December 11, 2024
28 years. 18 cubs. Over 61,000 online followers. Grizzly 399 was a tour de force in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, inspiring artists, motivating activists and leading wildlife managers to change policy. Now, she’s gone. We asked the question: What’s next?
The first time I saw Grizzly 399 — one of only two personal sightings — it was April 2022, a few months before she separated from her largest litter ever: four unruly cubs known affectionately as “the quad.”
I was only four months into being the News&Guide’s environmental reporter and didn’t know much about anything, let alone how to balance the story when I pulled up to the bear jam on Moose-Wilson Road. In retrospect, the story was not just about 399 causing a suburban bear jam, which is how I wrote it that day.
It was a much longer story, one that wasn’t possible to cram into a short article.
On that day I didn’t see the big picture. I didn’t
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fully understand the danger 399 was in, having left Grand Teton National Park. And I didn’t see the Wyoming Game and Fish Department watching the scene nearby, ready to intervene if humans and the five large, hungry bears they were watching got too close.
All I saw was the people gathered along the Snake River Ranch’s fence line, clambering for a sight of the Tetons’ queen. I wanted to see what they were seeing, and I snapped a few pictures — the only photographs I ever personally shot of 399. Now I look back at those photographs and understand a bit more of the story.
It was a story about how a single grizzly served as her species’ vanguard, advancing south out of their protected home range in the heart of the
Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem into a community unprepared for her arrival. It was a story about humans’ capacity for devotion — you could call it obsession — with a being other than themselves and not of their species. And it was a story about how potent symbolism can be when humans advocate for and fight over how best to manage something they all love, but for different reasons. 399 is now gone. But her legacy lives on. I hope you enjoy reading about what made her such an indelible symbol and what her life has meant and will mean for the next generation of wildlife managers, people and, of course, grizzly bears. — Billy Arnold, environmental reporter
The News&Guide’s editorial board and cartoonist Rob Pudim weigh in on the impact of Grizzly 399.
lived and died by the highway, raising the question: Is roadside living good for bears?
There’s broad agreement: There will never be another 399. But other bears have stolen people’s hearts.
The creator of 399’s Instagram account was anonymous for a decade. Until now.
399’s jaunt through southern Jackson Hole made the community more bear proof. There are still gaps.
The way humans have talked about grizzly bears has changed, thanks in no small part to 399.
399 was known as a “good bear.” But it wasn’t always that way.
ON THE COVER: In early June of this year, Jackson photographer Steve Mattheis had what he called an “unforgettable” experience with Grizzly 399. “After about 15 years of photographing her, I had no idea this would be the last time,” he wrote. “And I am grateful that my final photos of her were so ‘her.’ She radiated power and beauty in her spring coat, moving gracefully through the woods with her cub in tow, unfazed by the cars and people. She even glanced my way as she approached, showing off her magnificent claws through the dewy grass. She was pure magic.”
By Billy Arnold
If federal wildlife managers choose to remove grizzly bears’ Endangered Species Act protections in 2025, Wyoming officials will consider altering a key piece of policy that grizzly 399 helped enshrine: buffer zones outside of Grand Teton National Park intended to protect beloved bears like 399 from hunting.
“That’s something we’d have to revisit,” Angi Bruce, the new director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, told the News&Guide in early December. “There’s a lot of factors that come into play and we’d want to make sure that was still scientifically sound and it was something the public still wanted.”
To the second point, there’s no question that some members of the public emphatically do want them.
“The buffer zone needs to stay, 399 or not. It was a good idea, so why change it now?” said Cindy Camp bell, a Red Top resident and grizzly advocate who opposes removing their federal protections. She sees the buffer zone as a layer of protection for all grizzlies that live in Teton Park, not just 399 and her famous cadre.
The idea of buffer zones are not new in wildlife management, but after grizzlies’ federal protections were last removed, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission approved hunting seasons in 2018 that included a corridor north and east of Teton Park where hunters wouldn’t be able to pursue or kill grizzlies.
“That no hunt area was based on all known locations of that particular bear,” Dan Thompson, large carnivore supervisor for the Game and Fish department, told the News&Guide in October.
But even in 2018, wildlife advocates felt the buffer zone was an insufficient compromise to protect bears. Delisting as a whole, they argued, was a mistake. But the hunt never happened. At the 11th hour, a judge overturned the U.S.
When grizzly bears' Endangered Species Act protections were removed in 2017, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission moved quickly to authorize a hunt in 2018 — but close areas east of Grand Teton National Park, a moved designed to protect habituated, celebrity bears. But if grizzlies' federal protections are removed in January, state officials hinted that they may not use maps from 2018 as a starting point. That means the buffer zones could be at risk.
Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to remove grizzlies’ federal protections, saying states hadn’t properly addressed concerns about genetic diversity and
the way they count bears. Grizzly 399 was a driving force in advocacy against delisting. She became the face of the anti-hunting “shoot ’em
with a camera” movement, and led wildlife photographer Tom Mangelsen to apply for and receive a hunting tag — a tag he planned to retire so that one fewer hunter could take a shot at grizzlies. How 399’s popularity translated into advocacy against delisting was the famous bruin’s legacy in the national political arena, not the creation of the buffer zones, said Louisa Willcox, the founder of Grizzly Times.
“She was the face of the delisting debate in 2016 and 2017 and the court case that led up to the relisting,” Willcox said. “Similarly, 610 and others are going to be front and center to the next one.”
But Willcox, an opponent of delisting, said buffer zones outside national parks are necessary if the decision goes the states’ way. She pointed to the 2021 Montana wolf hunt, which became an international controversy after hunters killed roughly 80 wolves near hunt areas on Yellowstone’s northern border, wiping out some park packs. That year, there was no buffer preventing wolf hunting along the Yellowstone and Montana border.
Now there is.
Famous grizzly bears have also been killed by hunters, like Grizzly 211, known to wildlife watchers as “Scarface.” That bruin, a popular denizen of Yellowstone National Park, was killed outside park borders. While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigated the incident, they never charged the hunter, who claimed self-defense. This year, a record year for grizzly mortalities in the Greater Yellowstone, hunters and other backcountry users have killed 15 bears in self defense — well above the 10-year average of 10.
Bears habituated to human presence like 399 are at particular risk of being killed by hunters, Willcox said.
“You’ve got a very tolerant bear that didn’t run away and died as a result,”
When we lose a beloved acquaintance to an accident, humans tend to search for some sense of meaning or legacy.
Millions of visitors glimpsed or photographed iconic Grizzly 399 and her brood. In her 28 years, she birthed 18 cubs, some that survived tough odds and went on to have cubs of their own. Wildlife watchers were thrilled and amazed at the consistent sightings, and even biologists were wowed when 399 pulled off a “cub swap” in 2011 with one of her offspring, Grizzly 610. Perhaps most impressive of all, 399 guided four cubs through the valley to south of Hoback Junction in 2021 and back to Teton park to den. The five bears strolled past Jackson Town Hall one night, perhaps the first time grizzlies had roamed the site in 150 years or more.
Along the way, this extraordinary bear gave humans a rare glimpse into the life of one of the wildest animals on Earth — Ursus arctos horribilis. She gained a following around the world and helped people better appreciate
wildness and the need to protect wild places.
Understandably, upon the grizzly’s death seven weeks ago in a collision with a vehicle in Snake River Canyon, people have been saddened, upset and looking for a way to honor the bear.
To us, there’s no better way to celebrate 399’s legacy than by supporting the construction of wildlife crossings in Teton County and around the state. Remarkably, 399 and cubs survived all these years in close proximity to roads, but her death is yet another reminder of the danger highways pose to animals.
If we are to do a better job of coexisting with wildlife, crossings are essential. Each year there are 200 documented collisions between motorists and large mammals in Teton County, and biologists say the actual figure could be up to four times higher, because many go unreported.
Teton County has been planning a crossing over Highway 89 north of Jackson by the National Elk Refuge and needs to raise $1.5 mil-
lion in philanthropy to secure a federal grant for construction. This is in addition to specific purpose excise tax revenue that voters already have approved. The county has partnered with the nonprofit Wyldlife Fund to accept donations to raise the necessary match.
Newspaper leaders, when planning this special supplement in tribute to 399, decided to pitch in 10% of advertising revenue toward the wildlife crossings project with the Wyldlife Fund: TheWyldlifeFund.org.
Given the size of Grizzly 399’s following and the resources in this community, raising the $1.5 million in memory of the bear should be as easy as plucking huckleberries and snacking on pine nuts. Let’s channel our grief over her death into a lasting legacy of protecting thousands of wild creatures in the decades to come.
By the editorial board: Johanna Love, Adam Meyer, Kevin Olson and Jim Stanford.
On the morning I learned of 399’s passing, I drove the lands where she roamed for 28 years. She was hit by a car around 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 22 in the Snake River Canyon, heading downstream, in fact farther downriver than she had ever been known to travel. As I left the town of Jackson and headed north, I felt a palpable emptiness on the land and even in the heavens, a strange stillness, a void filled with loss and longing. To absorb that we will never again experience 399’s physical majesty is heartbreaking and unfathomable.
Many of us feel there has never been a bear like 399. She is sui generis , in a league of her own.
Perhaps 399 is like a divine avatar or holy being who only incarnates every few centuries and arrives when we humans are in need of special help and direction on our evolutionary path. Her passing marks the end of an era, an era we never wanted to end.
As I entered Grand Teton National Park, 399’s primary residence, I felt the land itself mourning the passing of this Great Bear. Her endless movements and migrations — circumnavigating from the north end of the park to far south of the town of Jackson — brought so much life and vitality to the paths she walked upon, and also to our human community that awaited her next visitation.
I am forlorn knowing that the pos-
sibility of having a sudden, magical encounter or fleeting sighting of her and her various broods will never happen again. It was always a wonder and surprise how she would bless us with an audience — truly posing to give those who loved her a chance for the photograph of a lifetime — then disappear again to her hidden wilds, secret trails of passage, especially the Snake River water corridor. How she spent most of her days and years was mostly hidden from us.
But when she reappeared, 399 was an endless source of wisdom, guidance, animal joy and connection, and we followed her with a hunger for what is most real, wild, authentic and true in this world.
rise in the east. It’s a sign of someone infinitely curious, a teacher, a guide, a traveler, a trickster, a storyteller. Gemini is a sign whose higher purpose is to bridge dualities and differing points of view, to find common ground and acceptance of others.
