Additional information is being released in connection with a fatal bear attack which happened near Yellowstone Park on Wednesday morning.

State wildlife officials say that two people were injured and one person was killed in separate bear attacks that occurred at the Soda Butte Campground.

Park County Sheriff’s Department dispatch records show that a Park County Sheriff’s deputy and a Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks game warden were dispatched to the area at about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday and Investigators found a man dead at the campground about two hours later.

Two other people, a male and a female, were reportedly bitten and later treated at a hospital in Cody, Wyoming. The identities of the victims have not been released.

FWP officials, in cooperation with the Gallatin National Forest, the National Park Service and the Park County Sherriff’s Office spent much of the day at the site collecting forensic evidence of the attacks.

Officials from the agencies plan to hold a community meeting at the Cooke City Chamber of Commerce on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. to discuss the incident.

“The camp sites are being combed for evidence,” said FWP spokesman Ron Aasheim “We’re not certain if it was one bear or more than one, and we haven’t determined if it was a grizzly or black bear. We’ve extracted DNA samples from evidence found on site. This will help us identify the bear or bears involved, once captured.”

Officials say that tents were ripped or damaged during the attacks but no food was found in the tent of the dead man or in the tents of the two injured victims. “Everyone appeared to have followed all food storage regulations,” Aasheim said.

The Soda Butte Campground, the nearby Chief Joseph and Colter campgrounds, also in the Gallatin National Forest, are closed.

“This is not typical bear behavior. It’s odd. It’s not normal,” Aasheim said.

FWP officials have set a number of traps in anticipation of the animal’s return on Wednesday night.

via KPAX – Missoula, Montana – News, Weather, Sports – - KPAX Home Missoula News, Missoula Weather, Missoula Sports, Montana News, Montana Weather, Montana Sports | Separate bear attacks blamed for fatality, injuries.

Authorities continue piecing together details about an overnight bear attack near Cooke City that killed one person and injured two others.

MT FWP officials say that it appears the victims were attacked separately and were not camped in the same location of the Soda Butte Campground.

The attacks are believed to have occurred sometime between midnight and 2:00 a.m., and authorities believe that only one bear is responsible for the attacks.

Aasheim says the man who died had been dragged from his tent and was found at the western edge of the campground.

A woman suffered severe lacerations from bites on her arms, while another man was bitten on his calf. Both are being treated for their injures at a Cody, Wyoming hospital. Their injuries are not life threatening. Officials say the man was able to drive himself to Cody, while the woman was transported by ambulance.

Authorities have not yet released the names of the people involved.

Wildlife officials are investigating a deadly bear attack in the Cooke City area that left one man dead and two people injured.

The incident happened at the Soda Butte Campground late Tuesday night or into early Wednesday morning.

The name of the man who was killed has not yet been released.

Ron Aasheim of MT Fish, Wildlife & Parks says that another man was bitten on the leg and taken to a hospital in Cody, Wyoming, and a woman suffered injuries to her arms. Their conditions are not yet known.

FWP spokeswoman Andrea Jones has confirmed one attack and says there might have been multiple attacks; FWP officials and the Park County Sheriff’s Office are at the site of the attack and investigating what happened.

A Cooke City resident who chose to remain anonymous informed Montana’s News Station early Wednesday morning that there were two separate attacks, both causing severe injuries.  The source says there may have been a third attack.

We will have more information as it becomes available.

via KXLH | Helena, Montana – News, Weather, Sports | UPDATED: Bear attack kills one, injures two at Cooke City campground.

Depending on where you are in the Rockies this year, the annual summer bear season could mean black-bear sightings in your front yard or a near-death experience while looking through the jaws of a hungry bear.

Already, the list of bear attacks across the Rockies this summer is beginning to mount.

On Saturday morning, a bear attacked a homeless man sleeping in Durango near the Animas River. The man survived, but the bear didn’t after Colorado Division of Wildlife officials turned their guns on it after the attack. A necropsy of the bear’s carcass was completed at CSU.

Last Thursday, a bear broke into a home in Bailey, southwest of Denver, biting a man.

Other bears have been sighted plundering porches and backyards in Livermore and Rist Canyon.

