February 21, 2024 • 38 mins
Timothy Treadwell (aka Grizzly Man) was renowned for his extremely close relationships with the brown bears in Katmai National Park. He spent 13 summers living amongst the bears, and in his last 5 years got over 100 hours of footage of the bears and red foxes in the park. But his close relationship with the bears ultimately led to a fatal attack on him and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard.
You can watch the documentary Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog on Amazon for free here.
If you'd like to learn more about bears, check out bearwise.org.
You can find the official incident report on the death of Timothy and Amie by the Department of the Interior here.
Support the show for free by leaving a 5-star review wherever you're listening, or on GoodPods or Podchaser (where we can respond to your comments).
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, check out our website GetOutAlivePodcast.com and join us on Patreon (where you can now follow us for free)!
Support the show by shopping at www.getoutalivepodcast.com/shop
You can find Ashley @TheAngryOlogist on Twitter
You can watch the documentary Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog on Amazon for free here.
If you'd like to learn more about bears, check out bearwise.org.
You can find the official incident report on the death of Timothy and Amie by the Department of the Interior here.
Support the show for free by leaving a 5-star review wherever you're listening, or on GoodPods or Podchaser (where we can respond to your comments).
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, check out our website GetOutAlivePodcast.com and join us on Patreon (where you can now follow us for free)!
Support the show by shopping at www.getoutalivepodcast.com/shop
You can find Ashley @TheAngryOlogist on Twitter
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
No one knew that, No oneever freakin knew that there are times when
my life is on the precipice ofdeath, and that these bearers can bite,
they can kill, and if Iam weak, I go down.
I love them with all my heart. I will protect them. I will
die for them, but I willnot die at their claws and pause.
(00:37):
Welcome to episode seventy two of GetOut Alive, a bi weekly podcast about
animal attacks, why they happen,and how we can avoid them. I'm
your host, Ashley, and beforewe get into today's episode, I have
a new patron to shout up.Thank you so much to John for becoming
an expert survivalist on our Patreon.Thank you John for all your suggestions for
new episodes so far. And Johnalso told he's a trucker, So thank
(01:00):
you John and all the other truckersthat listen out there for everything that you
do. You two can join uson Patreon by following the link in the
episode description to get bonus content,including a new bonus episode next week.
And if you're an expert survivalist,you get gifts and the next gift we
sent out with in the next fewweeks, So please make sure that I
have your updated address. Today's episodehas been really heavily requested, but the
(01:23):
first person a requested that I canremember was another patron of ours, Anton,
So thank you so much Anton forsuggesting this. And I will say
this is a very difficult case forme to talk about as a professional biologist,
but also as a podcaster, ananimal lover, and in general just
a person who has opinions. Soif you know this case, you may
(01:44):
already have made up your mind abouthow you feel about what happened or about
Timothy himself. But if you havenot heard this story, please know it
will get graphic, as many ofour episodes are, because today I am
talking about Timothy Treadwell, also knownas the Grizzly Man. Timothy was born
on April twenty ninth, nineteen fiftyseven, in Long Island, New York.
(02:05):
He was one of five kids,and his parents said he was an
ordinary young man until he went tocollege at Bradley University. Timothy got into
college with a diving scholarship, butquickly got wrapped up in the binge,
drinking and doing drug scene, andhe lost his scholarship when he injured his
back. But he ultimately did finishcollege. He decided he wanted to become
an actor, so he changed hislast name, which was originally Dexter,
(02:29):
to Treadwell, which is a familynamed from his mom's side, and he
moved to California and got on theshow Love Connection from the nineties. His
father claims that what really sent himspiraling was the fact that he'd lost the
role of Woody Boyd in the showCheers to Woody Harrelson. Now that is
a claim from Timothy himself, sono one could really back that up,
but that is what he said.According to Tim's book, Among Grizzlies Living
(02:53):
with Wild Bears in Alaska in thenineteen eighties, Timothy nearly died from a
heroin overdose. One of his closefriends encouraged him to take a trip to
Alaska to get away from everything fora while. And while on his first
trip to Alaska, tim saw awild brown bear and said that is when
he found his calling to protect bears. So let's take a moment to talk
(03:14):
about where Timothy was in Alaska.Timothy spent thirteen years living among bears in
Catmai National Park, and yes,this is the same catm National Park that
hosts Fat Bear Week each year,and congrats to the twenty twenty three winner,
Bear one thirty eight grazier Now.Katmai was named a National monument in
nineteen eighteen to preserve the area wherethe greatest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century
(03:38):
occurred in nineteen twelve in an areanow called the Valley of ten Thousand Spokes.
In the sixties, astronauts actually usedthis area for trainings because they assumed
it was a good representation of theMoon's landscape. And of course, long
before America claimed it, this areaof Alaska was and still is inhabited by
the Aleutic people also known as theSunpiak people, and they lived there in
(04:00):
the area among these bears for overseven thousand years. And we've touched on
it before in a previous episode.But the bears in Catmai National Park are
considered brown bears, not grizzlies,and specifically, according to the Alaska Department
of Fishing Game, brown bears livealong the coast where there's better access to
salmon, which allows them to growlarger than what we call grizzlies that live
(04:20):
more inland, and brown bears canlive in higher densities because there's more food
available to them. Besides bears,Katmai is home to wolves, sea otters,
seals, wolverines, many species ofwhales, and also orcas, puffins,
eagles, and of course sucki salmonto name a few species. But
Katmai is said to have the highestdensity of brown bears anywhere in the world,
(04:44):
and these bears notoriously tolerant of peopledue to the abundant resources. Like
I said earlier, Timothy spent thirteenyears in Catmai, each summer living among
these bears. He claimed to betheir sole protector and even started a non
profit called Grizzly People, which,according to their Facebook page quote, is
a grassroots organization dedicated to preserving grizzlybears and their habitat through public outreach and
(05:09):
education. Grizzly People was co foundedby Jewel Palovak, his close friend and
also previous girlfriend. Timothy did outreachon behalf of the bears, and he'd
visit schools to talk to the kidsabout them, but he never charged a
fee because he was doing it forthe love of the bears. Tim would
spend his winters in California, workingodd jobs, making just enough money to
get by and to fund his tripsto Alaska for the summer. He would
(05:31):
start the summer off camping in anopen area near Hallow Bay that he called
Grizzly Sanctuary. Then in the laterparts of the summer he would move thirty
five miles to an area he calledthe Grizzly Maze, which had very thick
vegetation. But this area had alot of bear trails, so the quote
Mayze was where he saw the mostbears, and that's where his friend in
pilot, Willie Fulton, would pickhim up. At the end of the
(05:54):
summer. Tim started bringing a camerain the last five years he visited the
park, and he recorded over ahundred ndred hours of footage of the brown
bears in Catmai within those years.There's a few documentaries or miniseries out that
include his footage, and I'll linkthose in the episode description. But the
one I watched in preparation for thisepisode is Grizzly Man, which you can
watch for free on Amazon, directedby Werner Herzog. I will warn you
(06:18):
do not watch this if you aresqueamish, because there are photos of dead,
cut open bears that have been kneecropsied, also parts of dead animals,
and the documentary itself can just belike a little uncomfortable at times with
the way that Tim would record himself, so take that with what you will.
He also claimed to always be alonein the wilderness, but there are
(06:38):
multiple occasions where he'd bring women along. In the last few years, he
would sometimes bring his girlfriend, Amyhugen Art, and of the one hundred
hours of footage, Amy was onlyseen three times, and each time her
face was obscured in the footage.It becomes clear how unorthodox Tim's methods were
because he would get within feet ofthese bears and talk to them as if
(07:01):
they were pets, and he namedthe ones that he would see year after
year that he could recognize. Inthe first ten minutes of the documentary Grizzly
Man, you see him petting twowild brown bear cubs, then he gets
scratched by a sub adult bear thathe named a rowdy, and then he's
filming a ten foot tall male bearat one point that comes within feet of
(07:23):
him because Tim sat in its wayas the bear was trying to scratch its
back on a tree and he justtold it to leave, and to be
fair, it did. And Tim'svideos are a lot of him saying how
dangerous these bears are, but hecontinually would get so close to them that
he could touch them. And thisis where the story becomes hard for me
to talk about because although I thinkTim's heart was in the right place,
(07:44):
I can't say that getting so closeto these bears was a good choice.