Lyn Dalebout
Now we must lean into and learn to live in a new reality: the Land Without 399. We must metabolize her being into our beings, the many gifts and lessons experienced as we move through our depth of shared grief. And we also celebrate with immense gratitude the fact that we knew her when she walked the Earth.
Many of us this summer sensed in a more poignant way the possibility that 399’s sacred assignment might be coming to an end. We hoped and prayed that her transition, when it was meant to be, would be one of ease and grace.
When 399 left this earthly plane, the moon in Gemini was about to
We asked readers to pen short remembrances of Grizzly 399. This is a selection. — Ed. How blessed
Almost two decades ago I began dating a lifelong bear lover. This relationship took me to Wyoming more times than I can count, led to the purchase of a home on Union Pass and hundreds of hours looking for and viewing bears. I am now a bear lover too, thanks to my husband’s influence and enthusiasm. Along with thousands of other bear lovers, I grieve the loss of 399.
Our proximity to the parks has given us the opportunity to experience multiple wonderful wildlife sightings. I was blessed to see 399 several times. However, two instances stand out in my mind. When our 11-year-old niece and 15-year-old nephew visited from Colorado, we took them to the parks. 399 was their first, and remains their only, grizzly bear sighting in the wild. I got chills when we approached the bear jam. I couldn’t believe how fortunate we all were! We got to experience this with them! Not just any bear (they are all magnificent) but the famous 399!
In 2020 we were in the right place at the right time. We were on the Pilgrim Creek bridge when 399 and her quads crossed the river. That excitement can’t be described and will never be forgotten! Four adorable, tiny cubs? Unbelievable! A once-ina-lifetime experience! I recognize and appreciate how blessed I have been. I will continue to remember 399 and pray for glimpses of her offspring and other beautiful wild animals in their homes.
Sharon Ammerman Union Pass
As a bear watcher, I spent most of my time in northern Yellowstone. After hearing so much about 399 in the Tetons, in 2018, I made the trip down, that’s when I saw 399 and her two yearling cubs. During the dark times of 2020, due to COVID-19, once the parks started opening up, I went down and saw 399 with her four cubs. What a way to brighten the world up; it was a true blessing, and to successfully raise all four to subadults. I watched 399 and Grizzly 679 courting in 2022. I saw 399 every year from 2018 to my last sighting on May 30, 2024, with her yearling cub. 399 was a great mother. She taught us so much
As I relived many memories on my drive — honoring her the day after she passed — I am most grateful for the myriad moments I had with her since I first started following her in 2007. She was both a fierce mother bear imparting life-giving lessons to her cubs, and also played with them in joy and tenderness. I consider her to be one of my greatest mentors. I believe she knew she was a teacher to all of us. She chose to interact with us. She chose to guide us in how to live respectfully alongside wild ones. She gracefully and youthfully aged.
Along with being remembered by us humans who loved her, 399’s legacy now is all of her cubs, with their various personalities and missions. When I first saw her last cub soon after the two of them appeared at Pilgrim Creek in 2023, I immediately dubbed him the Little King.
Even at his first introduction to the human world, this wee cub had a powerful stance and presence. He wore the white collar of fur around his neck like a robe of royalty.
and gave us a glimpse of a bear’s world. She always looked so proud to show off her cubs. Her interaction with her cubs was amazing. She always looked at her admirers with a smile. She brought me so much happiness and I was always so happy to see her. She also proved that we can coexist with grizzly bears.
RIP, you beautiful grizzly, you will be missed and you will live in our hearts forever.
David Brown Missoula, Montana
There is nothing quite like seeing a grizzly bear in the wild. 399 gave us that opportunity numerous times over the years as we traveled to the Tetons from Minnesota.
We were camping at Signal Mountain when we overheard our neighbor telling someone that he had just seen a grizzly sow with four cubs as he pulled into the campground. We knew exactly who he had seen, and in seconds we were at the entrance to the campground. There she was. ... with her four little cubs! We watched them wrestling and playing just feet from our car, all while 399 kept a close eye on them. It is a memory that we will never ever forget. We were giddy all day.
And unbelievably, later that week we were able to see eight grizzly bears together in one field near Pilgrim Creek; it was 399 and the quads, along with 610 and her two yearlings.
We feel like 399 gave us all a chance to learn more about grizzlies and to appreciate them in a positive way. Who would have ever thought one could feel so sad when she died? There will never ever be another bear like 399.
Deedee Nadeau Winona, Minnesota
I felt so much sadness when I learned that our Jackson, Wyoming, bear 399 had been killed by a car Oct. 22, 2024. She brought so much joy and worry to all of those who knew about her. Bear 399 was a resourceful and responsible mother grizzly bear who raised her cub families the best that she knew how to keep them as safe as she knew how.
The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) documentary “Queen of the Tetons” did much to educate the public of the reasons and dangers her life presented as she chose habituation to human presence in or-
Now called Spirit by many, he carries forth the legacy of his lineage, determined to fulfill his mission as the last born cub of the Queen of the Tetons.
The whole world literally celebrated her life, and now we all grieve together. Now we will share her unique story and generous wisdom, each via our own creativity and actions, by passing it forward to those who never knew her physically but can tap into her spiritually from wherever they live.
I prayed in honor and reverence for her that day in the park amidst tears of release. I asked 399 for her guidance.
These words tumbled into my mind as a powerful breath of wind cascaded down Mount Teewinot: “Claim your gifts, and share them further and farther.”
I don’t know if these words came just for me or if she was offering advice to a humanity in need. Perhaps they resonate with you.
Beloved Grizzly Mother, 399, for now you reside in the heavens, in the breathing winds and the flowing waters, and live on in our hearts. We can connect with you there. We love you. We thank you. Fare thee well.
This tribute has been edited for length. Lyn Dalebout is a poet, astrologer and biologist. Read more of her work at EarthSkyWord.com. Guest Shots are solely the opinion of their author.
der to protect her cubs in her care. She will always be remembered by me with appreciation and awe. Marilyn Whittaker Boulder, Colorado
399, your presence was always a profound source of strength and inspiration, a powerful symbol of hope that continues to inspire me. When you were here, your energy was transformative, and it still uplifts me today. Even in your absence, your spirit remains a shining light that I sense and feel deeply, a constant reminder of your enduring legacy. As I gaze at the sky, I wonder, is that butterfly a manifestation of your loving spirit? The red bird that catches my eye, is it a sign of your continued presence? Please stay with me for a moment. I see a star shining brightly in the night sky, and I am convinced it is you, shining brightly to help guide your legacy cubs. In the beauty of nature, amidst the snow-capped mountains and the arrowleaf balsamroot at Pilgrim Creek, your footprints live on, a lasting tribute to the profound impact you’ve had as Grizzly Bear 399. I am grateful for your presence, a precious gift that inspires me to live with hope and joy.
Gloria Straube Hannibal, Missouri
We met when I was gutted by the loss of my father and were visiting the area inspired by photos we found from his visit years ago. I spotted you amongst the willows with your quads. Your magic hit me hard as I unexpectedly felt such joy observing you. I’ll never forget making my husband and father in law get out of the car yelling “get the picture!” as I moved the car to park amongst what was becoming what we later learned was referred to as a “bear jam.” I remember thinking to myself “thanks Dad that was unbelievable.” Since then I’ve learned so much about bears after being inspired by you, and my husband is a wildlife photographer (inspired by wanting to take better pictures than he did that day). Now I’m gutted by this loss of you but promise to advocate for grizzlies so the magic can carry on for others that need to experience it for themselves. Rest in peace. Your life was legendary and impact eternal.
“Thank
I want to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Jackson and Teton County community for the incredible support and love shown for our Teton Queen, Grizzly 399. Over her remarkable 28-year journey, she inspired so many of us, and together, we watched over her with care and admiration.
I cherish the moments we shared during bear jams, quietly observing at Pilgrim Creek, and exchanging waves on the highway as we all did our part to protect her. I’m also deeply grateful for the support you’ve shown to the gallery and our team—this fall’s reception was a wonderful opportunity to connect with so many of you.
Thank you, Jackson. Most importantly, thank you, 399, for sharing your extraordinary life and story with us. Your legacy will live on, never in vain, and you will always be remembered.
Wishing you all happy holidays, and I hope to see you this spring as we welcome our grizzly friends out of hibernation.
The central question: Is roadside viewing good for bears?
By Billy Arnold
Grizzly 399 was hit and killed by a car in the Snake River Canyon. Two of her cubs were hit and killed by cars in Grand Teton National Park. Her adult daughter, Grizzly 610, was also likely hit in 2023 — but survived.
And, yet, across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, vehicle strikes are far from the leading cause of grizzly bear deaths, claiming only about four bears a year. In contrast, hunters and other backcountry travelers tend to kill about 10 grizzlies a year in self-defense.
Still, after 399 died, bear managers across the region have begun asking whether allowing bears to live alongside roads and become used to speeding cars and human presence is the best thing for them and the humans who drive by or flock to watch them.
One question is whether grizzlies like 399 and her progeny were more likely to get hit by cars because of their roadside residency.
But the larger question is whether their habituation, or tolerance of human presence, is a negative when they venture into developed areas now occupied by people and replete with trash and other human food sources.
“Habituation — we don’t consider it necessarily a good or a bad thing in the park,” said Justin Schwabedissen, Grand Teton’s bear biologist. “It’s what happens when you put a bear or any other animal in close proximity to millions of visitors every year.”
When bears like Grizzly 399 are watched by thousands of people at a time, they lose their fear response to humans, he said.
“But that’s the question: Does that set them up for failure when they leave park boundaries?” he said. “We’re just in the initial stages of trying to better understand that, not just with particular bears, but across the bear population here in the Greater Yellowstone.”
Schwabedissen and other Teton Park officials are hardly the only bear experts asking that question. Hilary Cooley, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said that 399’s life and death prompt questions about finding equilibrium between the benefits of wildlife viewing and risks for bears and humans.
“How do we balance that?” Cooley said to Greater Yellowstone bear managers at a November meeting. “There are situations where the benefits would outweigh the risks, and where are those?”
Already, there has been extensive research into the consequences of viewing grizzly bears, but as yet it’s hard to say definitively whether bears in the Greater Yellowstone are served or hurt by bear watching, said Frank van Manen, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist who leads the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.
“This is so context-dependent and so nuanced that I would hesitate to draw any really strong conclusions,” van Manen said.
In general, female bears like 399 and 610 are thought to dwell along roads because there are food sources and because doing so provides some protection from male grizzlies, who see subadult bears as a threat and will kill them to send their mothers into estrus, the period in their reproductive cycle when they’re available to mate.
