In Idaho, Mr. Mock underwent two surgical procedures that went effectively, based on a Facebook submit from his employer, Backcountry Adventurers, which supplies snowmobile leases and excursions of the park. But on Saturday, the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office in Montana introduced that Mr. Mock had died at East Idaho Regional Medical Center.
Backcountry Adventures mentioned Mr. Mock had “suffered a massive stroke.” His loss of life “comes as a terrible shock and is heartbreaking,” the corporate wrote. The cash raised on a GoFundMe web page — $29,000 as of Monday night — will go to Mr. Mock’s household for medical and funeral bills, the corporate mentioned.
According to the National Park Service: “Since 1979, Yellowstone has hosted over 118 million visits. During this time, 44 people were injured by grizzly bears in the park.”
Grizzly bears within the continental United States are listed as threatened underneath the Endangered Species Act. That designation means it’s unlawful to “harm, harass, or kill these bears, except in cases of self-defense or the defense of others,” according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In 2017, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service eliminated these protections for grizzly bears when it took them off the endangered record. In 2018, a federal court docket pressured the company to place grizzly bears again on the record. And in 2020, a federal appeals court docket in San Francisco upheld that decrease court docket’s ruling, defending roughly 700 grizzly bears residing within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which incorporates 34,000 sq. miles in elements of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
About 50,000 grizzly bears as soon as roamed North America. When they have been positioned on the endangered species record in 1975, there have been solely a few hundred left. Today, “we have a growing grizzly bear population in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem,” Mr. Jacobsen mentioned. The website the place Mr. Mock was attacked is “fairly close to that epicenter of growth,” he mentioned.
Because of that development, “we are seeing grizzly bears expand into areas where they haven’t been in a long time,” Mr. Jacobsen mentioned. And on the similar time, he added, there’s “increased residency and visitation to some of these areas in southwest Montana.” Those two developments, he mentioned, “set things up to produce more encounters between humans and grizzly bears.”