And the way that he interacted withthe bears was considered harassment. And in
any other case of a person gettingtoo close to a bear, Nick and
I would call it harassment. Andthat's what it is, so really,
in the eyes eyes of the parkService and also in my eyes, it
was harassment the way that he wasinteracting with these bears. For example,
(08:07):
there's one part of the documentary whereTim's recording himself within ten feet of a
female brown bear that he named thegrinch because she has quote kind of an
aggressive attitude, which may or maynot just be the fact that she is
a bear, and she was standingover a carcass that she was eating as
Tim started talking, and as he'stalking, she walks closer to him,
so his back is to her.He's facing the camera and she is behind
(08:30):
his back. She walks closer tohim, eventually getting within like two feet
of him, and he scolds her, telling her to back off, and
after telling her quote, don't youdo that, he points his finger at
her like he's scolding a dog.Don't do it. It's okay. I
love you, I love you,I love you, I love you,
I love you. I'm sorry.All the lovely footage aside, Tim was
(08:54):
constantly breaking park rules with what hewas doing. First of all, as
we talked about when we talk aboutYellowstone Catmai National Park advises people to stay
at least fifty yards or forty sixmeters from bears at all times. This
goes for other predators as well,but we're mostly talking about brown bears here.
But Tim would also stay at hiscampsite for months at a time,
(09:15):
and at CAPMI you cannot camp inone backcountry location for more than fourteen days
in order to reduce impact in theland, and if he had wanted to
camp longer than fourteen days, therule was to move two miles away then
the cycle would start over again,so he'd just have fourteen more days in
that spot and then have to moveagain, I'm not sure if this was
a rule at the time he wasthere, but Katmai also requires that all
backcountry campers use bear resistant food containers, and often Timothy did not secure any
(09:41):
of his food or toiletrees in mostof his time there. He also did
not use electric fencing around his campsite, which is another backcountry camping recommendation,
so not a rule, and theywarn against camping near bear trails, but
tim would purposely camp near them sothat he could see them most bears.
He only carried and used bear sprayonce in his entire time going there over
(10:03):
the thirteen years, but in hisbook he said that he was so grief
stricken after using the bear spray thathe wouldn't use it again, so he
never carried any guns nor bear spray. From nineteen ninety four two thousand and
three, the National Park Service saidhe accumulated six violations, which included guiding
tourists without a license, camping inthe same area longer than the National Park
(10:24):
Service limit, improper food storage,wildlife harassment, and conflicts with visitors and
their guides. Besides the bears,he would regularly interact with the red foxes
too, letting them climb over histent and he'd pet them and let them
bite him, which, besides beingharassment, is also a big disease risk
because Raybi's still exists up there,so that's obviously always a concern. So
(10:48):
all the bear things aside. Also, please don't interact with foxes this way.
Not a great idea, but atone point Tim got coffee with deb
like It, the superintendent of KatmaiNational Park, a few years before his
death. She told him she thoughtthat the work he was doing was great
because he was bringing positive attention tothe bears, but if he had any
more violations within the park that hewould have to be banned for life,
(11:11):
and he needed to be more carefulbefore anyone got hurt or in trouble,
meaning both humans and bears. Asyou can imagine, Tim did not have
a great relationship with the National ParkService. I came here and protected the
animals as best I could. Infact, I'm the only protection for these
animals out here. The government flyingover a grand total of two times in
(11:31):
two months. How dare they?How dare they challenge me? How dare
they smeer me when their campaigns?How dare they when they do not look
after these animals, and I comehere in peace and in love, neutral
and respect. I will continue todo this. I will fight them.
I will be an American dissident ifI need be. There's a patriotic time
(11:54):
going on right now. But asfar as this fucking government's concerned, Fuck
you, motherfucking park Service. Doyou watch any of his footage, It's
clear that although Tim may no longerbe an addict, that he definitely was
still struggling. And in his book, Tim says that the bears are what
saved him and helped him recover fromhis addiction to alcohol and drugs. But
he was self isolating in the wildernessexcept when he brought women along with him,
(12:16):
obviously, and he considered the bearsand the foxes around him to be
legitimately his friends. And in thevideos he took, he couldn't seem to
come to terms with the death ofthe animals that he considered friends. Second
edition, two thousand and one.It's taken a sad turn, but it
is a real turn. And Iwarned the death of this gorgeous baby fox.
(12:39):
Goodbye those fox I'm out of hiseye. Freaking fly don't do it
when I'm around I have some respect, fucker. And I'm not saying that
people can't form bonds with wild animals, and I really think that he did
with some of these foxes. Butstill he claimed he was out there doing
research. But the point of researchis to be objective, and Tim didn't
(13:05):
seem to be able to come toterms emotionally with the reality of nature.
He also often in his videos haderratic mood shifts, as you kind of
heard earlier when he was talking tothe Grinch, and then there's some footage
he took of himself talking about hisstruggles with sexuality. And my point here
is Tim really invested everything he hadinto being around these bears and doing what
(13:26):
he thought was protecting them, andthat was the majority of his efforts was
on these bears, not a loton helping himself, if that makes sense.
But the thing is Tim thought thathe was the only one protecting these
bears. But these brown bears livedin a national park. These ones were
(13:50):
protected from hunting and their habitat wasalso protected. So in my eyes,
this is just my opinion, thiswas an escape for Tim. He was
there under the guise of protecting thebears, but really it was to run
away and be around animals, becauseanimals a lot of times can be easier
(14:11):
to interact with. Then people totallyget that, and that's why a lot
of wild life biologists become wildlife biologists. But as you can imagine, a
lot of wilde life biology is dealingwith people. There was also an instance
in two thousand and one where herecorded some taurusts throwing rocks at a brown
bear to get a good picture ofit, which is an absolutely disgusting thing
to do. So basically they weretrying to get the bear to look at
(14:33):
them so they could get a goodpicture of a bear looking at them,
and Tim was recording this happening,and you can see in the video of
the bear flinching as it's being hitwith big rocks, which is very upsetting.
But Tim the whole time was justcrying and never actually intervened. He
never stepped up and told them tostop. But if you're setting out to
protect these bears this is that wouldbe a perfect example to do so where
(14:58):
no one else is around to stopthese people from throwing rocks at bears except
for him, and he did notonce again, nothing wrong with escaping into
the wilderness, but it's also notexactly right when you're harassing wildlife and breaking
rules and potentially damaging the habitat thatyou have set out to save. Now
let us finally get into the incidentthat you all know about if you've heard
(15:20):
of Tim before. It was lateSeptember two thousand and three, which is
typically when his expedition ended, becausewinter would be right around the corner and
the bears would be fattening up toget ready for it. As I mentioned
up top, Tim was not alwaysalone, and in two thousand and three,
Amy, his girlfriend, was withhim in Katmai. We know from
(15:41):
Tim and Amy's personal diaries that Amywas terrified of the bears. She actually
had also just gotten a new joband was set to start when she got
back from Alaska that fall. Shealso informed him that this would be her
last time accompanying him to stay withthe Brown Bears. Whether or not that
meant they were going to end therelationship, we don't know. So Tim
(16:03):
and Amy went back to Kodiak tomake their way home to California for the
winter, but at the airport inKodiak, Tim had an altercation with an
airport agent over the validity of histicket, so he decided to return to
his campsite in the Grizzly Maze.Amy had mixed feelings about returning, as
she had a deadline for her newjob, and according to Tim's diary,
she called him quote hell bent ondestruction, but she did return to the
(16:26):
Grizzly Maze with him all the same. So it was September twenty ninth,
two thousand and three when they returnedto their campsite near the shore of Kathleia
Lake. So I actually want totake a moment before we continue to correct
some information that I've said on thispodcast before that I have now come to
learn is no longer correct. Sopreviously I have said that bears such as
(16:48):
black bears or brown bears go intotorpor, which is like not a true
hibernation, but like a shortened formof hibernation. And I've come to recently
learn I'm not sure if this isjust new information in general or just new
to me, but bears such asblack bears and brown bears actually do go
into true hibernation. They're actually whatsome scientists now call quote super hibernators.
