No one knew that, No one ever freakin knew that there are times when
my life is on the precipice of death, and that these bearers can bite,
they can kill, and if I am weak, I go down.
I love them with all my heart. I will protect them. I will
die for them, but I will not die at their claws and pause.
Welcome to episode seventy two of Get Out Alive, a bi weekly podcast about
animal attacks, why they happen, and how we can avoid them. I'm
your host, Ashley, and before we 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 John also told he's a trucker, So thank
you John and all the other truckers that listen out there for everything that you
do. You two can join us on 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 few weeks, So please make sure that I
have your updated address. Today's episode has been really heavily requested, but the
first person a requested that I can remember was another patron of ours, Anton,
So thank you so much Anton for suggesting this. And I will say
this is a very difficult case for me to talk about as a professional biologist,
but also as a podcaster, an animal lover, and in general just
a person who has opinions. So if you know this case, you may
already have made up your mind about how you feel about what happened or about
Timothy himself. But if you have not heard this story, please know it
will get graphic, as many of our episodes are, because today I am
talking about Timothy Treadwell, also known as the Grizzly Man. Timothy was born
on April twenty ninth, nineteen fifty seven, in Long Island, New York.
He was one of five kids, and his parents said he was an
ordinary young man until he went to college at Bradley University. Timothy got into
college with a diving scholarship, but quickly got wrapped up in the binge,
drinking and doing drug scene, and he lost his scholarship when he injured his
back. But he ultimately did finish college. He decided he wanted to become
an actor, so he changed his last name, which was originally Dexter,
to Treadwell, which is a family named from his mom's side, and he
moved to California and got on the show Love Connection from the nineties. His
father claims that what really sent him spiraling was the fact that he'd lost the
role of Woody Boyd in the show Cheers to Woody Harrelson. Now that is
a claim from Timothy himself, so no one could really back that up,
but that is what he said. According to Tim's book, Among Grizzlies Living
with Wild Bears in Alaska in the nineteen eighties, Timothy nearly died from a
heroin overdose. One of his close friends encouraged him to take a trip to
Alaska to get away from everything for a while. And while on his first
trip to Alaska, tim saw a wild brown bear and said that is when
he found his calling to protect bears. So let's take a moment to talk
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 where the greatest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century
occurred in nineteen twelve in an area now called the Valley of ten Thousand Spokes.
In the sixties, astronauts actually used this area for trainings because they assumed
it was a good representation of the Moon's landscape. And of course, long
before America claimed it, this area of Alaska was and still is inhabited by
the Aleutic people also known as the Sunpiak people, and they lived there in
the area among these bears for over seven 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 live along the coast where there's better access to
salmon, which allows them to grow larger than what we call grizzlies that live
more inland, and brown bears can live in higher densities because there's more food
available to them. Besides bears, Katmai is home to wolves, sea otters,
seals, wolverines, many species of whales, and also orcas, puffins,
eagles, and of course sucki salmon to name a few species. But
Katmai is said to have the highest density of brown bears anywhere in the world,
and these bears notoriously tolerant of people due to the abundant resources. Like
I said earlier, Timothy spent thirteen years in Catmai, each summer living among
these bears. He claimed to be their 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 grizzly bears and their habitat through public outreach and
education. Grizzly People was co founded by Jewel Palovak, his close friend and
also previous girlfriend. Timothy did outreach on behalf of the bears, and he'd
visit schools to talk to the kids about them, but he never charged a
fee because he was doing it for the love of the bears. Tim would
spend his winters in California, working odd jobs, making just enough money to
get by and to fund his trips to Alaska for the summer. He would
start the summer off camping in an open area near Hallow Bay that he called
Grizzly Sanctuary. Then in the later parts of the summer he would move thirty
five miles to an area he called the Grizzly Maze, which had very thick
vegetation. But this area had a lot of bear trails, so the quote
Mayze was where he saw the most bears, and that's where his friend in
pilot, Willie Fulton, would pick him up. At the end of the
summer. Tim started bringing a camera in the last five years he visited the
park, and he recorded over a hundred 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 link those in the episode description. But the
one I watched in preparation for this episode is Grizzly Man, which you can
watch for free on Amazon, directed by Werner Herzog. I will warn you
do not watch this if you are squeamish, because there are photos of dead,
cut open bears that have been knee cropsied, also parts of dead animals,
and the documentary itself can just be like 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 alone in the wilderness, but there are
multiple occasions where he'd bring women along. In the last few years, he
would sometimes bring his girlfriend, Amy hugen Art, and of the one hundred
hours of footage, Amy was only seen 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 of these bears and talk to them as if
they were pets, and he named the ones that he would see year after
year that he could recognize. In the first ten minutes of the documentary Grizzly
Man, you see him petting two wild brown bear cubs, then he gets
scratched by a sub adult bear that he named a rowdy, and then he's
filming a ten foot tall male bear at one point that comes within feet of
him because Tim sat in its way as the bear was trying to scratch its
back on a tree and he just told it to leave, and to be
fair, it did. And Tim's videos are a lot of him saying how
dangerous these bears are, but he continually would get so close to them that
he could touch them. And this is where the story becomes hard for me
to talk about because although I think Tim's heart was in the right place,
I can't say that getting so close to these bears was a good choice.
