What is an unlucky act of God?  What represents a misadventure caused by alleged human negligence?   What is the value of a life?

The widow of a man fatally mauled by a Yellowstone-area grizzly bear in 2010 is suing the federal government, alleging reckless disregard for safety protocol owed to bruin researchers. At stake also is the reputation of one of the most respected large mammal research units on the planet, the Yellowstone Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.

An attorney for Yolanda Evert, whose husband Erwin Evert was killed after stumbling upon a grizzly awakening from the effects of sedation east of Yellowstone National Park, filed suit Oct. 25, 2011 in federal district court in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The complaint alleges that researchers affiliated with the bear study team, a unit of the U.S. Geological Survey, committed negligent and wrongful acts in their handling of a 425-pound male bear, which had been trapped and tranquilized, then awoke and apparently attacked Evert.  According to a court document filed by attorney Emily Rankin with the Spence Law Firm based in Jackson, Wyoming, the family is seeking damages of $5 million.



                 The late botanist Erwin Evert


In addition to the study team, the suit cites the two field scientists that worked with the bear, known as Bear #646, on June 17, 2010, the date Evert died. Named are Chad Dickinson and Seth Thompson, as well as their superior, Charles Schwartz, who was overseeing the study team at the time of the incident but has since retired from government service. 

Professional colleagues of Evert wrote in a tribute obituary posted at the University of Wyoming’s site, Rocky Mountain Herbarium: “The needless death of our friend and colleague Erwin Evert has saddened us all.” 

I can safely say that it saddened and shocked everyone involved, from those who knew Evert to associates with the study team that was left reeling by the incident.

Evert, 70 at the time of his death, was a Chicago native who fell in love with the West, and became a noted botanist.  He published a catalog and atlas titled Vascular Plants of the Greater Yellowstone Area .

One irony is that, according to friends, he also was a devout conservationist who appreciated spending the warm months of the year on the edge of wilderness backcountry inhabited by bears.  He was killed as he hiked through the Kitty Creek drainage in the Shoshone National Forest not far—somewhere within the neighborhood of a mile— from the place where he and his wife maintained a summer cabin on land leased by the Forest Service.

The couple, both otherwise residents of the Chicago area, had spent nearly 40 summers in Wyoming.  Kitty Creek is located along U.S. Highway 20 that parallels the North Fork of the Shoshone River between the town of Cody and Yellowstone National Park.  Kitty Creek and their cabin is about seven miles outside Yellowstone’s East Entrance.

The chain of events is laid out in the court brief and corresponds with most press accounts.  The tragedy made headlines across America.

This much is not in dispute: It is standard protocol for bear researchers to close off an area and mark trailheads with warning signs whenever grizzlies are being trapped, immobilized via tranquilizers and studied. A fatal incident like this has never happened in the history of the study team's work in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

In earlier stories, the government had contended that the area was well marked with closure signs. Attorneys allege that such signage announcing that closure of a trail used by Evert was removed prematurely, meaning he had no warning that a grizzly, which also showed signs of being wounded from scrapes with other bears, might be awakening from sedation. It is, at this point, uncertain exactly how much Evert did or did not know about whether bear trapping was occurring.

Dickinson and Thompson, the complaint states, were in the area trapping grizzlies and studying the animals before releasing them.  Information gleaned from such research, carried out since the days when John and Frank Craighead pioneered the technique of tracking Yellowstone grizzlies using radio telemetry in the late 1950s, has led to unprecedented insight about bear behavior.

Bear 646 had been lured to the trap site using deer meat and then was immobilized with the sedative Telazol.  The bear’s weight was measured and other samples were taken, including a tooth, for later analysis.

Rather than stay with the bear until the sedation—three doses of Telazol—hard worn off, the complaint states that Dickinson and Thompson left to check a trapping snare nearby.  Another key part of the complaint is the assertion that researchers removed warning signs.

 “Shortly after the crew took down the warning signs, Erwin Evert walked on the trail, a decommissioned road, without knowledge or warning that he was walking in the same location of a trap site or a recently trapped and recovering bear,” it alleges.

The brief continues, “As the crew prepared to leave the Kitty Creek drainage area, they encountered Yolanda Evert and she expressed concern as to her husband’s whereabouts.  Chad Dickinson rode directly back to site #4 to look for Mr. Evert.  Mr. Dickinson found Mr. Evert’s mauled body approximately twenty-one yards from where bear #646 was left to recover unmonitored from the effects of chemical immobilization and other intrusions, and almost directly under a tree where the [study team] crew had hung bait.”

Although Evert was reportedly not carrying bear spray, attorney Emily Rankin told the Chicago Tribune that it is immaterial since it is her opinion federal researchers created a hazard that Evert blindly walked into. 

Two days after Evert died, wildlife management specialists killed Bear #646 and through DNA analysis linked it to Evert. No date has yet been set for trial.