(17:11):
So, according to bearwise dot org, a bear's metabolism, heartbeat, and
respiration rate drops dramatically, but itsbody temperatures only drop about twelve degrees during
hibernation. They don't eat nor dothey go to the bathroom, unlike true
hibernators who wake up every few daysto drink, go to the bathroom,
and eat some food before they goback to sleep. So I always want
(17:33):
us to be using them as fresh, correct information on this podcast. So
thank you to those who pointed thatout to me. And now we will
all go on knowing that bears arein fact hibernators and they are super at
it. So thank you for pointingthat out to me. So, just
to recap, Tim and Amy wereabout to go home. Tim got angry
at some people decided he needed onemore week with the bears, so they
(17:56):
went back. But this was thelatest they had ever really stayed, so
when he got back to their campsite, he claimed that the bears around at
this point were quote scary, unknownand wilder bears from the interior. But
Tim also wanted to stay that extraweek to try to find and locate one
of his favorite bears that he hadnot seen in a while. Tim had
(18:17):
taken a video of himself sitting nextto a stream with a large male brown
bear behind him that he named Oli. So Tim's back once again is to
this bear, as this bear isforging in the stream. He said he
had just met Oli the other dayand only promptly charged at him, but
Tim stood his ground and was okay. And then in the recording, Tim
said this it is the old bear, one who was struggling for survival,
(18:44):
and an aggressive one at bat whois the one that you must be very
careful of. For these are thebears that, on occasion do for survival
kill any umans. Could only thebig old bear possibly kill and eat Timothy
treadwell, what do you think,goalie? I think if you were weak
around him and going down as downas gulling going down the pipe. He
(19:10):
even said most people should camp inthe open with weapons and that what he
was doing was unsafe. Within afew days of their return, he said
in one video quote, I haveremained safe, but every second of every
day that I have moved through thisjungle or even at the tent, I
am right on the precipice of greatbodily harm or even death end quote.
(19:33):
On Sunday, October fifth, Timothyhad a phone call from satellite phone with
Jewel, the co founder of Tim'sorganization in California, and in that call
he did not report any problems withany bears. On October sixth, Willie
Fulton, his friend and pilot whowould often bring them out to Cappai,
was set to pick Tim and Amyup to take them home finally for the
(19:53):
year. However, when Willie gotto the shore, he didn't say any
gear on the beach where he typicallymet them, which was unusual, so
he started walking up the embankment towardswhere he knew their camp was, and
he was calling for them but notgetting a response. At one point,
he got an uneasy feeling and turnedaround, walking quickly towards his plane,
(20:15):
and as he was walking, helooked up in the brush and saw a
big male grizzly with its head down, quietly stalking him. Willie made his
way back to his plane as quicklyas he could and took to the sky
to look for Amy and Tim.As he flew over their campsite, he
saw a brown bear standing over ahuman rib cage. Consuming it, and
(20:37):
at that moment he realized it wasthe same bear that was just stalking him,
and that the remains likely belonged toeither Tim or Amy. He flew
low to try to scare the bearaway from the remains, but each time
he dove lower, the bear wouldjust eat more quickly, so Willie called
for help. Willie led Alaska Statetroopers and members of the Park Service to
(21:00):
the site where he had encountered thebear eating the human remains, and as
they stopped to look around, someoneknows to bear approaching them, and everyone
began shooting. When the gunfire stoppedand the literal cloud of smoke from the
gunfire dissipated, it was clear toWillie that the bear that had just been
shot was the same bear that stalkedhim just moments before, and he guessed
it was the same bear that killedhis friends. As the team began looking
(21:25):
around, they found Timothy's disfigured head, a partial human spine, a right
forearm in Tim's hand with his wristwatchstill attached. Some of Amy's remains were
found partially buried near their torn tent, a sign that the bear that killed
them was cashing her body so basicallyit killed more than it could eat at
(21:47):
one time and was like just coveredher body with leaves and debris to save
for later. A short time later, a second adolescent bear was shot in
because it charged park rangers during theirrecovery efforts. Officials tried retrieving this bear
to do a field ney cropsy,but weather was getting bad that day,
(22:08):
so they left both the bears andtook as much as they could and left
the area. But when they returnedby October seventh through eighth, all that
remained of that second bear was thebear's head and some bones remaining, but
its teeth indicated it was probably aroundthree years old. The bear that was
killed first, the one that hadstalked Willie, the one that he presumed
(22:30):
killed his friends, was twenty eightyears old and had a tattoo on his
lip that marked him as Bear oneforty one, meaning that he had been
captured by scientists before or the wildlifebillogists within the state, and he was
part of their monitoring efforts for thegrizzlies in the park. Bear one,
for one had worn down teeth andbroken canines, but otherwise seemed to have
(22:53):
healthy levels of fat and otherwise seemedto be in okay condition. A field
me cropsy revealed human remains inside hisstomach, and in fact it was the
only remains in his stomach, soit was the only thing he had eaten
in a while. And the picturesof that are in the documentary, which
is why I set up top toview it with caution. But in the
(23:17):
end, at the end of thisnee cropsy on Bear one forty one,
four trash bags full of human remainsand clothing were taking out of his stomach
and it totaled to twenty eight pounds. Ten days before his death is when
Timothy recorded himself with that bear Oliin the background, claiming that Oli could
(23:37):
eat him. And it has beenspeculated that Oly was in fact Bear one
forty one. Because tim was oftenrecording, there is in fact a recording
of the night of the attack,and this is why this case. I
mean, there's a lot of reasonswhy this case became so popularized in the
media, but this is probably themain reas reason that people know of this
(24:02):
case is because there is sound outthere of his death, but the lens
cap was on the camera at thetime, so there's no actual footage,
just the audio, and his cofounder of Grizzly People, Juwel Palivak,
is the only one that has thisaudio, but before it was given to
her, it was analyzed by AlaskaState troopers for the purposes of the investigation
(24:23):
of their deaths. The audio beginsaround one thirty pm on October fifth,
so this is the evening before theywere supposed to be picked up by Willie
on October sixth, and the audiothere is very clear sound of rain,
so there was a storm happening atthe time, and Tim and Amy were
in their tent about to eat dinnerwhen they heard a bear outside, So
(24:48):
it is speculated that Tim went outsideand Amy remained inside. At first,
Amy turns on the camera and youcan hear her asking Tim over the sound
of the rain, quote, isthe bear still out there? Tim responds
with Amy, get out of here. Get out of here. I'm getting
killed. You can hear the zipperof the tent as Amy exit it,
(25:11):
and Tim is on the ground withhis head in the bear's mouth, and
Amy yells to him to play dead. Tim responds by yelling back at her
to get out of there. Thisis followed by the sound of wind,
rain, and Amy's screams. Afew seconds later, Amy tells Tim to
play dead again, and then thebear lets go of Tim and backs away.
(25:33):
So it's assumed here by experts thatTim playing dead worked and that's what
caused the bear to leave. Andthere's a short conversation that follows this between
Amy and Tim trying to figure outif the bear is actually gone. By
the sounds of the tape, itthen assumed that Amy approaches Tim in an
effort to help him, but thebear returns, so she backs off.
(25:57):
Tim is then clearly heard screaming thatplaying dead isn't working and starts begging Amy
to hit the bear with something.Amy grabs a frying pan and approaches the
bear, hitting it on the head. Now, reminder, Amy, it
has been well established, has alwaysbeen afraid of bears for this exact reason,
(26:18):
but in that moment, she pushedthat fear aside to literally run up
to a bear trying to eat herboyfriend to help him. As Amy is
hitting this bear with a frying pan, in the background, Tim can be
heard moaning, and then the bearlets go of Tim's head and bites his
upper thigh and begins dragging him away. Amy is screaming at the top of
(26:41):
her lungs, and Tim can beheard over the storm and over Amy's screams,
saying Amy, you need to getaway, so at this point it
seemed he had given up on Amytrying to save him. You can hear
Tim's moaning as he's dragged away fromtheir camp in this audio, and the
bear can be heard fronting and growlingall the while Amy is still screaming,
(27:06):
but at one point the pitch ofher screams changed, and it is believed
when her screams changed is when thebear came back for her, and then
the videotape ends because it ran outof tape. So the details of exactly
what happened to Amy are unclear,which I think is fine because obviously we
know that she was killed by thisbear. But the recording of this attack
(27:30):
is six minutes long. According tothe official report released by the Department of
the Interior, which you can findonline thanks to someone filing a Foyer request,
most of Tim and Amy's food thatthey were eating for themselves was actually
in bear proof containers when the airwas being investigated, and there was food
easily accessible to bears within the tent, but it did not appear that any
(27:52):
bear tried to actually get into thetent to access that food. Otherwise,
they noted that his campsite was prettyclean. So in that report they listed
the contributing factors to Tim and Amy'sdeaths as follows. One, the location
of their camp site was the primaryfactor that led to this attack because it
was near active late season spawning sitesfor salmon and in an area with thick
(28:15):
brush at a site nowhere near otherpeople. Two. Tim's pattern of camping
near prime feeding sites during a timewhen bears were fiercely competing for food contributed
to this attack as well. Andthree it's possible that the bear was investigating
the human food in the area,but Tim's quote history of approaching bears and
allowing bears to approach him within afew feet could have caused this fatal encounter.