And the way that he interacted with the bears was considered harassment. And in
any other case of a person getting too close to a bear, Nick and
I would call it harassment. And that's what it is, so really,
in the eyes eyes of the park Service and also in my eyes, it
was harassment the way that he was interacting with these bears. For example,
there's one part of the documentary where Tim's recording himself within ten feet of a
female brown bear that he named the grinch because she has quote kind of an
aggressive attitude, which may or may not just be the fact that she is
a bear, and she was standing over a carcass that she was eating as
Tim started talking, and as he's talking, she walks closer to him,
so his back is to her. He's facing the camera and she is behind
his back. She walks closer to him, eventually getting within like two feet
of him, and he scolds her, telling her to back off, and
after telling her quote, don't you do 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
constantly breaking park rules with what he was doing. First of all, as
we talked about when we talk about Yellowstone Catmai National Park advises people to stay
at least fifty yards or forty six meters 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 his campsite for months at a time,
and at CAPMI you cannot camp in one backcountry location for more than fourteen days
in order to reduce impact in the land, and if he had wanted to
camp longer than fourteen days, the rule 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 move again, I'm not sure if this was
a rule at the time he was there, but Katmai also requires that all
backcountry campers use bear resistant food containers, and often Timothy did not secure any
of his food or toiletrees in most of his time there. He also did
not use electric fencing around his campsite, which is another backcountry camping recommendation,
so not a rule, and they warn against camping near bear trails, but
tim would purposely camp near them so that he could see them most bears.
He only carried and used bear spray once in his entire time going there over
the thirteen years, but in his book he said that he was so grief
stricken after using the bear spray that he 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 said he accumulated six violations, which included guiding
tourists without a license, camping in the same area longer than the National Park
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 his tent and he'd pet them and let them
bite him, which, besides being harassment, is also a big disease risk
because Raybi's still exists up there, so that's obviously always a concern. So
all the bear things aside. Also, please don't interact with foxes this way.
Not a great idea, but at one point Tim got coffee with deb
like It, the superintendent of Katmai National Park, a few years before his
death. She told him she thought that the work he was doing was great
because he was bringing positive attention to the bears, but if he had any
more violations within the park that he would have to be banned for life,
and he needed to be more careful before anyone got hurt or in trouble,
meaning both humans and bears. As you can imagine, Tim did not have
a great relationship with the National Park Service. I came here and protected the
animals as best I could. In fact, I'm the only protection for these
animals out here. The government flying over a grand total of two times in
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 come here in peace and in love, neutral
and respect. I will continue to do this. I will fight them.
I will be an American dissident if I need be. There's a patriotic time
going on right now. But as far as this fucking government's concerned, Fuck
you, motherfucking park Service. Do you watch any of his footage, It's
clear that although Tim may no longer be 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 from his addiction to alcohol and drugs. But
he was self isolating in the wilderness except when he brought women along with him,
obviously, and he considered the bears and the foxes around him to be
legitimately his friends. And in the videos he took, he couldn't seem to
come to terms with the death of the animals that he considered friends. Second
edition, two thousand and one. It's taken a sad turn, but it
is a real turn. And I warned the death of this gorgeous baby fox.