But while roadside living is believed to have some benefits — like protecting younger bears from marauding boars — studies also suggest there are consequences. Living along roads versus more remote areas of an ecosystem can increase the amount of time grizzlies are vigilant and decrease the amount of time they spend foraging, mating and caring for
young. As their tolerance of humans and cars increases, that can heighten their risk of being hit and killed by cars, being fed by people, being killed by people, or causing property damage and other conflicts.
“In some instances, there’s no doubt that it protects cubs,” van Manen said. “In some other instances, there’s also no doubt that the offspring of those animals and the animals themselves that are part of roadside viewing might be at a higher risk.”
A little fewer than half of cubs born in the Greater Yellowstone survive their first two years. It’s unclear whether cubs raised roadside have a higher survival rate than the average bear.
Grizzly 399, for example, has had 18 cubs. At least eight have died, six killed by humans. Of those, two were killed by cars, one by a hunter and three by wildlife officials after the bears killed livestock or got into human-related foods. The whereabouts of most of her other cubs are unknown.
Bear buffs like Tenley Thompson, general manager of Jackson Hole EcoTour Adventures, see the benefit of escaping boars as counterbalanced by the higher risk of vehicle strikes and conflict. But bears, Thompson said, are making the choice to live near roads. Humans just have to decide whether to allow them to stay and to adjust their actions accordingly to
protect bears.
“If we are, we have to make the investments and the public education and the effort to do it in a safe and an ethical way,” she said.
steps of Glacier National Park, which set a policy of hazing all habituated bears away from roads, Teton Park looked north to Yellowstone and adopted its policy.
“We decided to do what Yellowstone did, which was babysit the people and allow the bears to forage naturally,” Wilmot said.
What that looks like has changed over the years — and 399 helped drive a lot of that change. The famous matriarch was the first grizzly with cubs to take up public residence in Teton Park, and was a symbol of the species’ slow southern expansion out of core habitat in Yellowstone National Park after its protection under the Endangered Species Act in 1975. When she arrived, making her presence known to the public in 2006, the park’s wildlife biologists had to figure out whether to haze her away from the road or allow her to stay.
Hazing 399 away would have sacrificed her access to the resources she was using along Teton Park highways. Biologists at the time realized they would give up a “huge” habitat for bears if they hazed them.
“This was in a period of recovery. They were recovering. They were moving down,” said Kate Wilmot, who helped create Teton Park’s roadside bear policies in her 15 years as bear management specialist. Now she serves as the park’s branch manager for Fish and Wildlife. “This was a big deal. We wanted to support grizzly bears using the habitat.”
So rather than following in the foot-
But over time, the park’s policies have changed. A volunteer group called the “Wildlife Brigade,” which manages bear jams and keeps people 100 yards away from grizzlies, is still active. In 2011, the park changed the 100-yard rule to apply to vehicles as well as humans. The park has also closed parts of the Pilgrim Creek area near 399’s longstanding den site. Those changes were intended to give bears more room to move.
In part, the park is responding to increasing visitation and demand to see famous grizzlies like 399. But they’re also trying to figure out how to balance that with a larger number of bears on the landscape. Since 1975, when grizzlies were protected under the Endangered Species Act, their population has grown to a 2023 estimate of 1,030 grizzlies across the Greater Yellowstone, one of the largest nearly intact temperate-zone ecosystems on Earth.
At one point, park biologists counted more than 10 bears moving through backcountry areas near Pilgrim Creek in a 24-hour period. With people driving backcountry roads for a glimpse of 399, officials worried about tracking people in remote terrain and their presence blocking bear movements. So they closed the areas.
Now the park is evaluating its roadside bear management policies on an almost annual basis. For Schwabedissen, the questions that need to be answered are both about managing roadside bears in the park and what they do when they leave. He’s wondering whether the 100-yard rule sufficiently protects bears. And he wants to investigate lineages of roadside bears like 399 and her less famous counterparts to better understand survival and how that’s linked to habitat choice.
“Those are really hard questions to answer, but that’s certainly what we’re thinking about as a study team, especially as we see more of these bears that we consider habituated in areas outside of these large national parks,” Schwabedissen said
Contact Billy Arnold at 307-732-7063 or barnold@jhnewsandguide.com.
Grizzly 399 daughter 610 is the most obvious choice, but others could take spotlight.
By Kyle Leverone
Standing in the rain on a cold, November night just over two weeks after Grizzly 399 died, wildlife photographer Jacob Krank reminded mourning wildlife watchers they had something to look forward to.
“Keep going out and enjoying Princess,” Krank said, referring to another famous bruin in the Yellowstone region. “There’s grizzly bear 610, there’s Bonita, Blondie, Bruno, Brutus, Raspberry, Jam, Ash — all these other beautiful bears out there.”
For the better part of the last three decades, 399, a mother of 18 cubs, has been the iconic queen of Grand Teton National Park and Jackson Hole. As the first mother grizzly who visibly took up residence alongside the park’s roads after her species’ near eradication from the ecosystem, she became the symbol of grizzlies’ recovery. She attracted crowds of thousands of adoring fans, who saw her as a warm mother of her young and a bear who handled the spotlight that was cast upon her with grace. 399 tolerated humans’ presence and, until she was struck and killed by a car on Oct. 22, she was the living face of the grizzly bear franchise.
But now that 399 is gone, the question is: Who’s next? Will any of the bears Krank lauded at 399’s memorial service take up her mantle? While it’s hard to imagine another bear as popular as the Queen
of the Tetons, will there be a princess with as much clout as 399, the Tetons’ reigning matriarch?
In general, wildlife managers argue against naming and anthropomorphizing bears or assigning them human attributes. That detracts from observing the bears as fascinating wild animals, they argue.
Some wildlife watchers agree, including Trevor Bloom, founder of Guides of Jackson Hole.
“I’d love to see 399’s legacy be honored by a respect and new understanding of the complexity and
the beautiful lives of all grizzly bears and not just focus on one individual,” Bloom said.
But the cat is out of the bag. Even though the bears themselves aren’t fighting for their claim like in HBO’s “Game of Thrones” or “Succession,” in the days and weeks after 399’s death, speeches in her honor have been laced with hints about who could take her place — if anyone. Here are the top contenders.
The flawed, obvious choice
The obvious choice to become
spokesbear of the species in Grand Teton National Park is Grizzly 610, 399’s eldest living daughter. At 18, 610 has birthed 10 cubs and adopted one from her mother. This past summer she raised three along the road.
So as the most visible daughter of 399, 610 is an easy choice to take the throne. But some wildlife watchers say her behavior isn’t as becoming. 610 is known to be a little more skittish and less welcoming of humans. While 399 appeared to pose for photos, 610 isn’t as charismatic.
According to Bloom, 399’s daughter is more of a “natural bear.”
“I think she’s a really, really cool bear,” Bloom said. “She just gives this different feeling when you watch her versus 399. She’s a little more wild and a little more agitated or aggressive.”
Comparing the ursine icon to human icons, 399 is like Taylor Swift or LeBron James. For years she lived in the public eye and did so with such little controversy — or at least little controversy that bothered her fans. No cheating scandals, no crimes committed, no gambling. 399 mauled a hiker in 2007 but was spared when park officials ruled she acted in self defense. She got into trash and other human-provided foods when she ventured south into Jackson Hole, but not as much as some managers
expected she would. Her popularity kept wildlife managers from killing her like they typically do with food-conditioned bears.
Grizzly 610 is more of a Princess Diana. She appears to be a caring mother who doesn’t love the attention. In the past, 610 has bluff charged the wildlife paparrazi.
610 was the first bear that Candy Brad, a Boulder, Colorado, veterinarian who followed 399 in her later years, ever saw. Brad, who worries about humans getting too close to bears and habituating them, said that 610 is her favorite. She just doesn’t put up with mooning the way 399 did.
“She’s a snob and you don’t mess with her,” Brad said. “She’s a wild bear. You don’t get near her. If you go after her to photograph her, she’ll turn around and bluff charge you. And hopefully it’s just a bluff.” The new mom
Outside of the 399 bloodline, Grizzly 1063, is alternatively called “Fritter” or “Bonita.”
She’s another popular choice to follow in 399’s paw prints.
Fritter had her first litter this year and showed off three cubs in northern Teton park.
Her emergence as a mother was a symbol of grizzlies’ recovery and expansion, scientists said. As more grizzlies have inhabited the ecosystem, their average age of reproduction has trended up from 5.8 to 6.3 years old. Two bears in the Greater Yellowstone have had their first cubs at 8. One had her first cub at 9.
A relatively old first-time mom, Grizzly 1063 was 7 years old when she had her first cubs this year.
She was the most visible grizzly this past summer and stayed near the road in areas such as Leeks Marina, Colter Bay and Pilgrim Creek, Bloom said. She, like 399, handled the crowds well.
“She’s a beautiful bear, very charismatic, very easy to photograph, has the three cubs and is relatively young,” Bloom said, “so I think we’ve got many years to watch her grow.”
The other aspirants
The mother of 1063, Grizzly 793, also known as “Blondie,” is a popular bear in the park as well but doesn’t appear to have the same parental instincts as 399, wildlife watchers’ model mother. She also isn’t as present.
A grizzly sow known to wildlife watchers as Felicia and her cub saunter down Highway 26 on Togwotee Pass in late May 2019. Like Grizzly 399, Felicia has been known to raise her cubs near the Togwotee roadside, causing traffic snarls and headaches for wildlife managers just east of Grand Teton National Park.
Named as such because of her light coat, Blondie lost her three cubs in 2022. In 2023 she emerged with two bright, blond cubs of the year. But this summer, Blondie never made an appearance.
“That’s not out of the ordinary for her,” said Justin Schwabedissen, Teton park’s bear biologist. “We’ve seen her go an entire season and not show up roadside.”
Grizzly 863, who wildlife watchers call “Felicia,” is also popular, but she lives on Togwotee Pass in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Originally relocated to the pass from Cody, she has lived by the road but posed a problem for wildlife managers who don’t want photographers and bear peepers dangerously clogging the highway. Keeping with the sports analogy, 863 may as well be playing basketball overseas.
“She’s not playing for the right team,” said Jackson Hole Ecotours guide Bo Welden. “She’s not playing for the Park Service, so she doesn’t have the
franchise behind her in the same way [as 399].”