(28:41):
The report is really fascinating and showssketches of the area of the attack
and where certain remains and what notwere found, and the report ends with
the wildlife biologists from the area,Larry van Dale, stating his thoughts on
what happened based on the investigation.In the end, he believed it was
an opportunistic killing by the older malebear, and that this was an isolated
(29:02):
incident that the younger second bear thatwas killed just happened to be in the
wrong place at their wrong time,resulting it in being shot. Now,
Tim really embodied the quote find whatyou love and let it kill you,
and the pilot that ultimately discovered whathad happened to them said that Tim never
would have wanted the bear killed,and he probably would have been happy if
no one had ever found him.But the reality is, as we often
(29:26):
talk about in this podcast, isthat human lives come first, and sometimes
it really sucks. But when youmake the choice to approach wild animals and
get them used to people, especiallyanimals like bears, it is a very
real possibility that they will and canhurt someone or damage property to the point
that they will have to be euthanized. And although Tim never would have wanted
(29:49):
these bears to be killed, OLEIand the other bear never would have been
shot had Tim not put himself soclose to them. Also, like we
were talking up top about, whenTim had coffee with that superintendent of Katmai,
she was saying, be careful orelse something bad could happen, someone
could get hurt, or something badcould happen to the bears or people.
(30:12):
She was saying that because there hadnever been a death from a brown bear
to a human in Katmai. Ever, Tim's death was the first time in
history that a bear had killed someonethere. This was preventable, and this
case has had long lasting effects,of course on the families of Tim and
(30:34):
Amy, but also the people thathad to respond to the case, the
people who had to investigate these deaths, that people who had to shoot these
bears, that people who had todo the outreach everybody. It has had
very long lasting effects, even thoughit was some twenty years ago. In
the end, some say Tim seta bad example for how to interact with
(30:56):
wildlife and that he encouraged the harassmentof bears. I think it's also important
to point out here that the nativepeople in the area, the Alyutic,
had lived with these bears for thousandsof years, and in the documentary Grizzly
Man, the director spoke with thecurator of the Elyutic Museum, and the
man he spoke to, who wasan Elytic person, said that Tim trying
(31:17):
to act like a bear was thequote ultimate of disrespecting the bear and what
the bear represents, and that inthe elyutic culture they avoided the bears,
and the bears avoided them, andwhen they crossed that invisible boundary with the
bears, quote, we pay theprice. And the clip of the curator
saying that in the film is overlaidonto a clip of Tim taking the video
(31:42):
of a brown bear swimming. Andthen Tim gets into the water and gets
right like literally within inches of thisbear, and the bear just chooses to
exit the water calmly and just leaveshim alone, which honestly is really impressive
if you think about it, thefact that he swam with a wild brown
(32:04):
bear and it chose to not evenscratch him at all. Once again,
not a good choice. Others saythat Tim's work actually did help garner love
and protections for more brown bears.And then there is the group of people
who say he got what he deserved, some of which even wrote letters saying
as much to his family and friends, one of which read in the Grizzly
(32:27):
Man documentary, someone sent his closefriends a letter saying, quote, a
bare diet consists of liberals and democratsand lack of environmentalists that think the spotted
owl is the most important thing inthe world. End quote. You can
hate Tim all you want, butit is so easy to write a letter
from your couch where you're sitting watchingFox News all day to people you don't
know, saying that their close frienddeserved to die, when you yourself have
(32:51):
never stepped out of your comfort zoneand stood up for something you believed in
even when it wasn't the mainstream thingto do. Also, I'm not sure
what dumpster fire of a person youhave to be to hear that someone died
than feel compelled to write a letterto someone that loved them saying that the
person that died deserved it. I'msure none of you listening to this podcast
would do that, So I'm justranting, but I just felt the need
to say it. So there iswas Tim unorthodox? Yes? Did he
(33:15):
break rules and ultimately cause the deathof two bears? Also yes, but
he loved something so much that hededicated his entire life to it and has
lived on after his death being knownfor that passion, which is more than
most people can say. He alsomanaged to live beside brown Bears for thirteen
years, literally within feet of themwith no conflicts, and he really did
(33:37):
capture some amazing footage of the bearsand the foxes and Catmai that seemingly no
one else will be able to doand frankly, no one else should do.
Like around minute twenty six in thatdocumentary, Tim is sitting with one
of his favorite bears behind him,mister Chocolate, within like ten or fifteen
feet, and one of his favoritefoxes that he named Spirit runs up with
(33:58):
her kits. So Tim sitting withinfeet of a wild brown bear that's just
grazing behind him, ignoring him,and a couple of red foxes that are
following him around link dogs. Onceagain, although not advised, it is
incredible. I don't agree with Tim'smethods, but I can understand where he's
coming from. Although I am abiologist and we often have to be objective
(34:20):
and we have to get used towild life sometimes is being destroyed, it
is very easy to forget that eachanimal is an individual, just like your
pets are. All individuals are wildanimals pets, of course not, but
each fox, each bear, eveneach snake, each bird, each turtle,
each fish are all individuals and allanimals as a whole are worth protecting.
(34:44):
Few people have gone as far asTimothy did an attempt to protect wildlife
for better or worse. Thank youall so much for listening to this episode.
I will post relevant links in theepisode description, and you can find
links to our website Patren and allof our social media in the episode description
as well. I know I've saidin the last few episodes that we were
(35:04):
doing like kind of a theme.So we started this year talking about the
Endangered Species Act, which grizzlies andbrown bears are covered under four Now it
is a very contentious issue, whichI'm not going to get into, but
after the Abusing the ESA episode,we talked about wildlife rehab and then we
talked to Say about her adventures doingjournalism on wild animals. And now we're
(35:27):
ending with we not ending. I'mnot saying we're ending the podcast, but
like we're ending this little arc withTimothy, and I think the point I
was trying to make is we aspeople have a very complicated relationship with wildlife,
and some people decide that certain speciesare worth killing, like wolves,
(35:50):
like we talked about in the firstepisode of the year. Some people go
out of their way to try tohelp animals, like we talked about in
the rehab episode, and you actuallyjust end up doing more harm than good.
We talked about ways that you actuallycan be helpful in that episode to
wildlife, and in the episode withSigh, and about all the wonderful research
that we could do working alongside animalsand how we can learn from them and
(36:10):
learn more about how they are individualsand how they deserve to be protected.
And I wanted to end that littlearc with this story about Timothy because I
think it's a good representation of althoughwe should care about wildlife, and although
many of us may love wildlife,there's a line and we have to tote
(36:36):
that line in order to preserve them. But when we overstep, when we
try to insert ourselves into nature ina way that just isn't appropriate, is
when we can end up doing moreharm than good. So, once again,
not that I agree with Tim's methods, but he really did love these
(36:57):
bears and just wanted them protect didand really he needed an escape for himself.
And I can't say that I haven'tgone into the woods as an escape
either. I have not tried topretend that the animals in the woods are
my friends. However, I getit, and I hope that if you
went into this episode knowing about thiscase and you thought Tim was just some
(37:19):
wacko, that maybe you could havemore compassion for him at the end.