Goodbye those fox I'm out of his eye. 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. But still he claimed he was out there doing
research. But the point of research is to be objective, and Tim didn't
seem to be able to come to terms emotionally with the reality of nature.
He also often in his videos had erratic mood shifts, as you kind of
heard earlier when he was talking to the Grinch, and then there's some footage
he took of himself talking about his struggles with sexuality. And my point here
is Tim really invested everything he had into being around these bears and doing what
he thought was protecting them, and that was the majority of his efforts was
on these bears, not a lot on helping himself, if that makes sense.
But the thing is Tim thought that he was the only one protecting these
bears. But these brown bears lived in a national park. These ones were
protected from hunting and their habitat was also protected. So in my eyes,
this is just my opinion, this was an escape for Tim. He was
there under the guise of protecting the bears, but really it was to run
away and be around animals, because animals a lot of times can be easier
to interact with. Then people totally get 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 dealing with people. There was also an instance
in two thousand and one where he recorded some taurusts throwing rocks at a brown
bear to get a good picture of it, which is an absolutely disgusting thing
to do. So basically they were trying to get the bear to look at
them so they could get a good picture 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 hit with big rocks, which is very upsetting.
But Tim the whole time was just crying and never actually intervened. He
never stepped up and told them to stop. But if you're setting out to
protect these bears this is that would be a perfect example to do so where
no one else is around to stop these people from throwing rocks at bears except
for him, and he did not once again, nothing wrong with escaping into
the wilderness, but it's also not exactly right when you're harassing wildlife and breaking
rules and potentially damaging the habitat that you have set out to save. Now
let us finally get into the incident that you all know about if you've heard
of Tim before. It was late September two thousand and three, which is
typically when his expedition ended, because winter would be right around the corner and
the bears would be fattening up to get ready for it. As I mentioned
up top, Tim was not always alone, and in two thousand and three,
Amy, his girlfriend, was with him in Katmai. We know from
Tim and Amy's personal diaries that Amy was terrified of the bears. She actually
had also just gotten a new job and was set to start when she got
back from Alaska that fall. She also informed him that this would be her
last time accompanying him to stay with the Brown Bears. Whether or not that
meant they were going to end the relationship, we don't know. So Tim
and Amy went back to Kodiak to make their way home to California for the
winter, but at the airport in Kodiak, Tim had an altercation with an
airport agent over the validity of his ticket, 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 new job, and according to Tim's diary,
she called him quote hell bent on destruction, but she did return to the
Grizzly Maze with him all the same. So it was September twenty ninth,
two thousand and three when they returned to their campsite near the shore of Kathleia
Lake. So I actually want to take a moment before we continue to correct
some information that I've said on this podcast before that I have now come to
learn is no longer correct. So previously I have said that bears such as
black bears or brown bears go into torpor, which is like not a true
hibernation, but like a shortened form of hibernation. And I've come to recently
learn I'm not sure if this is just new information in general or just new
to me, but bears such as black bears and brown bears actually do go
into true hibernation. They're actually what some scientists now call quote super hibernators.
So, according to bearwise dot org, a bear's metabolism, heartbeat, and
respiration rate drops dramatically, but its body temperatures only drop about twelve degrees during
hibernation. They don't eat nor do they go to the bathroom, unlike true
hibernators who wake up every few days to drink, go to the bathroom,
and eat some food before they go back to sleep. So I always want
us to be using them as fresh, correct information on this podcast. So
thank you to those who pointed that out to me. And now we will
all go on knowing that bears are in fact hibernators and they are super at
it. So thank you for pointing that out to me. So, just
to recap, Tim and Amy were about to go home. Tim got angry
at some people decided he needed one more week with the bears, so they
went back. But this was the latest 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, unknown and wilder bears from the interior. But
Tim also wanted to stay that extra week to try to find and locate one
of his favorite bears that he had not seen in a while. Tim had
taken a video of himself sitting next to 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 is forging in the stream. He said he
had just met Oli the other day and 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,
and an aggressive one at bat who is the one that you must be very
careful of. For these are the bears that, on occasion do for survival
kill any umans. Could only the big 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 down as gulling going down the pipe. He
even said most people should camp in the open with weapons and that what he
was doing was unsafe. Within a few days of their return, he said
in one video quote, I have remained safe, but every second of every
day that I have moved through this jungle or even at the tent, I
am right on the precipice of great bodily harm or even death end quote.