In the past month, bears have turned outright hostile in New Mexico, where they’ve developed an affinity for tents and a taste for the people sleeping in them.

“They’re coming down and acting kind of aggressive right now,” said Dan Williams, spokesman for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish.

New Mexico wildlife officials killed a bear at the end of June after it jumped on a tent and took a swipe at the man sleeping in it at Philmont Boy Scout Ranch, a 137,000-acre camping and backpacking ranch just south of the Colorado state line west of Raton.

There were two more incidents there: The same day, another bear was found with a goat in its mouth, and a Philmont staffer killed it. On Wednesday, a bear bit a 14-year-old Boy Scout through his tent, leaving a deep gash in his head.

“It kind of peeled back the scalp there,” Williams said.

Both campers who were attacked were carefully following strict bear-safety protocols in place at Philmont, he said.

Those incidents followed another in June when a bear swatted a man tent-camping in the Sandia Mountains near Albuquerque.

But all the ursine nastiness in some parts of the West doesn’t mean there’s anything unusual going on this year, particularly in Colorado and Wyoming.

Bear activity is quite normal throughout Colorado, DOW spokesman Tyler Baskfield said.

The bears’ habitat is normal and healthy, he said, and there is no sign of increased bear sightings or attacks in any localized area, he said.

“We haven’t noticed anything that is different than we’ve seen in years when there’s decent, natural food,” said Ken Wilson, a professor of wildlife and conservation biology at Colorado State University.

“A bear has been into some trash cans in Rist Canyon,” he said. “One bear can decide it’s going to get into something, (but) it’s not all of them.”

Few bears have been seen at all in southern Wyoming, where wildlife officials consider black-bear habitat and natural food supply excellent, said Al Langston, spokesman for the Wyoming Department of Game and Fish.

In New Mexico, dry weather hurt the bears’ food supply and dried out the forbs and grass that usually get black bears through the spring.

The lack of food there is so dire that this year’s number of bear attacks hasn’t been seen in New Mexico for almost a decade, Williams said.

There are plenty of things homeowners and backcountry adventurers can do to keep bears away.

For people camping in the mountains, store food in bear-resistant containers away from your sleeping area, Wilson said.

The best way to keep plundering bears away from homes is to keep birdseed, trash and other potential food sources inside where bears can’t have easy access to them, Baskfield said.

“There’s no reason to feed birds this time of year” because natural bird food is plentiful, he said.

And, he warned city dwellers, just because you might live in Fort Collins doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep your home bear resistant.

“We get bears who wander into Fort Collins on a regular basis,” he said.

via List of bear attacks this summer grows | coloradoan.com | The Coloradoan.

NAPLES — Beside Alligator Alley in Golden Gate, there is a canal that locals have named “the Crystal.”

Tracy Cusick, 39, and Chris Kight, 49, parked their van and set their white plastic chairs underneath a shade tree beside the Crystal, their favorite swimming hole, to enjoy some “tranquility.”

Cars repeatedly swoosh by on the interstate, but the trees act as a buffer between the couple and civilization.

“Normally when they drive past they, blow their horn at us,” Kight said.

In some places of the canal, the clear water makes it easy to see the bottom. Fish dash by and the surface of the water sometimes ripples as they go. In other parts, which Kight thinks can be as deep as 40 feet, the water is mysterious and dark.

Cusick and Kight have visited the Crystal to swim, fish and meet with friends for about 20 years, but they are worried they may have to fight to keep the swimming hole open after a gruesome alligator attack on Sunday left a young man without a hand.

Tim Delano, 18, was attacked by a 10-foot alligator while swimming in the canal with friends Sunday evening. The gator clamped its mouth around Delano’s left hand and then severed it when the teen got away.

Friends drove Delano a couple of miles to get help. Delano was airlifted to Lee Memorial Hospital, where he is recovering. A tracker, sent by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, later trapped and killed the gator.

Delano wants people to stop swimming at the Crystal. “I hope they shut it down, so no accidents like this will happen again,” he said.

Kight said what happened to Delano was a first.

“It was a freak accident,” Kight said.