But in the end, I dowant us all to understand that it is
not okay at harass wildlife. Thereare rules in these national parks for a
reason. We should not approach thewild animals in the national parks because it
is not a zoo. They're notour friends. They are there for us
to respect from a distance. Sothank you all so much for listening.
(37:43):
We'll be back in two weeks witha new animal tech story. But in
the meantime, thank you so muchto Josh Walsh for making our intro music.
Thank you to Jesse Walsh for doingall the editing, and I will
see you later. They needed acaretaker, They needed someone to look after
them, but not a drunk person, not a person messed up. So
I promised the bears that if Iwould look over them, would they please
(38:05):
help me be a better person.And they become so inspirational and living with
the foxes too, that I did. I gave up the drinking. It
was a miracle. It's an absolutemiracle, and the miracle was animals.
The miracle was animals.
No one knew that, No oneever freakin knew that there are times when
my life is on the precipice ofdeath, and that these bearers can bite,
they can kill, and if Iam weak, I go down.
I love them with all my heart. I will protect them. I will
die for them, but I willnot die at their claws and pause.
(00:37):
Welcome to episode seventy two of GetOut Alive, a bi weekly podcast about
animal attacks, why they happen,and how we can avoid them. I'm
your host, Ashley, and beforewe get into today's episode, I have
a new patron to shout up.Thank you so much to John for becoming
an expert survivalist on our Patreon.Thank you John for all your suggestions for
new episodes so far. And Johnalso told he's a trucker, So thank
(01:00):
you John and all the other truckersthat listen out there for everything that you
do. You two can join uson Patreon by following the link in the
episode description to get bonus content,including a new bonus episode next week.
And if you're an expert survivalist,you get gifts and the next gift we
sent out with in the next fewweeks, So please make sure that I
have your updated address. Today's episodehas been really heavily requested, but the
(01:23):
first person a requested that I canremember was another patron of ours, Anton,
So thank you so much Anton forsuggesting this. And I will say
this is a very difficult case forme to talk about as a professional biologist,
but also as a podcaster, ananimal lover, and in general just
a person who has opinions. Soif you know this case, you may
(01:44):
already have made up your mind abouthow you feel about what happened or about
Timothy himself. But if you havenot heard this story, please know it
will get graphic, as many ofour episodes are, because today I am
talking about Timothy Treadwell, also knownas the Grizzly Man. Timothy was born
on April twenty ninth, nineteen fiftyseven, in Long Island, New York.
(02:05):
He was one of five kids,and his parents said he was an
ordinary young man until he went tocollege at Bradley University. Timothy got into
college with a diving scholarship, butquickly got wrapped up in the binge,
drinking and doing drug scene, andhe lost his scholarship when he injured his
back. But he ultimately did finishcollege. He decided he wanted to become
an actor, so he changed hislast name, which was originally Dexter,
(02:29):
to Treadwell, which is a familynamed from his mom's side, and he
moved to California and got on theshow Love Connection from the nineties. His
father claims that what really sent himspiraling was the fact that he'd lost the
role of Woody Boyd in the showCheers to Woody Harrelson. Now that is
a claim from Timothy himself, sono one could really back that up,
but that is what he said.According to Tim's book, Among Grizzlies Living
(02:53):
with Wild Bears in Alaska in thenineteen eighties, Timothy nearly died from a
heroin overdose. One of his closefriends encouraged him to take a trip to
Alaska to get away from everything fora while. And while on his first
trip to Alaska, tim saw awild brown bear and said that is when
he found his calling to protect bears. So let's take a moment to talk
(03:14):
about where Timothy was in Alaska.Timothy spent thirteen years living among bears in
Catmai National Park, and yes,this is the same catm National Park that
hosts Fat Bear Week each year,and congrats to the twenty twenty three winner,
Bear one thirty eight grazier Now.Katmai was named a National monument in
nineteen eighteen to preserve the area wherethe greatest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century
(03:38):
occurred in nineteen twelve in an areanow called the Valley of ten Thousand Spokes.
In the sixties, astronauts actually usedthis area for trainings because they assumed
it was a good representation of theMoon's landscape. And of course, long
before America claimed it, this areaof Alaska was and still is inhabited by
the Aleutic people also known as theSunpiak people, and they lived there in
(04:00):
the area among these bears for overseven thousand years. And we've touched on
it before in a previous episode.But the bears in Catmai National Park are
considered brown bears, not grizzlies,and specifically, according to the Alaska Department
of Fishing Game, brown bears livealong the coast where there's better access to
salmon, which allows them to growlarger than what we call grizzlies that live
(04:20):
more inland, and brown bears canlive in higher densities because there's more food
available to them. Besides bears,Katmai is home to wolves, sea otters,
seals, wolverines, many species ofwhales, and also orcas, puffins,
eagles, and of course sucki salmonto name a few species. But
Katmai is said to have the highestdensity of brown bears anywhere in the world,
(04:44):
and these bears notoriously tolerant of peopledue to the abundant resources. Like
I said earlier, Timothy spent thirteenyears in Catmai, each summer living among
these bears. He claimed to betheir sole protector and even started a non
profit called Grizzly People, which,according to their Facebook page quote, is
a grassroots organization dedicated to preserving grizzlybears and their habitat through public outreach and
(05:09):
education. Grizzly People was co foundedby Jewel Palovak, his close friend and
also previous girlfriend. Timothy did outreachon behalf of the bears, and he'd
visit schools to talk to the kidsabout them, but he never charged a
fee because he was doing it forthe love of the bears. Tim would
spend his winters in California, workingodd jobs, making just enough money to
get by and to fund his tripsto Alaska for the summer. He would
(05:31):
start the summer off camping in anopen area near Hallow Bay that he called
Grizzly Sanctuary. Then in the laterparts of the summer he would move thirty
five miles to an area he calledthe Grizzly Maze, which had very thick
vegetation. But this area had alot of bear trails, so the quote
Mayze was where he saw the mostbears, and that's where his friend in
pilot, Willie Fulton, would pickhim up. At the end of the
(05:54):
summer. Tim started bringing a camerain the last five years he visited the
park, and he recorded over ahundred ndred hours of footage of the brown
bears in Catmai within those years.There's a few documentaries or miniseries out that
include his footage, and I'll linkthose in the episode description. But the
one I watched in preparation for thisepisode is Grizzly Man, which you can
watch for free on Amazon, directedby Werner Herzog. I will warn you
(06:18):
do not watch this if you aresqueamish, because there are photos of dead,
cut open bears that have been kneecropsied, also parts of dead animals,
and the documentary itself can just belike a little uncomfortable at times with
the way that Tim would record himself, so take that with what you will.
He also claimed to always be alonein the wilderness, but there are
(06:38):
multiple occasions where he'd bring women along. In the last few years, he
would sometimes bring his girlfriend, Amyhugen Art, and of the one hundred
hours of footage, Amy was onlyseen three times, and each time her
face was obscured in the footage.It becomes clear how unorthodox Tim's methods were
because he would get within feet ofthese bears and talk to them as if
(07:01):
they were pets, and he namedthe ones that he would see year after
year that he could recognize. Inthe first ten minutes of the documentary Grizzly
Man, you see him petting twowild brown bear cubs, then he gets
scratched by a sub adult bear thathe named a rowdy, and then he's
filming a ten foot tall male bearat one point that comes within feet of
(07:23):
him because Tim sat in its wayas the bear was trying to scratch its
back on a tree and he justtold it to leave, and to be
fair, it did. And Tim'svideos are a lot of him saying how
dangerous these bears are, but hecontinually would get so close to them that
he could touch them. And thisis where the story becomes hard for me
to talk about because although I thinkTim's heart was in the right place,
(07:44):
I can't say that getting so closeto these bears was a good choice.