On Sunday, October fifth, Timothy had a phone call from satellite phone with
Jewel, the co founder of Tim's organization in California, and in that call
he did not report any problems with any bears. On October sixth, Willie
Fulton, his friend and pilot who would often bring them out to Cappai,
was set to pick Tim and Amy up to take them home finally for the
year. However, when Willie got to the shore, he didn't say any
gear on the beach where he typically met them, which was unusual, so
he started walking up the embankment towards where he knew their camp was, and
he was calling for them but not getting a response. At one point,
he got an uneasy feeling and turned around, walking quickly towards his plane,
and as he was walking, he looked 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 quickly as 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 a human rib cage. Consuming it, and
at that moment he realized it was the same bear that was just stalking him,
and that the remains likely belonged to either Tim or Amy. He flew
low to try to scare the bear away from the remains, but each time
he dove lower, the bear would just eat more quickly, so Willie called
for help. Willie led Alaska State troopers and members of the Park Service to
the site where he had encountered the bear eating the human remains, and as
they stopped to look around, someone knows to bear approaching them, and everyone
began shooting. When the gunfire stopped and the literal cloud of smoke from the
gunfire dissipated, it was clear to Willie that the bear that had just been
shot was the same bear that stalked him just moments before, and he guessed
it was the same bear that killed his friends. As the team began looking
around, they found Timothy's disfigured head, a partial human spine, a right
forearm in Tim's hand with his wristwatch still 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 basically it killed more than it could eat at
one time and was like just covered her 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 their recovery efforts. Officials tried retrieving this bear
to do a field ney cropsy, but weather was getting bad that day,
so they left both the bears and took as much as they could and left
the area. But when they returned by October seventh through eighth, all that
remained of that second bear was the bear's head and some bones remaining, but
its teeth indicated it was probably around three years old. The bear that was
killed first, the one that had stalked Willie, the one that he presumed
killed his friends, was twenty eight years old and had a tattoo on his
lip that marked him as Bear one forty one, meaning that he had been
captured by scientists before or the wildlife billogists within the state, and he was
part of their monitoring efforts for the grizzlies in the park. Bear one,
for one had worn down teeth and broken canines, but otherwise seemed to have
healthy levels of fat and otherwise seemed to be in okay condition. A field
me cropsy revealed human remains inside his stomach, and in fact it was the
only remains in his stomach, so it was the only thing he had eaten
in a while. And the pictures of that are in the documentary, which
is why I set up top to view it with caution. But in the
end, at the end of this nee cropsy on Bear one forty one,
four trash bags full of human remains and 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 Oli in the background, claiming that Oli could
eat him. And it has been speculated that Oly was in fact Bear one
forty one. Because tim was often recording, 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 reasons why this case became so popularized in the
media, but this is probably the main reas reason that people know of this
case is because there is sound out there of his death, but the lens
cap was on the camera at the time, so there's no actual footage,
just the audio, and his co founder of Grizzly People, Juwel Palivak,
is the only one that has this audio, but before it was given to
her, it was analyzed by Alaska State troopers for the purposes of the investigation
of their deaths. The audio begins around one thirty pm on October fifth,
so this is the evening before they were supposed to be picked up by Willie
on October sixth, and the audio there is very clear sound of rain,
so there was a storm happening at the time, and Tim and Amy were
in their tent about to eat dinner when they heard a bear outside, So
it is speculated that Tim went outside and Amy remained inside. At first,
Amy turns on the camera and you can hear her asking Tim over the sound
of the rain, quote, is the bear still out there? Tim responds
with Amy, get out of here. Get out of here. I'm getting
killed. You can hear the zipper of the tent as Amy exit it,
and Tim is on the ground with his 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. This is followed by the sound of wind,
rain, and Amy's screams. A few seconds later, Amy tells Tim to
play dead again, and then the bear lets go of Tim and backs away.