Although Cusick and Kight were the only mid-afternoon swimmers at the Crystal Monday, Kight said there were about 75 people there Sunday.

People were listening to music, barbecuing and swimming in the canal, according to the couple.

“It’s just a hangout,” Kight said.

Parents bring their children to swim and fish.

“The kids are never unattended,” Cusick said.

The day of the accident, Kight and Cusick left before it got dark, around 7 p.m., because they won’t swim in the Crystal past sunset.

“A gator feeds at night like a shark does,” Kight said.

Unlike Delano, they have seen gators in the waters before. “Any canal you go in there’s a chance,” Kight said.

Kight learned what happened to Delano from a television news report later that night. He knew it was the Crystal right away.

“I recognized a tree,” Kight said.

There’s still a dried pool of blood where Delano stood after he got out of the water. Kight pointed it out on the dirt road. He said they are glad Delano survived, but they’re worried their favorite swimming hole won’t.

“It would really bother me if they shut it down. There aren’t places to swim,” Cusick said.

She thinks it might be a good idea to post signs warning people about the potential dangers or to let them know what to do to stay safe.

“Everyone knows anyway, but to refresh their memories,” Cusick said.

But if there is a push to ban people from swimming in the Crystal, Kight said he’d start a petition to fight it.

“There will be a lot of people to sign it,” he said. “It’s the last swimming hole we have in Naples.”

via PHOTOS: Alligator attack doesn’t deter locals from swimming in the Crystal » Naples Daily News.

NAPLES, Fla. — A man is hospitalized in southwest Florida after an alligator bit off his left hand.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman Gabriella Ferraro said the man was swimming with three friends in a Collier County canal around 9:30 p.m. Sunday when the alligator attacked.

The men swam to shore and drove to a gas station, where they called 911.

A helicopter flew the victim to a Fort Myers hospital. His name was not released and his condition early Monday was not known.

Ferraro said the 10 foot 2 inch alligator was captured. The hand was retrieved from its stomach and flown to the hospital.

Wildlife officials advise people to stay out of freshwater canals and lakes this time of year because alligators are more active, especially around dawn and dusk.

via Man Loses Hand In Alligator Attack – Orlando News Story – WKMG Orlando.

DURANGO, Colo. – Colorado Division of Wildlife officers shot and killed a bear early Saturday morning that bit a man near the Animas River in Durango.

The victim said he was sleeping outside when he was bitten by a bear through his blanket at about 2:30 a.m.

He received a minor wound during the attack and was able to escape the bear by entering into a nearby building.

Officers from the DOW and the U.S. Department of Agriculture responded immediately with tracking dogs, which led officers directly to a male bear approximately three blocks from where the incident took place.

DOW officers shot and killed the animal.

The bear carcass was identified by several people who witnessed the incident as the bear that bit the man.

“A bear that bites a person – or loses its fear of people may be a serious threat to public safety,” said Patt Dorsey, area wildlife manager for the DOW in Durango.

“In the interest of public safety, we chose to remove this animal as quickly as possible.”

The carcass of the bear underwent a necropsy at Colorado State University. The stomach contents of the bear showed that the bear was using human-provided food sources.

A package of hamburger and an ice cream-container were found in the bear’s stomach.

People living in or visiting bear country are urged to eliminate access to all food sources.

The DOW says most bears sighted in residential areas within bear habitat do not cause damage. If a bear does not find food, it usually moves on.

via Bear that bit man sleeping outside killed – KDVR.

An alligator attacked a man and bit off his hand in Golden Gate Estates late Sunday.

Collier County emergency personnel and sheriff’s deputies, along with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, responded, emergency dispatchers reported.

The man was airlifted to the Lee Memorial Hospital trauma center in Fort Myers, officials said.

An alligator trapper was searching for the alligator Sunday night.

via Alligator attacks Golden Gate Estates man, bites off his hand, authorities say » Naples Daily News.

DURANGO, Colo. (AP) ― Wildlife agents shot and killed a bear Saturday that bit a Durango man as he slept in his backyard.

Authorities say the man wasn’t seriously hurt and fled from the animal by going indoors.

But Colorado Division of Wildlife responded to the attack and tracking dogs led them to the bear that was only about 300 yards away.