A grizzly known as “Raspberry” who allegedly held onto her most recent cub, dubbed “Jam,” for three years — a year longer than normal — is another contender, but she lives in Yellowstone National Park, far from 399’s kingdom. Welden even ventured to offer up Grizzly 926, the daughter of 610, granddaughter of 399. She birthed twins last year and hangs out in the middle of the park. But right now, 926 doesn’t seem to have the prestige to fill 399’s giant prints. Right now she’s in the minor leagues.
The options are plentiful, but out of all of them, Walden would prefer an “unknown bear” to be the next icon.
“Sometimes that feels more special,” he said. “They just get to be a bear. It’s super rare to see that.”
Contact Kyle Leverone at 307-732-7065 or sports@ jhnewsandguide.com.
“ALL OF THE GREATER YELLOWSTONE ECOSYSTEM, INCLUDING JACKSON HOLE AND THE BTNF, IS SUITABLE HABITAT FOR GRIZZLY BEARS. 399 WAS AT THE FOREFRONT OF UTILIZING A GROWING RANGE.”
—BTNF WILDLIFE BIOLOGIST ASHLEY EGAN
“399 WAS MOST OFTEN SEEN in Grand Teton National Park, but the Bridger-Teton National Forest was important to her life, too,” says BTNF North Zone wildlife biologist Ashley Egan. It is believed that 399’s den was deep in the Teton Wilderness, one of three wilderness areas within the BTNF’s 3.4 million acres. “And, as the population of grizzly bears increased, 399 appeared to be at the forefront of an expanding range going south from GTNP,” Egan says. “That’s the BTNF.”
But, as important as the BTNF was to 399 and her cubs, she was also important to the BTNF. “Given her prevalence and popularity across the GYE and nation, she helped facilitate coexistence on the BTNF. The result saved the lives of other bears,” Egan says.
It was because of 399 and other roadside bears that the BTNF started its Wildlife Bear Ambassador program in 2020. Simultaneously, the BTNF began to amplify its bear aware messaging and partner with organizations like BearWise JH and Friends of the Bridger-Teton to do things like air bear-aware PSAs on 1710AM, FBT’s radio station, educate campers about proper food storage, and install new signage at trailheads. “She also helped make the presence of grizzly bears more accepted in our community, given she was no stranger,” Egan says.
“399’s legacy will live on because of the awareness she created about grizzly bears,” says Egan. “There are other bears alive today that would not be if 399 wasn’t the ambassador for her species that she was. She’s a
The matriarch of western Wyoming’s presence — not her record breaking — caught wildlife watchers by storm.
By Billy Arnold
Dubbed the most famous bear in the world, Grizzly 399 held only one major biological record.
In 2023, wildlife watchers gathered by the thousands in Pilgrim Creek, wondering whether she would emerge from the den at all. The famous bear, known for raising her cubs along the roads in Grand Teton National Park, was 27 — an age only 9% of female grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem reach. For weeks, the crowds watched with bated breath. Then, on the evening of May 16, 2023, 399 waltzed out of her den with a tiny cub of the year in tow. When she did, she became the oldest known grizzly mother in the Greater Yellowstone. The record was set. People were floored.
“Super bear,” Sam Bland, a retired park ranger, said after she emerged. “Super mom.”
But it wasn’t 399’s record that made her a superstar. Instead, Grizzly 399’s visibility, and the duration of that visibility, made her remarkable — and allowed thousands of people to develop deep, personal connections with her, even if they were unidirectional. If most grizzlies birthed a “quad,” put a cub up for adoption or had a romantic fling with a male, biologists would know if the bear was collared. Everyday
people would not. 399 did all of that in public, becoming an ambassador for her species.
“There are a lot more 399s out there than we sometimes realize, which is good because we need those bears for the population,” said Frank van Manen, the U.S. Geological Survey ecologist who leads the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team. “That is what’s keeping this population healthy and thriving.”
But 399 was nearly singular, and met multiple incredibly rare milestones for a bear.
Known for having triplets, already infrequent for grizzlies, she wowed her fans by bearing four cubs in 2020. Biologists have counted only 10 other litters of quads since 1973 in the Greater Yellowstone — 11 if you count the first-ever litter of five seen this summer. At 0.5%, that’s a minute fraction of all the grizzly bear litters documented in the past 51 years.
399 also didn’t live to be the oldest bear on record, but she is in the top of her class. Research shows that just 5% of female
born in the Yellowstone region live to or past 28.
But Grizzly 399’s prominence — especially compared to the quieter bears that live outside of public view — also meant that people could watch
May 2023,
her and understand how grizzlies lived. In the span of three years, they could see 399 have cubs, teach them how to forage, keep them out of trouble, mourn when they died, and then kick them off and mate with a nearby boar as she often did with her frequent companion Bruno.
In the fall of 2008, two years after 399 first started raising her cubs along Teton Park roads, Sue Cedarholm watched as the griz taught her three subadult cubs to dig frozen fish out of Oxbow Bend. Ravens and bald eagles milled about overhead as the bears worked and people watched from the road. The next day, 399 nursed the grizzlies. The next day, she pushed them away. Two days later, she was mating.
“Nature can be so cruel,” Cedarholm remembered thinking. “They’re just like they’re living their life with their mom telling them what to do, and then, boom, she chases them off.”
399 also showed the risks humans pose to grizzlies, and how wildlife managers handled them.
“She’s given us a view into what a different regime for wildlife management for grizzlies would look like,” said Kristin Combs, executive director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates. “She’s given us a glimpse into, ‘How do we turn the focus off bears and turn it onto humans?’ For the first time, she allowed us to do that.”
In 2016, wildlife watchers mourned when 399’s cub known as “Snowy” was hit and killed by a car. The next year, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to remove grizzly bears’ Endangered Species Act protections, 399 became the poster child for wildlife advocates opposed to “delisting.” After a court battle, grizzlies’ protections were restored. In her later years, when 399 left Teton Park and ate trash, compost and livestock feed — behavior that would get a bear of average fame killed — Teton County residents lobbied the town and county governments to pass regulations aimed at making the community more bear-resistant. As 399 passed through developed areas, state and federal wildlife managers also tailed her nonstop, doing everything they could to keep her out of trouble, including collaring two of her four cubs.
While her fans were angry that the
cubs had been captured, the collars helped wildlife managers track their movements. Collaring data is also part of how scientists and the public know so much about 399, especially in comparison to the other, less visible bears in the Greater Yellowstone.
399’s visibility allowed people like photographer Tom Mangelsen to see human-like emotion behind her matted fur and long claws. At one point, he watched as 399 and her two cubs ended up on other sides of a highway. They were separated and couldn’t find each other because of loud vehicles that
were obstructing their hearing. 399 was upset, foaming at the mouth and “bawling,” Mangelsen said. When the family unit eventually reunited, 399 immediately laid down on her back and began to nurse her young.
“That’s the first thing a human would do,” Mangelsen said. “Let them nurse. Calm them down. There’s nothing more comforting to a baby than that. She’s just like a human in that sense.”
When 399 died Oct. 22 after being hit by a car in the Snake River Canyon, Mangelsen was devastated. He has been one of 399’s fiercest advocates. He
Scan the QR code for a gallery of images of Grizzly 399 throughout her life.
estimates that he spent 150 days a year following her for the past 18 years.
“That night, I heard Tom wail in a way that was so animalistic,” his friend Julia Nell said at a 399 memorial. “I’ve never heard anyone cry or wail the way that he did. It went on for a long time.”
For Jack and Gina Bayles, photographers and tour guides, 399 became a cheeky part of their personal relationship. Whenever Jack saw 399, Gina said he would whisper quietly “I love you.”
“She was the other woman,” Gina said.
Asked why, Jack Bayles said he spent 10 years in the military, seven years as an ER tech and 13 years as a cop.
“I’ve got about 1,000 memories I don’t want,” he said. “She was quite literally my salvation.”
Other people developed an intense connection with 399 from far away.
After following her triumphs and travails over social media, Angela Linford and her friends from Salt Lake City decided to drive to Jackson in early November for a candlelight vigil held in 399’s memory. They had never seen 399 in person.
“Just that she exists mean a lot to us,” Linford said.
The Sunday after 399 died, Red Top resident and grizzly bear advocate Cindy Campbell held a “sacred ceremony” in the bear’s honor. While Campbell didn’t livestream the proceedings — she chose to honor 399 in private — she invited others to do the same at sunrise, wherever they were, in whatever fashion they chose. People from Israel, Germany, South Africa, France, Italy and Brazil told Campbell they participated.
Back in May 2020, at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Grizzly 399 emerged with her four cubs after people had been locked inside for months, squabbling with family and adapting to a rapidly changed lifestyle.
“That all fell away when she walked down with those four little cubs,” Campbell said. “Something changed in the world. That was one of the greatest gifts that she ever gave us.”
Contact Billy Arnold at 307-732-7063 or barnold@jhnewsandguide.com.
Experts, guides don’t believe wildlife tours will decrease. Rather 399 set a standard.
By Jasmine Hall STATE GOVERNMENT REPORTER
Grief has reverberated across the globe following the loss of Grizzly 399. Those who flocked from around the world to see her are mourning.
But there is no doubt that millions of visitors will return to Grand Teton National Park and the greater Yellowstone region, keeping the tourism and outdoor recreation industry going strong.
“Grizzly 399 became a symbol of wildness that remains in this area and sparked inspiration in thousands of minds,” Crista Valentino, executive director of the Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism Board, said. “She’ll surely be missed on this landscape, but we believe that she ignited a love of nature and desire to visit untamed places that will continue beyond her.”
Tourism is the second largest industry in Wyoming, following mineral extraction. It generated $4.8 billion in 2023, according to the Wyoming Office of Tourism. The National Park Service was reported among the top contributors to the economy, as 7.7 million visitors and $1.4 billion flowed out of Wyoming’s parks and into state coffers.
Valentino said there was no data to suggest 399’s loss might negatively impact travel and tourism numbers in Jackson Hole. However, there was still no shying away from the economic impact the beloved matriarch had during her life. Countless T-shirts, ornaments, notebooks and photographs are sold in her honor. Visitors bustled into the park, and she’s a household name in the wildlife tour industry that has boomed in the last two decades.
“While it’s hard to quantify 399’s economic impact, we do know that wildlife viewing — including the opportunity to see a symbolic icon of conservation — is one of many reasons people are drawn to visit Grand Teton National Park,” Emily Davis, the park’s public affairs officer, said.