And the way that he interacted withthe bears was considered harassment. And in
any other case of a person gettingtoo close to a bear, Nick and
I would call it harassment. Andthat's what it is, so really,
in the eyes eyes of the parkService and also in my eyes, it
was harassment the way that he wasinteracting with these bears. For example,
(08:07):
there's one part of the documentary whereTim's recording himself within ten feet of a
female brown bear that he named thegrinch because she has quote kind of an
aggressive attitude, which may or maynot just be the fact that she is
a bear, and she was standingover a carcass that she was eating as
Tim started talking, and as he'stalking, she walks closer to him,
so his back is to her.He's facing the camera and she is behind
(08:30):
his back. She walks closer tohim, eventually getting within like two feet
of him, and he scolds her, telling her to back off, and
after telling her quote, don't youdo that, he points his finger at
her like he's scolding a dog.Don't do it. It's okay. I
love you, I love you,I love you, I love you,
I love you. I'm sorry.All the lovely footage aside, Tim was
(08:54):
constantly breaking park rules with what hewas doing. First of all, as
we talked about when we talk aboutYellowstone Catmai National Park advises people to stay
at least fifty yards or forty sixmeters from bears at all times. This
goes for other predators as well,but we're mostly talking about brown bears here.
But Tim would also stay at hiscampsite for months at a time,
(09:15):
and at CAPMI you cannot camp inone backcountry location for more than fourteen days
in order to reduce impact in theland, and if he had wanted to
camp longer than fourteen days, therule was to move two miles away then
the cycle would start over again,so he'd just have fourteen more days in
that spot and then have to moveagain, I'm not sure if this was
a rule at the time he wasthere, but Katmai also requires that all
backcountry campers use bear resistant food containers, and often Timothy did not secure any
(09:41):
of his food or toiletrees in mostof his time there. He also did
not use electric fencing around his campsite, which is another backcountry camping recommendation,
so not a rule, and theywarn against camping near bear trails, but
tim would purposely camp near them sothat he could see them most bears.
He only carried and used bear sprayonce in his entire time going there over
(10:03):
the thirteen years, but in hisbook he said that he was so grief
stricken after using the bear spray thathe wouldn't use it again, so he
never carried any guns nor bear spray. From nineteen ninety four two thousand and
three, the National Park Service saidhe accumulated six violations, which included guiding
tourists without a license, camping inthe same area longer than the National Park
(10:24):
Service limit, improper food storage,wildlife harassment, and conflicts with visitors and
their guides. Besides the bears,he would regularly interact with the red foxes
too, letting them climb over histent and he'd pet them and let them
bite him, which, besides beingharassment, is also a big disease risk
because Raybi's still exists up there,so that's obviously always a concern. So
(10:48):
all the bear things aside. Also, please don't interact with foxes this way.
Not a great idea, but atone point Tim got coffee with deb
like It, the superintendent of KatmaiNational Park, a few years before his
death. She told him she thoughtthat the work he was doing was great
because he was bringing positive attention tothe bears, but if he had any
more violations within the park that hewould have to be banned for life,
(11:11):
and he needed to be more carefulbefore anyone got hurt or in trouble,
meaning both humans and bears. Asyou can imagine, Tim did not have
a great relationship with the National ParkService. I came here and protected the
animals as best I could. Infact, I'm the only protection for these
animals out here. The government flyingover a grand total of two times in
(11:31):
two months. How dare they?How dare they challenge me? How dare
they smeer me when their campaigns?How dare they when they do not look
after these animals, and I comehere in peace and in love, neutral
and respect. I will continue todo this. I will fight them.
I will be an American dissident ifI need be. There's a patriotic time
(11:54):
going on right now. But asfar as this fucking government's concerned, Fuck
you, motherfucking park Service. Doyou watch any of his footage, It's
clear that although Tim may no longerbe an addict, that he definitely was
still struggling. And in his book, Tim says that the bears are what
saved him and helped him recover fromhis addiction to alcohol and drugs. But
he was self isolating in the wildernessexcept when he brought women along with him,
(12:16):
obviously, and he considered the bearsand the foxes around him to be
legitimately his friends. And in thevideos he took, he couldn't seem to
come to terms with the death ofthe animals that he considered friends. Second
edition, two thousand and one.It's taken a sad turn, but it
is a real turn. And Iwarned the death of this gorgeous baby fox.
(12:39):
Goodbye those fox I'm out of hiseye. Freaking fly don't do it
when I'm around I have some respect, fucker. And I'm not saying that
people can't form bonds with wild animals, and I really think that he did
with some of these foxes. Butstill he claimed he was out there doing
research. But the point of researchis to be objective, and Tim didn't
(13:05):
seem to be able to come toterms emotionally with the reality of nature.
He also often in his videos haderratic mood shifts, as you kind of
heard earlier when he was talking tothe Grinch, and then there's some footage
he took of himself talking about hisstruggles with sexuality. And my point here
is Tim really invested everything he hadinto being around these bears and doing what
(13:26):
he thought was protecting them, andthat was the majority of his efforts was
on these bears, not a loton helping himself, if that makes sense.
But the thing is Tim thought thathe was the only one protecting these
bears. But these brown bears livedin a national park. These ones were
(13:50):
protected from hunting and their habitat wasalso protected. So in my eyes,
this is just my opinion, thiswas an escape for Tim. He was
there under the guise of protecting thebears, but really it was to run
away and be around animals, becauseanimals a lot of times can be easier
(14:11):
to interact with. Then people totallyget that, and that's why a lot
of wild life biologists become wildlife biologists. But as you can imagine, a
lot of wilde life biology is dealingwith people. There was also an instance
in two thousand and one where herecorded some taurusts throwing rocks at a brown
bear to get a good picture ofit, which is an absolutely disgusting thing
to do. So basically they weretrying to get the bear to look at
(14:33):
them so they could get a goodpicture of a bear looking at them,
and Tim was recording this happening,and you can see in the video of
the bear flinching as it's being hitwith big rocks, which is very upsetting.
But Tim the whole time was justcrying and never actually intervened. He
never stepped up and told them tostop. But if you're setting out to
protect these bears this is that wouldbe a perfect example to do so where
(14:58):
no one else is around to stopthese people from throwing rocks at bears except
for him, and he did notonce again, nothing wrong with escaping into
the wilderness, but it's also notexactly right when you're harassing wildlife and breaking
rules and potentially damaging the habitat thatyou have set out to save. Now
let us finally get into the incidentthat you all know about if you've heard
(15:20):
of Tim before. It was lateSeptember two thousand and three, which is
typically when his expedition ended, becausewinter would be right around the corner and
the bears would be fattening up toget ready for it. As I mentioned
up top, Tim was not alwaysalone, and in two thousand and three,
Amy, his girlfriend, was withhim in Katmai. We know from
(15:41):
Tim and Amy's personal diaries that Amywas terrified of the bears. She actually
had also just gotten a new joband was set to start when she got
back from Alaska that fall. Shealso informed him that this would be her
last time accompanying him to stay withthe Brown Bears. Whether or not that
meant they were going to end therelationship, we don't know. So Tim
(16:03):
and Amy went back to Kodiak tomake their way home to California for the
winter, but at the airport inKodiak, Tim had an altercation with an
airport agent over the validity of histicket, so he decided to return to
his campsite in the Grizzly Maze.Amy had mixed feelings about returning, as
she had a deadline for her newjob, and according to Tim's diary,
she called him quote hell bent ondestruction, but she did return to the
(16:26):
Grizzly Maze with him all the same. So it was September twenty ninth,
two thousand and three when they returnedto their campsite near the shore of Kathleia
Lake. So I actually want totake a moment before we continue to correct
some information that I've said on thispodcast before that I have now come to
learn is no longer correct. Sopreviously I have said that bears such as
(16:48):
black bears or brown bears go intotorpor, which is like not a true
hibernation, but like a shortened formof hibernation. And I've come to recently
learn I'm not sure if this isjust new information in general or just new
to me, but bears such asblack bears and brown bears actually do go
into true hibernation. They're actually whatsome scientists now call quote super hibernators.