DOW wildlife manager Patt Dorsey says the agents then shot and killed the animal.

Dorsey says bears that attack people or lose their fear of them are a serious threat to public safety.

via Wildlife Officers Kill Bear That Bit Durango Man – cbs4denver.com.

A 51-year-old Bailey man suffered bite wounds from a bear inside his home early Thursday morning.

The man discovered the bear in his basement and approached it in hopes of getting the animal to leave. The 320-pound, male bear was later shot and killed.

According to wildlife officers, the family heard sounds in their kitchen shortly after midnight on Thursday morning and quickly determined that a bear had entered the home. The man attempted to monitor the bear’s whereabouts and was bitten as the bear tried to get past him.

A Division of Wildlife officer, responding alongside deputies from the Park County Sheriff’s Office, located the bear outside the home and killed it.

“The instructions we give our wildlife officers are clear: Public safety is our first priority,” said Reid DeWalt, area wildlife manager. “Bears that enter homes are a threat to public safety. When we’re dealing with aggressive or habituated wildlife, people come first.”

The victim was taken to Swedish Medical Center in Littleton and released Thursday morning.

Most conflicts between people and bears involve some sort of food source. In this case, wildlife officers said there was an open door to a garage containing accessible trash and a refrigerator. In addition, officers reported that the door from the garage into the home appeared not to be latching correctly. Bears can smell food from miles away, be it birdseed, pet food, a greasy grill grate or accessible refuse. Bears that become habituated to people will seek out such food sources.

Most bears sighted in residential areas within bear habitat do not cause any damage. If a bear doesn’t find abundant food, it will move on. In most cases, bears avoid confrontations with people.

Aggressive bear attacks are rare, but encounters like the one in Bailey have increased as Colorado’s population grows. The bear population has not increased, but the number of people living, working and recreating in bear country has.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife recommends the following measures to avoid harmful wildlife interactions:

• If a wild animal enters your home, leave and call for help. Animals that feel cornered or threatened are a danger to humans and pets.

• Make your property safe by keeping garbage out of reach and smell of bears. Use bear-proof trash containers. Be sure garbage cans are emptied regularly. To reduce residual odor, periodically clean garbage cans with hot water and chlorine bleach, or by burning trash residue in metal cans. Store trash in a bear-proof enclosure. Contact the Division of Wildlife for designs.

• Lock all ground-level windows and doors. Bears are smart — when they learn that homes contain food, they may try to enter.

• If you have pets, do not store their food outside or feed them outside. Clean your grill of grease and store inside. Hang bird seed, suet and hummingbird feeders on a wire between trees instead of on your deck or porch. Bring all bird feeders in at night. Do not put fruit, melon rinds and other tasty items in mulch or compost piles.

via Bear injures man in Park County | SummitDaily.com.

NBC — A Colorado man was almost killed when a 320-pound bear snuck in to his house and attacked him. Jack Hansell has the photo to prove it.

In a small town like Bailey, big news tends to travel fast, especially when the story is as bizarre as Jack Hansell’s.

Around 10:30 Wednesday night, Jack’s son heard something moseying around in the kitchen. Then he saw it.

Jack says “so he starts yelling, ‘there’s a bear, there’s a bear in the house!’”

That bear made its way downstairs to the basement. Jack followed after him. Jack hoped he’d get a chance to open the basement door so the bear could run out. But he didn’t.

Jack says “he charged me. Bit me in the lower leg and scratched me in the other leg and then knocked me over.”

Jack had so much adrenaline rushing through him, he didn’t feel the bite at all. So he started whacking the bear with a bat.

The bear ran up the stairs and climbed up in to Jack’s loft.

At this point, police and members of the Division of Wildlife were already on their way.

Jack says “unfortunately the bear tried climbing out of an upper story window and then police and DOW had to take care of him at that point.”

Jack suffered a few injuries and the bear was put down. The Division of Wildlife and Jack say this incident could have been prevented.

Jack says “make sure the garage door is shut every night. I had forgot to shut it last night.”

via Jack Hansell survives bear attack in his Colorado home | ksdk.com | St. Louis, MO.