Bear injures man hiking alone in Yellowstone National Park
The man deployed bear spray but still suffered "significant but non-life-threatening injuries to his chest and left arm," a statement from the park said.
A female Grizzly bear walks in a meadow near Pelican Creek on June 21, 2024, in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. (Photo credit: Jonathan Newton/Getty Images)
Sept. 17 (UPI) -- A man suffered serious injuries after being attacked by a bear Tuesday while hiking by himself in Yellowstone National Park.
The attack occurred while the man was hiking Turbid Lake Trail, which is located east of Yellowstone Lake, according to a press statement. Park officials have since closed the trail and are investigating the attack on the unidentified 29-year-old man.
The man deployed bear spray but still suffered "significant but non-life-threatening injuries to his chest and left arm," the statement said. Park medics responded to the incident and walked out with the hiker, who was transported to Lake Medical Clinic and later flown to a hospital.
The hiker thought the bear was a black bear, but park officials suspect it was a grizzly bear considering its size and behavior, according to the statement. Bear management staff plan to attempt DNA analysis to confirm the species.
"Because this incident was a defensive reaction by the bear during a surprise encounter, the park will not be taking any management action against the bear," the statement said.
The park occasionally sees visitors injured by wildlife. A Florida man was gored by a bison in May after getting too close to the animal.
Elsewhere, a hiker in Japan was found dead over the summer from a brown bear attack while hiking in the country's rugged Hokkaido region. In Canada's western province of British Columbia, a man was severely injured during a grizzly bear attack.
However, bear attacks remain vanishingly rare. A 2019 article published in Nature found there are about 40 brown bear attacks per year globally, about a dozen of which occur in North America. Yellowstone is home to more dangerous grizzly bears. But a 2022 paper found that the per capita risk of being killed by a grizzly bear while visiting the park was one out of every 26.2 million park visitors.
Yellowstone National Park saw its busiest May on record with more than 566,000 recreational visits that month.
Despite so many people flocking to the park's roughly 3,500 square miles, the attack on Tuesday is the first time a bear has injured someone in Yellowstone in years, according to the press release. The last time a bear injured someone was in 2021 when a solo hiker was attacked by a grizzly bear.
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