(17:11):
So, according to bearwise dot org, a bear's metabolism, heartbeat, and
respiration rate drops dramatically, but itsbody temperatures only drop about twelve degrees during
hibernation. They don't eat nor dothey go to the bathroom, unlike true
hibernators who wake up every few daysto drink, go to the bathroom,
and eat some food before they goback to sleep. So I always want
(17:33):
us to be using them as fresh, correct information on this podcast. So
thank you to those who pointed thatout to me. And now we will
all go on knowing that bears arein fact hibernators and they are super at
it. So thank you for pointingthat out to me. So, just
to recap, Tim and Amy wereabout to go home. Tim got angry
at some people decided he needed onemore week with the bears, so they
(17:56):
went back. But this was thelatest they had ever really stayed, so
when he got back to their campsite, he claimed that the bears around at
this point were quote scary, unknownand wilder bears from the interior. But
Tim also wanted to stay that extraweek to try to find and locate one
of his favorite bears that he hadnot seen in a while. Tim had
(18:17):
taken a video of himself sitting nextto a stream with a large male brown
bear behind him that he named Oli. So Tim's back once again is to
this bear, as this bear isforging in the stream. He said he
had just met Oli the other dayand only promptly charged at him, but
Tim stood his ground and was okay. And then in the recording, Tim
said this it is the old bear, one who was struggling for survival,
(18:44):
and an aggressive one at bat whois the one that you must be very
careful of. For these are thebears that, on occasion do for survival
kill any umans. Could only thebig old bear possibly kill and eat Timothy
treadwell, what do you think,goalie? I think if you were weak
around him and going down as downas gulling going down the pipe. He
(19:10):
even said most people should camp inthe open with weapons and that what he
was doing was unsafe. Within afew days of their return, he said
in one video quote, I haveremained safe, but every second of every
day that I have moved through thisjungle or even at the tent, I
am right on the precipice of greatbodily harm or even death end quote.
(19:33):
On Sunday, October fifth, Timothyhad a phone call from satellite phone with
Jewel, the co founder of Tim'sorganization in California, and in that call
he did not report any problems withany bears. On October sixth, Willie
Fulton, his friend and pilot whowould often bring them out to Cappai,
was set to pick Tim and Amyup to take them home finally for the
(19:53):
year. However, when Willie gotto the shore, he didn't say any
gear on the beach where he typicallymet them, which was unusual, so
he started walking up the embankment towardswhere he knew their camp was, and
he was calling for them but notgetting a response. At one point,
he got an uneasy feeling and turnedaround, walking quickly towards his plane,
(20:15):
and as he was walking, helooked up in the brush and saw a
big male grizzly with its head down, quietly stalking him. Willie made his
way back to his plane as quicklyas he could and took to the sky
to look for Amy and Tim.As he flew over their campsite, he
saw a brown bear standing over ahuman rib cage. Consuming it, and
(20:37):
at that moment he realized it wasthe same bear that was just stalking him,
and that the remains likely belonged toeither Tim or Amy. He flew
low to try to scare the bearaway from the remains, but each time
he dove lower, the bear wouldjust eat more quickly, so Willie called
for help. Willie led Alaska Statetroopers and members of the Park Service to
(21:00):
the site where he had encountered thebear eating the human remains, and as
they stopped to look around, someoneknows to bear approaching them, and everyone
began shooting. When the gunfire stoppedand the literal cloud of smoke from the
gunfire dissipated, it was clear toWillie that the bear that had just been
shot was the same bear that stalkedhim just moments before, and he guessed
it was the same bear that killedhis friends. As the team began looking
(21:25):
around, they found Timothy's disfigured head, a partial human spine, a right
forearm in Tim's hand with his wristwatchstill attached. Some of Amy's remains were
found partially buried near their torn tent, a sign that the bear that killed
them was cashing her body so basicallyit killed more than it could eat at
(21:47):
one time and was like just coveredher body with leaves and debris to save
for later. A short time later, a second adolescent bear was shot in
because it charged park rangers during theirrecovery efforts. Officials tried retrieving this bear
to do a field ney cropsy,but weather was getting bad that day,
(22:08):
so they left both the bears andtook as much as they could and left
the area. But when they returnedby October seventh through eighth, all that
remained of that second bear was thebear's head and some bones remaining, but
its teeth indicated it was probably aroundthree years old. The bear that was
killed first, the one that hadstalked Willie, the one that he presumed
(22:30):
killed his friends, was twenty eightyears old and had a tattoo on his
lip that marked him as Bear oneforty one, meaning that he had been
captured by scientists before or the wildlifebillogists within the state, and he was
part of their monitoring efforts for thegrizzlies in the park. Bear one,
for one had worn down teeth andbroken canines, but otherwise seemed to have
(22:53):
healthy levels of fat and otherwise seemedto be in okay condition. A field
me cropsy revealed human remains inside hisstomach, and in fact it was the
only remains in his stomach, soit was the only thing he had eaten
in a while. And the picturesof that are in the documentary, which
is why I set up top toview it with caution. But in the
(23:17):
end, at the end of thisnee cropsy on Bear one forty one,
four trash bags full of human remainsand clothing were taking out of his stomach
and it totaled to twenty eight pounds. Ten days before his death is when
Timothy recorded himself with that bear Oliin the background, claiming that Oli could
(23:37):
eat him. And it has beenspeculated that Oly was in fact Bear one
forty one. Because tim was oftenrecording, there is in fact a recording
of the night of the attack,and this is why this case. I
mean, there's a lot of reasonswhy this case became so popularized in the
media, but this is probably themain reas reason that people know of this
(24:02):
case is because there is sound outthere of his death, but the lens
cap was on the camera at thetime, so there's no actual footage,
just the audio, and his cofounder of Grizzly People, Juwel Palivak,
is the only one that has thisaudio, but before it was given to
her, it was analyzed by AlaskaState troopers for the purposes of the investigation
(24:23):
of their deaths. The audio beginsaround one thirty pm on October fifth,
so this is the evening before theywere supposed to be picked up by Willie
on October sixth, and the audiothere is very clear sound of rain,
so there was a storm happening atthe time, and Tim and Amy were
in their tent about to eat dinnerwhen they heard a bear outside, So
(24:48):
it is speculated that Tim went outsideand Amy remained inside. At first,
Amy turns on the camera and youcan hear her asking Tim over the sound
of the rain, quote, isthe bear still out there? Tim responds
with Amy, get out of here. Get out of here. I'm getting
killed. You can hear the zipperof the tent as Amy exit it,
(25:11):
and Tim is on the ground withhis head in the bear's mouth, and
Amy yells to him to play dead. Tim responds by yelling back at her
to get out of there. Thisis followed by the sound of wind,
rain, and Amy's screams. Afew seconds later, Amy tells Tim to
play dead again, and then thebear lets go of Tim and backs away.
(25:33):
So it's assumed here by experts thatTim playing dead worked and that's what
caused the bear to leave. Andthere's a short conversation that follows this between
Amy and Tim trying to figure outif the bear is actually gone. By
the sounds of the tape, itthen assumed that Amy approaches Tim in an
effort to help him, but thebear returns, so she backs off.
(25:57):
Tim is then clearly heard screaming thatplaying dead isn't working and starts begging Amy
to hit the bear with something.Amy grabs a frying pan and approaches the
bear, hitting it on the head. Now, reminder, Amy, it
has been well established, has alwaysbeen afraid of bears for this exact reason,
(26:18):
but in that moment, she pushedthat fear aside to literally run up
to a bear trying to eat herboyfriend to help him. As Amy is
hitting this bear with a frying pan, in the background, Tim can be
heard moaning, and then the bearlets go of Tim's head and bites his
upper thigh and begins dragging him away. Amy is screaming at the top of
(26:41):
her lungs, and Tim can beheard over the storm and over Amy's screams,
saying Amy, you need to getaway, so at this point it
seemed he had given up on Amytrying to save him. You can hear
Tim's moaning as he's dragged away fromtheir camp in this audio, and the
bear can be heard fronting and growlingall the while Amy is still screaming,
(27:06):
but at one point the pitch ofher screams changed, and it is believed
when her screams changed is when thebear came back for her, and then
the videotape ends because it ran outof tape. So the details of exactly
what happened to Amy are unclear,which I think is fine because obviously we
know that she was killed by thisbear. But the recording of this attack
(27:30):
is six minutes long. According tothe official report released by the Department of
the Interior, which you can findonline thanks to someone filing a Foyer request,
most of Tim and Amy's food thatthey were eating for themselves was actually
in bear proof containers when the airwas being investigated, and there was food
easily accessible to bears within the tent, but it did not appear that any
(27:52):
bear tried to actually get into thetent to access that food. Otherwise,
they noted that his campsite was prettyclean. So in that report they listed
the contributing factors to Tim and Amy'sdeaths as follows. One, the location
of their camp site was the primaryfactor that led to this attack because it
was near active late season spawning sitesfor salmon and in an area with thick
(28:15):
brush at a site nowhere near otherpeople. Two. Tim's pattern of camping
near prime feeding sites during a timewhen bears were fiercely competing for food contributed
to this attack as well. Andthree it's possible that the bear was investigating
the human food in the area,but Tim's quote history of approaching bears and
allowing bears to approach him within afew feet could have caused this fatal encounter.