Tenley Thompson, general manager of Jackson Hole EcoTour Adventures, started guiding in Grand Teton close to 18 years ago, when there were few grizzlies visible in the national park. She said Grizzly 399 was one of the only options for visitors to see a wild bear. She started as an unknown animal and by 2007, Thompson said, was requested often by the touring company’s clients.
“Ten years ago, about 25% of our wildlife viewing tour customers wanted to see 399 and would request to see her on a tour,” Thompson said. “In more recent years, that number was closer to 40 to 50% of the wildlife tour viewing guests in the summer months.”
There were many reasons
the bear had a special place in Thompson’s heart, but she said the economic value of Grizzly 399 was immense.
“She and I sort of grew up together in many ways,” Thompson said. “Now, in great part thanks to her, we have a healthy population, including some of her offspring, to continue to educate visitors about. If we can make visitors better understand the bears of our home, then they will want to protect them when they go back to their homes.”
Matt Fagan, the founder of Buffalo Roam Tours, has also been guiding in the valley for 20 years and shared a similar tale to Thompson. There were countless requests to see Grizzly 399 and extra tips offered to make it happen, bringing more money to Jackson Hole.
“I’ve had guests whose sole purpose was to see 399,” he said. “They’d book us for three days to see that one bear.”
He said a grizzly bear sighting has always been an exciting part of the experience, but Grizzly 399 made it uniquely possible.
“Because she had such a peculiar behavior of being roadside, it made it very enjoyable for guests and people to come and see her and to have a history of her,” he said, “to try and humanize an animal over their lifetime.
“She was one of the champions of that,” he said.
This helped bring awareness, joy and connection, Fagan said.
But he said her relationship with the public was complicated. She created “ungod-
ly traffic jams and very poor behavior by people who were fanatical about it.”
Fagan said Grizzly 399 was also one of the reasons the park established and the Grand Teton National Park Foundation funded the Wildlife Brigade, a team of trained volunteers who “promote ethical wildlife viewing practices, assist with people and traffic management during roadside wildlife jams, patrol developed areas to look for unsecured food and other bear attractants, and educate visitors about bear safety, proper food storage and other resourcesensitive activities.”
He also said there had to be adverse impacts to the wildlife. Grizzly 399 could be tracked through the park and pursued all day. “Popularism” of other
bears is also only growing. He said their nicknames, such as Blondie or Raspberry, make them celebrities, and visitors and wildlife photographers amount to paparazzi looking for them. He doesn’t believe this will change after Grizzly 399’s death.
“If you’re famous, do you live a better life or a worse life?” Fagan asked. “You could ask Harrison Ford, and people will tell you stories about how he feels about paparazzi.”
Fagan said the fact that her roadside lifestyle was tolerated and encouraged was dangerous. He compared it to teaching children to play alongside the road. She was moving to easier locations and benefiting more from roadside kills as she got older, and she brought her cubs with her. He said the stretch of highway where she was hit and killed was a known place for deer carcasses hit by cars, or “easy pickings.”
He hopes her famous name and the tragedy of her death is used to educate and gain more support for infrastructure like wildlife crossings and fencing.
“The reason why the bike path was put in Grand Teton National Park to begin with was, 30 years ago, a young girl was hit by a car riding on the side of the road,” Fagan said. “And it took over 12 years of lobbying Congress to get a bike path put in, and this was a human fatality car accident. Now, we have a bike path that goes from town all the way out to Jenny Lake.
“The millions of people that have had contact with this bear and have heard her story and the story of the recovery of the grizzly bear in the Lower 48,” Fagan said, “let’s turn this into ‘now we have 399 miles of fencing, wildlife friendly overpasses, underpasses.’”
Social media helped drive bear’s meteoric rise that anonymous creators tried to manage.
By Billy Arnold ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTER
When Tenley Thompson decided to try being the voice of a famous grizzly bear online, she didn’t start with Grizzly 399, the most famous bear in the world. Instead, she started with her daughter, Grizzly 610.
Unlike 399, who was relatively tolerant of human presence, 610 is known for having an attitude — a comportment that Thompson thought would play well on Twitter, which was ballooning at the time.
“She’s charged plenty of people,” Thompson said of 610. “My favorite is when they tried to push her off the Moose-Wilson Road with rubber bullets and she charged the patrol car and jumped on the hood.”
For about five years, Thompson tweeted about eating elk, asked for portraits from News&Guide photographers and reposted articles about delisting. But in the mid-2010s, Thompson went bigger.
On Instagram, she acquired the handle @grizzlybear399, hoping to prevent someone else from commercializing the famous bear’s likeness. When Thompson, a wildlife tour guide, started seeing people posting misinformation about the famous bear, she activated the account to set the record straight.
By the time 399 died in October, the account had more than 61,000 followers — about 8,000 less than 399’s main documentarian, photographer Tom Mangelsen. The photos and videos Thompson have posted have garnered thousands of views.
But for the past decade, Thompson remained anonymous. This article is the first time she and other handlers of Grand Teton National Park’s famous bears’ online profiles have identified themselves publicly.
“It was never about me, and it was never about my ego, and it was never about what I wanted,” Thompson said in early December. “It was about trying to do good things for the bears I loved.”
For Thompson and other humans who doubled as famous grizzlies online, that meant choosing not to commercialize the account and, as the bears’ stocks rose, trying to post information that encouraged people to behave better around them, whether by staying more than 100 yards away from them in Teton Park or acquiring bear-resistant trash cans for their homes in Jackson Hole.
Acutely aware of 399’s popularity and the ills that came with it — and her own role as the general manager of a wildlife tourism company, Jackson Hole EcoTour Adventures — Thompson said she never tried to make 399 more popular.
Instead, she tried to dispel misinformation, like claims that 399 had never hurt a human. She countered the idea that 399, who was tolerant of people, actually liked people. And she tried to disrupt mythologizing.
“What’s fascinating about her is the struggles she goes through and the losses and the recovery and her willingness to carry on and her endurance and her resilience through terrible circumstances,” Thompson said. “When we turn it into this just simplistic ‘Look at this adorable mother in her cute cubs, and she’s a cute teddy bear,’ I think we do her a disservice, and that’s what I wanted people to see.
“I wanted people to see the real bear,” she said. Social media made Grizzly 399 the bear of the digital age. But it also attracted thousands of people to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Their eagerness to see 399 and the other famous bears in Teton Park often got the best of them — and oftentimes the bears. Even well-behaved visitors challenged bear managers in the park to find new ways of keeping people and bears safe as the number of people at roadside bear jams exploded. Other visitors behaved badly, feeding the offspring of famous bears like Grizzly 610. After leaving their mother, two of 610’s emancipated cubs were trapped and killed for displaying boldness around people.
“We love them probably to the point where we think that we’re all doing damage to them. We’re habituating them,” said Candy Brad, a retired veterinarian and wildlife photographer. “I use ‘us’ as all the photographers, all the tourists, all the people that chase them and show up and get in their face.”
399’s online following first started building 2006, when she began raising cubs near the road in Teton Park. After humans wiped out grizzly populations, only 136 bears remained in Wyoming by 1974, the
year before they received Endangered Species Act protections. All those bears were in Yellowstone National Park. After decades of intensive recovery efforts, 399 was the first female with cubs to publicly take up residence in the Tetons. She became a symbol of grizzlies’ recovery — two years after Facebook was founded.
In 2006, when 399 was first spotted near Oxbow Bend, bear watchers’ adrenaline surged onto the internet.
Sue Cedarholm, one of the first photographers to follow the famous bear, remembered people taking pictures in the morning and uploading them to Facebook that afternoon, which created competition among rank-and-file photographers.
Five years later, when 399’s daughter 610 adopted one of her mother’s cubs, Facebook was in full swing and Instagram had just been founded. The adoption story went wild. While managers knew
grizzlies would embrace one another’s cubs, the public had never seen it happen before. 399’s popularity ballooned.
“Social media is what really got her going worldwide,” Cedarholm said. “And then, when she had the quads” — the four cubs 399 emerged with during the COVID-19 pandemic — “that put her off the charts.”
But Thompson, 399’s voice on Instagram, cautioned that it wasn’t just social media that helped 399’s popularity explode. In her view, the rise of more affordable, high-quality camera equipment and the fact that 399 was the first sow to take up visible residence in the Tetons were other key contributors.
“I think social media had an irreplaceable impact on her popularity,” Thompson said. “But I think it was a combination of all of those factors to create sort of this perfect storm.”
Grizzly 399 with her four cubs of the year — known as “the quad” — at Pilgrim Creek in June 2020. A four-cub litter is extremely rare, and only a dozen (including a litter of five documented in Yellowstone National Park this summer) have been documented since record-keeping began in 1973. 399 emerged with her four cubs the day Grand Teton National Park reopened after the COVID-19 pandemic began. “She changed something in the world when she walked down Pilgrim Creek in May 2020,” Cindy Campbell said.
You know who you are, tailgating me on the 189, riding my bumper while I'm actually obeying the law. Lawless jerks on the Moose Wilson Road who will get to the Village 30 seconds earlier when I pull over and let them pass. I’ve seen actual moose on the road, charging out of the trees at full speed, while you’re pushing 65 in the 45 zone. I saw a bear cub dart off the bike path into morning traffic, while you’re rushing off to work or coffee or nursing a hangover, It’s bad enough that runaway RV’s coming off the pass are killing human beings, but you are in such a hurry to get to the congested construction zone that you pass me on the right. Road kill have your names on them. So slow down, save a life, maybe your own.
S L O W D O W N
Teton County steps up trash can compliance with new code enforcers.
By Charley Sutherland
Grizzly 399 never ran for mayor. She never hunkered down with county commissioners to study land use regulations, nor did she offer passionate public comments.
However, when Grizzly 399 did make it close to Town Hall on a 2021 stroll through Jackson with the kids, she inspired change. Prior to her trip, neither the town nor county had strong regulations over garbage aimed at preventing bear conflict, despite wildlife enthusiasts’ advocacy for such policy.
Any other bear that traveled through Jackson or that got into as much trouble as 399 did (see blotter on page 27) would likely have been euthanized, said Kristin Combs, executive director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates. Because of her fame, euthanization was off the table, because no agency could survive the PR nightmare associated with killing one of the world’s most famous animals.
“399 was so important to so many people,” Combs added.
So instead of killing Grizzly 399, wildlife advocates, town and county staffers, and elected officials got to work adjusting policy to make Jackson Hole more bear-ready.
In 2016, a county wildlife commit-
tee recommended expanding the “bear conflict priority area” to include the whole county, said Chris Colligan, who served on the committee and is now the county’s public works project manager. Whether due to a simple lack of political will or a general community reluctance to adapt, those suggestions stalled until Grizzly 399 visited town.
