who I watched poopoo Covid, maybe rightfully, regarding its risks. But when a risk that is orders of magnitude less likely than Covid was, or dying in a car accident on the way to griz country is, has claws, it's all of a sudden a Goddamn crime committed by the enviros that someone died. I do think claws and teeth trigger something deep within us - make us a bit irrational.
Basically, this will continue to happen every once in a while, and the reactions by the same players will be the same, and I hope to always live in a Montana where crossing the divide due to a pissed off griz is always a possibility.
