Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials have ruled Sunday afternoon’s bear attack near Funny River Road as defensive.
62-year-old resident Danny High was walking a friend’s dog in the woods just before 4:30 pm Sunday when he encountered the bear which seriously injured him. He is recovering in a Seattle hospital.
ADF&G Public Information Officer Cathie Harms said local investigator Jeff Selinger found the scene of the attack yesterday by a trail about 300 yards from mile 11 of Funny River Road near the river.
Harms: “Bears tend to approach people for two reasons. Number one is they percieve humans as a threat to either themselves, or their food source, or their cubs, and they need to get rid of that threat. The other reason is a predacious attack or approach where they think you are a source of food or, worst case, you are food. This appears at this time to be a case of the bear was surprised, the human was surprised, the bear got rid of the threat and then left.”
Selinger spoke with multiple neighbors who said the area is known to have a brown bear population.
In 2013 the Board of Game liberalized the brown bear bag limit in the area to help address the increasing bear population in Game Management Unit 15. For the past two years the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge closed Brown Bear hunting within its boundaries.
Harms said ADF&G is operating under the assumption it is a brown bear based on neighbors’ observations but the agency has samples from the scene and is conducting tests.
Warning signs of the bear activity have been posted in the area.