So it's assumed here by experts that Tim playing dead worked and that's what
caused the bear to leave. And there's a short conversation that follows this between
Amy and Tim trying to figure out if the bear is actually gone. By
the sounds of the tape, it then assumed that Amy approaches Tim in an
effort to help him, but the bear returns, so she backs off.
Tim is then clearly heard screaming that playing 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 always been afraid of bears for this exact reason,
but in that moment, she pushed that fear aside to literally run up
to a bear trying to eat her boyfriend to help him. As Amy is
hitting this bear with a frying pan, in the background, Tim can be
heard moaning, and then the bear lets go of Tim's head and bites his
upper thigh and begins dragging him away. Amy is screaming at the top of
her lungs, and Tim can be heard over the storm and over Amy's screams,
saying Amy, you need to get away, so at this point it
seemed he had given up on Amy trying to save him. You can hear
Tim's moaning as he's dragged away from their camp in this audio, and the
bear can be heard fronting and growling all the while Amy is still screaming,
but at one point the pitch of her screams changed, and it is believed
when her screams changed is when the bear came back for her, and then
the videotape ends because it ran out of 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 this bear. But the recording of this attack
is six minutes long. According to the official report released by the Department of
the Interior, which you can find online thanks to someone filing a Foyer request,
most of Tim and Amy's food that they were eating for themselves was actually
in bear proof containers when the air was being investigated, and there was food
easily accessible to bears within the tent, but it did not appear that any
bear tried to actually get into the tent to access that food. Otherwise,
they noted that his campsite was pretty clean. So in that report they listed
the contributing factors to Tim and Amy's deaths as follows. One, the location
of their camp site was the primary factor that led to this attack because it
was near active late season spawning sites for salmon and in an area with thick
brush at a site nowhere near other people. Two. Tim's pattern of camping
near prime feeding sites during a time when bears were fiercely competing for food contributed
to this attack as well. And three 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 a few feet could have caused this fatal encounter.
The report is really fascinating and shows sketches of the area of the attack
and where certain remains and what not were 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 male bear, and that this was an isolated
incident that the younger second bear that was 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 what you love and let it kill you,
and the pilot that ultimately discovered what had 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
talk about in this podcast, is that human lives come first, and sometimes
it really sucks. But when you make the choice to approach wild animals and
get them used to people, especially animals like bears, it is a very
real possibility that they will and can hurt someone or damage property to the point
that they will have to be euthanized. And although Tim never would have wanted
these bears to be killed, OLEI and the other bear never would have been
shot had Tim not put himself so close to them. Also, like we
were talking up top about, when Tim had coffee with that superintendent of Katmai,
she was saying, be careful or else something bad could happen, someone
could get hurt, or something bad could happen to the bears or people.
She was saying that because there had never 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 someone there. This was preventable, and this
case has had long lasting effects, of course on the families of Tim and
Amy, but also the people that had 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 to do the outreach everybody. It has had
very long lasting effects, even though it was some twenty years ago. In
the end, some say Tim set a bad example for how to interact with
wildlife and that he encouraged the harassment of bears. I think it's also important
to point out here that the native people in the area, the Alyutic,
had lived with these bears for thousands of years, and in the documentary Grizzly
Man, the director spoke with the curator of the Elyutic Museum, and the
man he spoke to, who was an Elytic person, said that Tim trying
to act like a bear was the quote ultimate of disrespecting the bear and what
the bear represents, and that in the elyutic culture they avoided the bears,
and the bears avoided them, and when they crossed that invisible boundary with the
bears, quote, we pay the price. And the clip of the curator
saying that in the film is overlaid onto a clip of Tim taking the video
of a brown bear swimming. And then Tim gets into the water and gets
right like literally within inches of this bear, and the bear just chooses to
exit the water calmly and just leaves him alone, which honestly is really impressive
if you think about it, the fact that he swam with a wild brown
bear and it chose to not even scratch him at all. Once again,
not a good choice. Others say that 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
Man documentary, someone sent his close friends a letter saying, quote, a
bare diet consists of liberals and democrats and lack of environmentalists that think the spotted
owl is the most important thing in the world. End quote. You can
hate Tim all you want, but it is so easy to write a letter
from your couch where you're sitting watching Fox News all day to people you don't
know, saying that their close friend deserved to die, when you yourself have
never stepped out of your comfort zone and stood up for something you believed in
even when it wasn't the mainstream thing to do. Also, I'm not sure
what dumpster fire of a person you have to be to hear that someone died
than feel compelled to write a letter to someone that loved them saying that the
person that died deserved it. I'm sure none of you listening to this podcast
would do that, So I'm just ranting, but I just felt the need
to say it. So there is was Tim unorthodox? Yes? Did he
break rules and ultimately cause the death of two bears? Also yes, but
he loved something so much that he dedicated his entire life to it and has
lived on after his death being known for that passion, which is more than
most people can say. He also managed to live beside brown Bears for thirteen
years, literally within feet of them with no conflicts, and he really did
capture some amazing footage of the bears and the foxes and Catmai that seemingly no
one else will be able to do and frankly, no one else should do.
