Many have watched the mama bruin and her bands of cubs stalk elk calves in a place called “Willow Flats” right in front of onlookers at Jackson Lake Lodge and the scene is as dramatic as any predator and prey episode on the Serengeti.īecause she and members of her extended family have been so visually accessible, in a setting backdropped by the Tetons, they’ve attracted crowds, but as Wilkinson points out, they are not any less wild, nor are they anything like the famous begging bears of Yellowstone known to generations at late as the 1960s. Millions of people from around the world have come to try and catch sight of bear 399 in Grand Teton National Park around Jackson Lake. The story of an individual bear family brings the issues to life, sometimes dramatically.” You can’t do that writing generically about anonymous grizzlies elusively roaming the backcountry. The story of 399 gives us a lens for thinking about delisting.Įxplains Wilkinson “399 inhabits Greater Yellowstone’s ‘human-wild’ interface and she is representative of the very kind of grizzly that will need to persist if the population is going to survive.” He goes on to say “I’ve been writing about grizzly bears for nearly 30 years and I’ve been searching for a way to make the issues of grizzly conservation exciting and accessible. The US Fish and Wildlife Service to soon announce plans to remove Greater Yellowstone’s grizzlies from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act and hand over management to the states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. On Friday, Nov 13 at the Emerson Cultural Center in Bozeman, Wilkinson and Mangelsen will formally unveil their book at a special presentation featuring Mangelsen’s dazzling photographs. The 150 selected for the book remind us why he is considered one of the most heralded nature photographers in the world. Over the last decade, Mangelsen has amassed a quarter-million frames of bear 399 and her clan. “Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek” is a gripping account, but it’s made breathtaking by the pictures of famed Jackson Hole wildlife photographer Tom Mangelsen. He succeeds, and once we are there, he takes us on a fascinating adventure about co-existence between humans and bruins in our own wild backyard. The irony is that Wilkinson cleverly uses our own fascination with grizzlies-the largest, most fearsome and charismatic predators in the Lower 48-to draw us in. But we hope it won’t be 399, who brings added meaning to the role of ursine motherhood. “ Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek, An Intimate Portrait of 399, the Most Famous Bear of Greater Yellowstone” is a real-life thriller and until the final page, we readers don’t know who the next casualty will be. I need to warn: In the new non-fiction book by Bozeman writer Todd Wilkinson, grizzly bears and people die tragically at the hands of each other.

Grizzly adventure bozeman