(28:41):
The report is really fascinating and showssketches of the area of the attack
and where certain remains and what notwere found, and the report ends with
the wildlife biologists from the area,Larry van Dale, stating his thoughts on
what happened based on the investigation.In the end, he believed it was
an opportunistic killing by the older malebear, and that this was an isolated
(29:02):
incident that the younger second bear thatwas killed just happened to be in the
wrong place at their wrong time,resulting it in being shot. Now,
Tim really embodied the quote find whatyou love and let it kill you,
and the pilot that ultimately discovered whathad happened to them said that Tim never
would have wanted the bear killed,and he probably would have been happy if
no one had ever found him.But the reality is, as we often
(29:26):
talk about in this podcast, isthat human lives come first, and sometimes
it really sucks. But when youmake the choice to approach wild animals and
get them used to people, especiallyanimals like bears, it is a very
real possibility that they will and canhurt someone or damage property to the point
that they will have to be euthanized. And although Tim never would have wanted
(29:49):
these bears to be killed, OLEIand the other bear never would have been
shot had Tim not put himself soclose to them. Also, like we
were talking up top about, whenTim had coffee with that superintendent of Katmai,
she was saying, be careful orelse something bad could happen, someone
could get hurt, or something badcould happen to the bears or people.
(30:12):
She was saying that because there hadnever been a death from a brown bear
to a human in Katmai. Ever, Tim's death was the first time in
history that a bear had killed someonethere. This was preventable, and this
case has had long lasting effects,of course on the families of Tim and
(30:34):
Amy, but also the people thathad to respond to the case, the
people who had to investigate these deaths, that people who had to shoot these
bears, that people who had todo the outreach everybody. It has had
very long lasting effects, even thoughit was some twenty years ago. In
the end, some say Tim seta bad example for how to interact with
(30:56):
wildlife and that he encouraged the harassmentof bears. I think it's also important
to point out here that the nativepeople in the area, the Alyutic,
had lived with these bears for thousandsof years, and in the documentary Grizzly
Man, the director spoke with thecurator of the Elyutic Museum, and the
man he spoke to, who wasan Elytic person, said that Tim trying
(31:17):
to act like a bear was thequote ultimate of disrespecting the bear and what
the bear represents, and that inthe elyutic culture they avoided the bears,
and the bears avoided them, andwhen they crossed that invisible boundary with the
bears, quote, we pay theprice. And the clip of the curator
saying that in the film is overlaidonto a clip of Tim taking the video
(31:42):
of a brown bear swimming. Andthen Tim gets into the water and gets
right like literally within inches of thisbear, and the bear just chooses to
exit the water calmly and just leaveshim alone, which honestly is really impressive
if you think about it, thefact that he swam with a wild brown
(32:04):
bear and it chose to not evenscratch him at all. Once again,
not a good choice. Others saythat Tim's work actually did help garner love
and protections for more brown bears.And then there is the group of people
who say he got what he deserved, some of which even wrote letters saying
as much to his family and friends, one of which read in the Grizzly
(32:27):
Man documentary, someone sent his closefriends a letter saying, quote, a
bare diet consists of liberals and democratsand lack of environmentalists that think the spotted
owl is the most important thing inthe world. End quote. You can
hate Tim all you want, butit is so easy to write a letter
from your couch where you're sitting watchingFox News all day to people you don't
know, saying that their close frienddeserved to die, when you yourself have
(32:51):
never stepped out of your comfort zoneand stood up for something you believed in
even when it wasn't the mainstream thingto do. Also, I'm not sure
what dumpster fire of a person youhave to be to hear that someone died
than feel compelled to write a letterto someone that loved them saying that the
person that died deserved it. I'msure none of you listening to this podcast
would do that, So I'm justranting, but I just felt the need
to say it. So there iswas Tim unorthodox? Yes? Did he
(33:15):
break rules and ultimately cause the deathof two bears? Also yes, but
he loved something so much that hededicated his entire life to it and has
lived on after his death being knownfor that passion, which is more than
most people can say. He alsomanaged to live beside brown Bears for thirteen
years, literally within feet of themwith no conflicts, and he really did
(33:37):
capture some amazing footage of the bearsand the foxes and Catmai that seemingly no
one else will be able to doand frankly, no one else should do.
Like around minute twenty six in thatdocumentary, Tim is sitting with one
of his favorite bears behind him,mister Chocolate, within like ten or fifteen
feet, and one of his favoritefoxes that he named Spirit runs up with
(33:58):
her kits. So Tim sitting withinfeet of a wild brown bear that's just
grazing behind him, ignoring him,and a couple of red foxes that are
following him around link dogs. Onceagain, although not advised, it is
incredible. I don't agree with Tim'smethods, but I can understand where he's
coming from. Although I am abiologist and we often have to be objective
(34:20):
and we have to get used towild life sometimes is being destroyed, it
is very easy to forget that eachanimal is an individual, just like your
pets are. All individuals are wildanimals pets, of course not, but
each fox, each bear, eveneach snake, each bird, each turtle,
each fish are all individuals and allanimals as a whole are worth protecting.
(34:44):
Few people have gone as far asTimothy did an attempt to protect wildlife
for better or worse. Thank youall so much for listening to this episode.
I will post relevant links in theepisode description, and you can find
links to our website Patren and allof our social media in the episode description
as well. I know I've saidin the last few episodes that we were
(35:04):
doing like kind of a theme.So we started this year talking about the
Endangered Species Act, which grizzlies andbrown bears are covered under four Now it
is a very contentious issue, whichI'm not going to get into, but
after the Abusing the ESA episode,we talked about wildlife rehab and then we
talked to Say about her adventures doingjournalism on wild animals. And now we're
(35:27):
ending with we not ending. I'mnot saying we're ending the podcast, but
like we're ending this little arc withTimothy, and I think the point I
was trying to make is we aspeople have a very complicated relationship with wildlife,
and some people decide that certain speciesare worth killing, like wolves,
(35:50):
like we talked about in the firstepisode of the year. Some people go
out of their way to try tohelp animals, like we talked about in
the rehab episode, and you actuallyjust end up doing more harm than good.
We talked about ways that you actuallycan be helpful in that episode to
wildlife, and in the episode withSigh, and about all the wonderful research
that we could do working alongside animalsand how we can learn from them and
(36:10):
learn more about how they are individualsand how they deserve to be protected.
And I wanted to end that littlearc with this story about Timothy because I
think it's a good representation of althoughwe should care about wildlife, and although
many of us may love wildlife,there's a line and we have to tote
(36:36):
that line in order to preserve them. But when we overstep, when we
try to insert ourselves into nature ina way that just isn't appropriate, is
when we can end up doing moreharm than good. So, once again,
not that I agree with Tim's methods, but he really did love these
(36:57):
bears and just wanted them protect didand really he needed an escape for himself.
And I can't say that I haven'tgone into the woods as an escape
either. I have not tried topretend that the animals in the woods are
my friends. However, I getit, and I hope that if you
went into this episode knowing about thiscase and you thought Tim was just some
(37:19):
wacko, that maybe you could havemore compassion for him at the end.
But in the end, I dowant us all to understand that it is
not okay at harass wildlife. Thereare rules in these national parks for a
reason. We should not approach thewild animals in the national parks because it
is not a zoo. They're notour friends. They are there for us
to respect from a distance. Sothank you all so much for listening.
(37:43):
We'll be back in two weeks witha new animal tech story. But in
the meantime, thank you so muchto Josh Walsh for making our intro music.
Thank you to Jesse Walsh for doingall the editing, and I will
see you later. They needed acaretaker, They needed someone to look after
them, but not a drunk person, not a person messed up. So
I promised the bears that if Iwould look over them, would they please
(38:05):
help me be a better person.And they become so inspirational and living with
the foxes too, that I did. I gave up the drinking. It
was a miracle. It's an absolutemiracle, and the miracle was animals.
The miracle was animals.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.