“She really was the catalyst for changing those regulations to reduce conflicts between bears and humans in our community,” Colligan said.
In the year after 399 walked through Jackson, the Teton County Board of County Commissioners approved rules requiring bear-resistant cans countywide. The Jackson Town Council followed suit and required them in “bear conflict zones” on the outskirts of town.
Even then, this year was one of the busiest for human-bear conflicts, said Dan Thompson, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s large carnivore supervisor. This year saw an especially bad berry crop that left bears hungry and more willing to seek out trash.
Countywide restrictions do little good if nobody enforces the rules, he said. “It’s great we got these new Teton County-wide regulations, but without compliance and enforcement it doesn’t really matter.”
While he sees the new town and county regulations as a positive, many places where bear biologists dealt with conflicts this year — Teton Village and the West Bank — required bearresistant trash cans years before officials required them across all of Teton County.
The county struggled with staffing code compliance positions for a while, Planning Director Chris Neubecker said, but it is “fortunate” to have two of those positions filled now by Olivia Graykowski and Jill Iantuono. They are on the front lines of efforts to mandate self-locking trash cans certified by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee. Teton County has issued about 250 notices of violation. Most were issued this year after the county ramped up enforcement, Neubecker said. So far, enforcement has not progressed to fines, Iantuono said in an email. Folks who are unresponsive to notices of violation get sent a “notice to abate” and must appear before county commissioners to explain why they have chosen not to comply. While no one has had to appear before commissioners yet this season, Neubecker said, several properties may soon if
they remain unresponsive to county notices. Compliance is “decent,” Iantuono said. But “we still have a way to go.” About 118 of the people who have received notices have switched their trash cans — a 47% rate. An additional 15 cans are on their way to homeowners who were out of compliance.
Last August, the county found 57 cans out of compliance in Game Creek, Hog Island and Hoback. Rafter J had 44 out-of-compliance cans and South Park Ranches had 27 old cans. Wilson and homes on Moose-Wilson Road had the best compliance.
Right now, Iantuono and Graykowski’s efforts are focused primarily on bear-proofing trash cans. Failure to bear-proof cans is the most common violation they see, though they also enforce rules requiring county residents to harvest or fence in fruit trees and store attractants like compost and animal feed behind bear-resistant enclosures.
“Many of us moved here to enjoy wildlife and wild areas,” Iantuono said. She said she and Graykowski are motivated by a love for wildlife and a desire to keep people and animals safe.
Some of the town’s own decorative
Grizzly 399 with one of her four cubs of the year at Pilgrim Creek in Grand Teton National Park, June 2020. 399’s presence along the park’s roads allowed humans insight into how grizzly bears raise their young, kick them off, and mate.
John Hechtel’s fascination with bears started at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. A National Geographic Society TV special on the Craighead twins pioneering grizzly research in Yellowstone National Park further fueled the interest.
“I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” he recalled. “Everybody said, ‘That’s pretty dumb. You can’t do that. You’ve never even been hiking.’”
But the city kid who grew up in the suburbs with a family that “didn’t like the outdoors” moved West, worked in a research unit led by John Craighead and pursued a master’s thesis on grizzlies in Alaska. Hechtel is now president of the International Association for Bear Research and Management, which strives to advance scientific understanding and conservation of the world’s eight species of bears.
Humans’ views of bears have evolved over millennia through stories that are often conflicting and still evolving. Encounters with Grizzly 399 are adding new perspectives to the mix, reshaping how people relate to bears and their environment. Susan Clark, who has long studied and written about the role of stories in conservation, said there are two kinds of stories: truth stories — matters of fact like gravity and bear biology — and solidarity stories.
“Solidarity is how we form communities around our common interests,” Clark said, “where we have a common outlook and we say, ‘Oh, we’re going to protect bears now,’ which was not the story a 100 years ago.”
Hechtel’s career took shape as Yellowstone grizzlies stood on a knife’s edge. On one side, Frank and John Craighead of Moose were working to save grizzlies from extinction by inventing tracking techniques to study the elusive omnivores, a symbol of vanishing American wilderness. On the other side, there was a push to tame wild places and eliminate danger to people.
“Even in the late ’60s, after the
By Rebecca Huntington
maulings in Glacier National Park, there were some people who said, ‘Maybe we should eliminate grizzly bears from Glacier National Park, so people can hike safely,’” Hechtel recalled.
On a single night, Aug. 12, 1967, grizzlies killed two young women in two separate maulings in Glacier, a tragedy captured in newspaper headlines and later examined in the Montana PBS historical documentary film “Glacier Park’s Night of the Grizzlies.”
“The extreme views of bears are all kind of based in reality and based on their life history,” Hechtel said. “Are the bears the mindless psycho killers or are they the animated teddy bears?”
For Hechtel, they’re more complex than either stereotype.
“Bears are predators,” he said. “They kill other animals, they kill each other. They sometimes injure and kill people. It’s not like the fear is groundless.”
But mother bears caring for adorable cubs also are real, as Grizzly 399 showed legions of fans who flocked to Grand Teton National Park to see her raising cubs along the park roadside.
Like Hechtel, Clark has long observed humans’ fear and fascination with grizzly bears. Grizzly 399 gave people a chance to experience “not a fictitious story bear, but a real bear,” Clark said of the matriarch’s popularity.
“People are really longing for something real,” Clark said. “When you’re standing there watching a grizzly bear do its thing at 200 feet, that’s real. And 399 provided that opportunity, as far as wildlife is concerned, more than any other animal or situation in recent years.”
In the 1970s, Clark worked on the first grizzly surveys for Teton County. In the Yellowstone region, the grizzly population had hit a low of about 130 animals. But grizzlies were moving into the Teton Wilderness, where Clark spent time on horseback assess-
ing the population. Talking with outfitters, Clark found that even the most grizzled hunters were enchanted by the bears, though they also wanted to avoid encounters. Their camps were bear magnets — a smorgasbord of unsecured game meat, horse feed and bacon grease — that got cleaned up.
With Denise Casey, Clark compiled “Tales of the Grizzly,” an anthology of 39 encounters with grizzlies in the wilderness, published in 1992. The book is “a history of the stories we’ve been telling ourselves about our relationship to bears,” said Clark, a founder of the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative and professor of wildlife ecology and policy sciences at Yale University.
The anthology clusters the stories into five “periods,” starting with Native American legends of grizzlies as “helpers, healers, teachers or protectors.”
Next up are the explorers and mountain men, who learned hard lessons through surprise encounters with a species they knew little about.
A third wave of stories from 1840 to 1870 features missionaries, surveyors, soldiers, emigrants, prospectors and railroad builders. Grizzlies stood in the way of Manifest Destiny and its drive to overcome wilderness and settle the West.
A fourth period covers stories from ranchers and sportsmen from 1878 to 1915, followed by a fifth batch capturing an emerging conservation point of view, which started about 1899, Clark said.
“Certainly, the conservation story is front and center now, but it was not earlier,” Clark said.
Stories shape the human psyche and, in turn, how people respond to and manage bears.
“The reality is humans are in charge of what’s happening in the region,” Clark said. “There are just tons of us, and we influence pretty much everything. So the kind of stories we tell are really, really important.”
Artists cement her legacy, build community and springboard activism.
By Kate Ready CONTRIBUTOR
When Jackson musician Zach Freidhof, 42, lost his father to pancreatic cancer in 2006, he ventured into Grand Teton National Park to grieve. On that snowy, blustery May day, 399 emerged from the willows between Oxbow Junction and Willow Flats and sat down in clear view of Freidhof and started nursing.
Nobody else was around and, sharing that intimate moment with her, Freidhof felt the protective energy of his dad. He spent two hours with her, watching as she lived a bear’s life in front of him.
“There was something about her presence, that experience, that connection,” he said. “It felt very healing.”
In the wake of her death, Freidhof wrote a nearly sixminute song titled “Queen of Presence” that honors 399. His lyrics dub her “the sage in the sage” and the “soul of wild things” who could “turn fears into gifts.”
“To me, she was the wilderness personified,” Freidhof said. “She was a sign of the strength and hope of this land. The mother in Mother Nature.”
He wanted to unite the collective grieving with one voice, to express the things she stood for and give thanks for the experiences she shared with him. Within an hour, the song was finished.
It felt like the words were already written, he said.
When Grizzly 399 died, mourners across the country found solace and community through art memorializing the mold-breaking bear as a mother maneuvering her children through modern obstacles, as a living communion with wilderness, as a muse of raw presence and a beacon of both wonder and warning.
Photographer and Washington resident Joanie Christian, 60, also foun d hope in the matriarch during uncertain times: the COVID-19 pandemic. On the morning of June 22, 2020, Christian captured an iconic moment from 399’s later years. Standing with her four cubs in the Pilgrim Creek meadow, 399 was defensively responding to a grizzly boar foraging about 100 yards north.
As the fog burned off, Christian stood only a few feet away from legendary photographer Tom Mange lsen. The moment has since been immortalized in the PBS documentary “Grizzly 399: Queen of the Tetons.”
“It was a very rare opportunity to escape the chaos, fear and division of the pandemic and have a front row seat to see a grizzly raising her brand new cubs in the
public eye, something most of us never have a chance to see in our lifetimes,” Christian wrote in a social media post remembering 399.
Mangelsen titled his image of the scene — an iconic shot of 399 and her cubs standing up on their hind
terview. “She defied the odds. She kept proving us wrong.”
That protective moment also is cemented in an 8-foot-tall bronze statue of 399 and her cubs, commissioned and dedicated before her death in Dubois at the National Museum of Military Vehicles.
Lander-based sculptor Sandy Scott of Eagle Bronze Foundry said the museum commissioned the dedication in the summer of 2022, with the request that the matriarch be sculpted as she was that day.
“There’s no title to the piece. She speaks for herself,” Scott said. “I’m confident that there will be a tribute, hopefully in the form of sculpture, to 399 in Jackson.”
Montana-based oil painter Lyn St. Clair recounted a particularly resourceful scene that she witnessed in May 2007 near Jackson Lake. She thinks 399 manipulated a crowd to her advantage.
“She would come out, flip over and right off the road she would nurse the cubs until traffic was gridlocked,” St. Clair said. 399 did that a couple more times, then disappeared into the willows. Shortly after, St. Clair saw 399 cross the road freely farther north.
legs — “Standing Tall.” Christian titled hers “The Protector.”