Like around minute twenty six in that documentary, Tim is sitting with one
of his favorite bears behind him, mister Chocolate, within like ten or fifteen
feet, and one of his favorite foxes that he named Spirit runs up with
her kits. So Tim sitting within feet 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. Once again, although not advised, it is
incredible. I don't agree with Tim's methods, but I can understand where he's
coming from. Although I am a biologist and we often have to be objective
and we have to get used to wild life sometimes is being destroyed, it
is very easy to forget that each animal is an individual, just like your
pets are. All individuals are wild animals pets, of course not, but
each fox, each bear, even each snake, each bird, each turtle,
each fish are all individuals and all animals as a whole are worth protecting.
Few people have gone as far as Timothy did an attempt to protect wildlife
for better or worse. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode.
I will post relevant links in the episode description, and you can find
links to our website Patren and all of our social media in the episode description
as well. I know I've said in the last few episodes that we were
doing like kind of a theme. So we started this year talking about the
Endangered Species Act, which grizzlies and brown bears are covered under four Now it
is a very contentious issue, which I'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 doing journalism on wild animals. And now we're
ending with we not ending. I'm not saying we're ending the podcast, but
like we're ending this little arc with Timothy, and I think the point I
was trying to make is we as people have a very complicated relationship with wildlife,
and some people decide that certain species are worth killing, like wolves,
like we talked about in the first episode of the year. Some people go
out of their way to try to help animals, like we talked about in
the rehab episode, and you actually just end up doing more harm than good.
We talked about ways that you actually can be helpful in that episode to
wildlife, and in the episode with Sigh, and about all the wonderful research
that we could do working alongside animals and how we can learn from them and
learn more about how they are individuals and how they deserve to be protected.
And I wanted to end that little arc with this story about Timothy because I
think it's a good representation of although we should care about wildlife, and although
many of us may love wildlife, there's a line and we have to tote
that line in order to preserve them. But when we overstep, when we
try to insert ourselves into nature in a way that just isn't appropriate, is
when we can end up doing more harm than good. So, once again,
not that I agree with Tim's methods, but he really did love these
bears and just wanted them protect did and really he needed an escape for himself.
And I can't say that I haven't gone into the woods as an escape
either. I have not tried to pretend that the animals in the woods are
my friends. However, I get it, and I hope that if you
went into this episode knowing about this case and you thought Tim was just some
wacko, that maybe you could have more compassion for him at the end.
But in the end, I do want us all to understand that it is
not okay at harass wildlife. There are rules in these national parks for a
reason. We should not approach the wild animals in the national parks because it
is not a zoo. They're not our friends. They are there for us
to respect from a distance. So thank you all so much for listening.
We'll be back in two weeks with a new animal tech story. But in
the meantime, thank you so much to Josh Walsh for making our intro music.
Thank you to Jesse Walsh for doing all the editing, and I will
see you later. They needed a caretaker, They needed someone to look after
them, but not a drunk person, not a person messed up. So
I promised the bears that if I would look over them, would they please
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 absolute miracle, and the miracle was animals.
The miracle was animals.