Christian remembers 399 as a bear who not only gave people wonder, joy and hope during a dark time but also as a resilient mother of a remarkable 18 cubs. In her mind, 399 made room for other bears not only through repopulation, but by fostering more understanding.
“She’s done so much to educate people about grizzlies and our ability to coexist with them peacefully,” Christian said in a phone in -
“I want my paintings to bring memories to life of experiences I’ve had,” St. Clair said. “It’s a gift to be able to see them.”
Oklahoma resident and Grand Teton super fan Claudia Davids, 59, broke the mold by memorializing 399 with a tattoo on the inside of her left arm, her first ink ever. Davids, a photographer who visits Jackson Hole twice a year, set the appointment to inscribe one of her favorite places on Earth — the Teton skyline — on her body. But the morning of the appointment, news broke about the matriarch’s death.
“Originally I just wanted the Grand Teton outline but I changed it up to include more pine trees and the bear,” Davids said. “I cried more about her than I cried about my horse.”
Davids can’t hold back tears when she remembers the day in 2022 when she first saw 399 emerge near Sawmill Ponds, cresting the ridge with her four cubs in tow.
“The way she handled life to keep her babies alive was so captivating,” she said.
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“There was nothing that was as exciting and fascinating as that bear that learned to look left and right when she crossed the road.”
With the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service exploring removing grizzlies’ protections under the Endangered Species Act (see page 3 for more), St. Clair hopes for a single show where artists can come together to showcase their work honoring 399 across all mediums for a cause that benefits grizzlies in some way. She said one Utah photographer has used his prints to donate thousands of dollars to Vital Ground, an organization that buys land to help protect grizzlies. Another photographer
donated bear-proof boxes.
“It’s a beautiful and powerful thing,” musician Freidhof said. “Art is a necessar y human process. Having a community around helps you heal and ask yourself questions you may not otherwise ask.”
Freidhof described artists as the “soul” of a community. He hopes for an opportunity to play his song live and sing the line that stands out most to him: “She looked us in the eye as she lived her life.”
“It reminds me of trying to be ourselves. That’s wha t we’re here to do,” Freidhof said. “Not apologizing, just living. The courage it takes to just live as ourselves.”
Contact Kate Ready via editor@ jhnewsandguide.com.
Keeping a keen eye on this evolving story — in newspapers and public discourse — Clark takes the long view in her 2021 book “Yellowstone’s Survival: A Call to Action for a New Conservation Story.”
These stories tell us more about ourselves and our changing views and attitudes than they tell us about bears, Clark said.
“That’s what society does,” she said, “is create stories that we share about who we are and what life is about.”
Clark sees Grizzly 399 as adding helpful stories to the mix.
Just as the Craigheads motivated curious youngsters like Hechtel to pursue a passion for bears, Grizzly 399 has captured the public’s imagination. By attracting legions of fans, the world-famous grizzly has spurred new people to show up and tell new stories about bear encounters. Clark sees those stories as expanding how humans think about bears in contrast with the “fairly rigid” approach she witnessed during those early surveys.
Hechtel agrees but worries that the adoration can go too far, pointing to the social media-fueled popularity of bears like 399 or the “fat bears” at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska.
“It’s spawning people to want to get similar pictures themselves, pictures with their favorite bears,” Hechtel said.
That can lead to overcrowding of habitat where people flock to get photos of the famous bears, and a narrow focus on a few individual bears instead of the health of the whole population, he said.
“It’s almost turning some of these bears into Kardashian-like celebrity figures,” he said.
Still, Hechtel hopes all the hype will motivate people to learn about and care about all bears.
From working closely around grizzlies, Hechtel can attest that they have a variety of personalities, from brutish to skittish to easygoing around humans.
“It’s not about just having a few bears that become these celebrity kind of bears,” he said. “It’s about having a population that’s allowed to do its thing, and bears allowed to do their thing to produce a range of bears with different personalities and individual tendencies and behaviors.”
Grizzlies are smart, practical creatures looking to make a living however they can, whether that’s next to roadsides or going after forbidden foods.
“Getting into a bit of food or garbage doesn’t make a bear a terrible individual,” Hechtel said. “They’re just trying to get the maximum amount of calories they can from their foraging. They’re smart. We can’t expect bears to say, ‘Oh, I would never touch gar-
bage because, you know, I’m a symbol of wilderness.’”
For Hechtel, grizzly conservation depends on “mutual respect” between humans and bears, and tempering extreme fear or adoration with more realistic attitudes toward bears. That can mean removing bears that damage property or become a risk to people after becoming conditioned to seek human foods.
For those who loved Grizzly 399, Hechtel hopes people will look for ways to support habitat conservation, connectivity between populations and research.
“It’s a cool story,” he said. “Anything that gets people to care about bears, to an extent, I really like.”
Reflecting on his lifetime of studying bears, Hechtel said he wants them to be around for “future kids growing up in cities that have a silly dream to learn about bears.”
For Susan Clark, this is not the end
8 species of bears
The North American black bear and the brown bear are the only two bear species not considered globally vulnerable.
American black bear: Canada, United States and Mexico
Brown bear (grizzly): Northern Eurasia, India and North America
Polar bear: Circumpolar distribution (Arctic and subarctic) of Canada, Russia, Greenland (Denmark), Norway and the United States
Andean bear: Andean mountains of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia
Panda bear: Minshan Mountains of Sichuan and Gansu provinces, Qinling Mountains of Shaanxi Province, China
Asiatic black bear: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Iran, Japan, North and South Korea, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam
Sloth bear: India, Sri Lanka, southern belt of Nepal, and (rare) Bhutan Sun bear: Southeast Asia
Source: International Association for Bear Research and Management
of the story.
“There’s still some folks out there who sort of want to control nature ... and so they’re pretty iffy about bears,” Clark said. “And other people are much more embracing and tolerant of bears. So we have a multiplicity of stories, and those stories are in conflict.”
That’s how society works out its differences.
“Over time, the big, giant, dominant story will change, and we’re changing in the direction of being more accommodating and more attentive to wildlife,” Clark said. “And 399 brought all that home.”
Contact Managing Editor Rebecca Huntington at 307-732-7078 or rebecca@jhnewsandguide.com.
she said of Scarface. “That’s what you can expect of these deaths that result from people having close encounters with habituated bears and, out of fear, killing them.”
The next delisting debate is underway. The Western states are seeking the change, having adopted a new method of estimating grizzlies’ population and translocated two bears from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem near Glacier National Park into the Greater Yellowstone to address genetic concerns. They’ve also signed a new agreement that outlines how they’ll manage mortality and hunting, generally, as well as a multi-party conservation strategy laying out how bears will be protected after delisting.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has already said delisting “may” be warranted, has been court-ordered to make a final decision by January. That would be nearly two years past deadline.
Even former insiders aren’t sure how the service will land this time.
“Honest answer: I don’t have any idea,” said Chris Servheen, who served as the agency’s grizzly bear recovery coordinator for 35 years. “Nobody has shared anything with me.”
Servheen signed off on a decision to delist grizzlies in 2007 and subsequently retired in 2016. The 2007 decision, like the one a decade later, was overturned by a judge who cited federal wildlife managers’ lack of understanding about how declining whitebark pine populations would impact grizzly bears.
Now, Servheen is a vocal opponent of delisting, arguing that states haven’t done enough to protect grizzlies from climate change, anti-predator policy in their legislatures, and expanding human development in the Greater Yellowstone.
The states, meanwhile, argue that federal recovery criteria have been met. In 2023, biologists used a new method of counting bears to estimate that there are about 1,030 grizzles and 77 unique females in the area within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem where grizzlies’ population is studied. That’s well above a 500-animal and 48-female threshold for recovery that federal officials established in 2016.
In a 2023 congressional hearing, Brian Nesvik, the former director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, described grizzlies’ recovery as an Endangered Species Act success story.
“The best way to celebrate this success is to delist
and return management to the states and the tribes, where it belongs, and to do so by whatever means is necessary,” he said, adding that grizzlies remain listed not because of biology but due to “administrative complexities and technicalities espoused by federal judges.”
That same year, Nesvik told the News&Guide that Wyoming would likely use the 2018 hunt plans, including the buffer zones, as the basis for any future hunt if grizzlies were eventually delisted.
But Bruce, who took over from Nesvik in July, is taking a different tack. Beyond “revisiting” buffer zones outside of Teton Park, she also said the department would have to “re-evaluate” the 2018 plans.
Beyond that, she declined to comment on grizzly hunting, saying that she wasn’t confident the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would make a decision in January given how tardy it already is. Thompson, Game and Fish’s large carnivore supervisor, is arguing that discussing hunts is premature even if grizzlies are delisted Jan. 1.
“We would still have to go through a full public process, meet with our commission and update our plan and determine if we want to move forward with hunting,” Thompson said.
Wyoming and Idaho have remained tight-lipped about their plans for hunting, including whether they would propose a hunt the first year federal protections are removed — if they are at all. But Montana has committed to waiting five years before allowing anyone to pursue grizzlies in the backcountry.
“There’s a five-year post-delisting monitoring period, and so this would coincide with that,” Ken McDonald, wildlife administrator for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, told the News&Guide in December. “That doesn’t mean we don’t think the population could withstand some hunting. But again, it’s just a good faith effort to demonstrate that we’re not going to immediately start whacking bears.”
Contact Billy Arnold at 307-732-7063 or barnold@ jhnewsandguide.com
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While tour guides like Fagan criticize the impact the industry can have, he also recognized the balancing act that was required to protect the wildlife and maintain a strong business in Jackson Hole. He said it’s a continuous struggle, and he’ll leave the industry if he feels like the focus of what he is doing is wrong.
But Fagan also raised the point that there is no limit on the number of tour companies that can operate in the park, unlike winte r cross-country skiing or mountain climbing guides. He said there’s also no limi t on wildlife photography. Other national parks have different structures that he thought could be considered.
a background in wildlife management or biology. We care desperately about these animals both, because they are our passion but also because they are our livelihood.”
She pointed to Teton Park’s frequent “bear jams” as an example.
“In wildlife tourism, the animal al ways must come first,” she said. “I tell our guides that if they need to go to a bear jam to find a bear, they have no business guiding us. There are so many better ways to ethically view wildlife.”
“Keeping this ecosystem wild will be the challenge of my lifetime, but I am determined that we can do this the right way.”
— Tenley Thompson JACKSON HOLE ECOTOUR ADVENTURES
“It’s the same reason why there’s a limit on the number of people that can be guided to the top of the Grand,” he said. “There is an awareness that there may be too much.”
Fagan follows rules and regulations from the park, as well as his own business ethics.
Thompson at EcoTour Adventures said similar things.
“All of us are in this field because we love wildlife,” she said. “We just can’t imagine doing anything else but spending every day out there with these bears. Almost everyone working at EcoTour has
That was always a pr oblem with 399. Guests would ask to see her by name, but the famous bear usually was involved in bear jams, which EcoTour wanted to avoid. That meant having honest dialogue with guests about what was in the best interests of the bears and theirs, and finding consensus on the best way to achieve that middle ground. Above al l, in bear jams, Thompson said EcoTour’s biggest concern is allowing them to cross the r oad unimpeded.
“Keeping this ecosystem wild will be the challenge of my lifetime,” Thompson said, “but I am determined that we can do this the right way and do right by animals like 399 so that my daughter will have the same and perhaps more opportunities to love the wildlife of our home that I have been able to dedicate my career to.”
Contact Jasmine Hall at 307-7327063 or state@jhnewsandguide.com.
For the Fall Arts Festival this past September we produced a new image titled “399’s Legacy” in honor of our favorite bear. A portrait of her featured as a “mosaic” combining images of her, all her cubs, grand cubs and the grizzlies of Grand Teton. I have been watching and photographing 399 and her offspring for the past 18 years, witnessing so many heartwarming and magical moments. Over the years, this matriarch became part of our Teton family. Her legacy leaves an indelible mark on grizzly bear awareness and conservation. I will miss her dearly. — Henry H. Holdsworth
In her honor, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of all 399 images this holiday season, will be donated to the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation - “Give Wildlife A Brake” Fund.
Cedarholm listens to speakers during a gathering of 399 admirers in October. Cedarholm was one of the first people posting photos of 399 and tried to mitigate the impact later.
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Cedarholm admits that people like her and Mangelsen, who has authored multiple books about 399, helped propel 399’s meteoric rise online. But she argued that they, like Thompson, also tried to counter 399’s often problematic ascent with messaging.
“Yes, we helped create the problem,” Cedarholm said. “But then we’re also trying to put out information to counter it, to help conservation, things people can do and how to act when you’re around bears.”
In the digital grizzly ecosystem, folks like Cedarholm and Mangelsen were among the first wave of influential figures, traditional wildlife photographers who migrated to social media over time.
Later came people who chose to adopt campy ursine personas online like Thompson and Mike Cavaroc, a Kelly-based photographer who ran 399’s Twitter account.
More recently, people like Bo Welden have emerged on the scene. They work as influencers, creators who share personal stories to talk about grizzlies and wildlife in the Tetons.
Cavaroc, 399’s Twitter handler, admitted that playing a bear online was fun. He, like Thompson, chose to stay anonymous because he didn’t want to get crossed up promoting his own photography. But he also wanted to let people’s imaginations run wild.
“I think it was just more fun for peo-
“The
ple to imagine that 399 was actually using Twitter, even if everybody knows it’s not real,” he said.
Cavaroc regrets not continuing with 399’s Twitter. He stopped in 2017 to give himself a break from social media.
“I really enjoyed providing that voice,” he said. “Wildlife can’t speak for themselves, but that really gave me the opportunity to speak up for public land protection, wildlife rights and have a platform.”
But now, as social media transforms into a new influencer-driven culture that promotes places and experiences, creators worry about its continued impacts on grizzlies and the ecosystem going forward.
“It’s just, how many people can see that and have access to it with maps and routes and blogs and forums that just tell people, ‘OK, go exactly right here and do these things,’” Welden said. “That’s freaky.”
Thompson, for her part, has always felt conflicted about being the voice of a famous bear on Instagram. She has always heard criticism that the Instagram account made 399 famous, which she disputes.
“She was popular long before I came on the scene,” Thompson said. “I didn’t create her popularity. I certainly gave it more of a national audience than it would have had otherwise.
“But I’d like to think I did far more good that way,” she said.
Contact Billy Arnold at 307-732-7063 or barnold@jhnewsandguide.com.
thing is, even when we’re apart, I’ll always be with
— Winnie the Pooh
For EcoTour Adventures and everyone who observed her, 399 was more than just a bear. She embodied the spirit of the wild and reminded us of what we stand to lose if we fail to protect our natural heritage. Through her life, she brought awareness to conservation’s importance, underscoring the need for policies supporting both wildlife and human communities.
Connecting with 399’s story often led people to care more broadly about the lands and waters of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. She fostered a sense of stewardship, encouraging advocacy for wildlife crossings, habitat preservation, and conservation policies sustaining the region’s remarkable biodiversity.
Local organizations have long been at the forefront of this conservation work. WYldlife for Tomorrow, a program of The WYldlife Fund, raises funds for vital wildlife crossings throughout Wyoming. The Grand Teton Park Foundation, funding the Wildlife Brigade, tirelessly trains new volunteers and educates visitors on appropriate bear safety practices. The Greater Yellowstone Coalition implements bear conflict mitigation strategies—like installing electric fencing around agricultural fields—in areas with increasing bruin visitors. Supporting these organizations is more important than ever.
Grizzly 399 has left an indelible mark on conservation and inspired a movement to ensure grizzlies and all wildlife have a future in our shared landscapes. For that, we owe her our gratitude—and our commitment.
cans on Town Square are still unsafe for bears. But new bear-resistant replacements are in the works, Tanya Anderson, the town’s ecosystem stewardship administrator, said.
Given the relatively new restrictions, there has been a pinch on the supply of bear-resistant trash cans, Anderson said. The Town Council still has to sign off on the purchase, but she expects to order and install them by spring.
Combatting cost
Another barrier is cost.
A 96-gallon compliant can costs from Ace Hardware about $400. Whether or not a resident can buy a can from a retailer depends on their trash hauler, Colligan said. Some allow folks to provide their own can, Colligan said, but others require residents to buy one of their cans. Those companies have struggled with supply chain issues.
Jackson Hole Bear Solutions, a nonprofit operated by Combs’ Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, has offered financial assistance to folks looking to make the switch, she said. While some calls come from “land rich, cash poor” residents, others come from second- or third-home owners complaining about the price.
“There are people who really need the help, and we are more than happy to help those folks out,” Combs said.
Another price-related solution in the works is a “pay-as-you-throw” system for trash in town, Anderson said. That system, she said, would allow people to simply buy a smaller, less expensive can if they don’t produce enough trash to fill a full-size 96-gallon container.
“In most other communities, it’s seen as a waste-reduction strategy,” Anderson said. “In our community, it’s a way to also support the expansion of bear-resistant trash containers.”
On Dec. 3, the Jackson Town Council passed, on a 4-1 vote, a series of ordinances to advance pay-as-you-throw.
When the town considered bear-resistant can mandates in 2022, Combs advocated for a blanket policy that would encompass the whole town.
That’s not what happened, and the “bear conflict zone” where locked-up cans are is primarily in neighborhoods near the forest. “I do hope that the new town council takes that up,” she said.
As compliance improves in the county, Combs worries bears won’t have trash to get into of outside Jackson and may converge on trash in town.
Townwide requirements may be held back in part because of commercial dumpsters, which are common in downtown Jackson. Commercial dumpsters are “the crux,” Anderson said.
“They’re heavier, they’re bigger, they’re metal, so they make a little bit more noise than the plastic ones when you dump them,” she said.
Properties that use commercial dumpsters could either enclose them or get bear-resistant versions. Fast-moving servers might not want to fiddle with a bear-resistant dumpster, Colligan said, and an enclosure might make more sense, though it could be pricy.
There’s no finish line for managing bear-human interactions, Colligan said.
In Whistler, British Columbia, officials have been successful at keeping bears out of human trash, but they now are tearing up hot tub covers, itching for the foam beneath them.
“We live in a place that people care enough to try to do what we can to reduce conflicts, and those conflicts are going to be ever-evolving,” he said.
Combs hopes 399’s legacy is a shift towards coexistence across bear communities — an attitude shift, of sorts, a willingness to recognize that humans are the ones in bear territory and the ones responsible for changing their behavior to protect wildlife
Contact Charley Sutherland at 307-7327066 or county@jhnewsandguide.com
To wildlife watchers, 399 was known as a “good bear.” Even wildlife managers admit that, while the famous bruin had the chance to eat tons of trash, she accessed humanprovided foods only occasionally. Still, like other bears that live near humans, she had plenty of close calls with the law. Here’s a 399-specific police blotter, a highlight reel of her run-ins with people and their waste.
Bites in the back: On June 13, 2007, Dennis Van Denbos was walking near Jackson Road when he startled Grizzly 399, who was dining on a freshly killed elk calf nearby. 399 bluff charged him once, and Van Denbos dove into a ditch. 399 then attacked, biting the hiker’s back, and left and right buttocks. The attack tore skin and caused deep puncture wounds but didn’t tear muscle or puncture a lung. Van Denbos survived and said he didn’t blame the bear. Grand Teton National Park and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided not to take any action against 399, at the time a minor wild celebrity, after deeming the encounter defensive.
Finding the wrong food: In the fall of 2020, state and federal wildlife officials watched as Barbara Magin, a resident of Solitude subdivision bordering Teton Park, fed 399 and her famous four cubs of the year molasses-enriched grain at her property for about two hours. Because Wyoming doesn’t have a prohibition on wildlife feeding, authorities declined to charge Magin for a possible Endangered Species Act violation.
Jail break: Also in the fall of 2020, Grizzly 399 left her home range in Grand Teton National Park and marauded through southern Jackson Hole, causing bear jams and delighting wildlife watchers. But she
also gave wildlife managers a run for their money as she waltzed through downtown Jackson, and got into beehives, livestock feed and unsecured garbag e. Bears that access humanrelated foods can get aggressive when they try to get them again, and wildlife managers typically relocate or kill them to prevent future conflict. 399 and her brood were tailed around the clock by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Wyoming Game and Fish Department staff and, ultimately, spared.
Attempted robbery: This September, bears believed to be 399 and her yearling cub were caught on camera knocking over bear-resistant trash cans in a neighborhood near Cache Creek. The bears were foiled by the cans’ locking mechanisms, and the garbage lived to stink another day.
399’s last chance at trash: About a month before 399 was hit and killed by a car in the Snake River Canyon, she once again accessed trash, livestock and pet feed south of Jackson — returning to human-provided food sources that she had largely eschewed after kicking off her famous four cubs, known as “the quad.”
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