I've photographed Alaskan brown bears in Katmai the past couple of years at
Brooks Camp, which is a wonderful place to get close to them.

Several times I've come across bears on the trails at short range (even though
I always make noise to warn them) and a couple of times they've approached to
within a few yards while I photographed. Last fall one bear approached to
within 10 yards and I got my best shot, then kept coming to within 5 yards (the
point where my lens would no longer close focus) before veering off. I was
standing in knee deep rushing water with heavy gear and had limited options so
just rode it out.

When approached by a bear at Katmai I always kept two thoughts in mind ...
first, the good news, "no one has ever been killed by a bear at Katmai" even
though thousands of people visit Brooks Camp or fish the streams and bear
encounters are commonplace. The bad news was "remember Michio Hoshino", the
great Japanese nature photographer who knew far more about bears than I do.
Michio was killed and partially eaten in Kamchatka (Russia) a couple years ago
by the local version of brown bears.

A couple days ago I heard on the news while traveling that bears had killed two
people in Katmai. My first thought was for my friend Howard who works at
Brooks as a Ranger and stays off-season for a month to assist the bear
biologists in their field work, but instead it was a well-known character who
camped with the bears in the wilderness for the past 13 years, writing a very
interesting book about his experiences ... Timothy Treadwell and his
girlfriend/companion.

Treadwell took a lot of chances and has done things like pet the bears or sleep
curled up beside them. He has a lot of experience and was quoted as saying the
bears were harmless and "party animals" at heart. But it only takes one bear
to turn your world up-side down and he met that bear and lost. I saw a TV
special on Tim recently where a bear was stalking his campsite with menace and
he finally said "I've got to charge the bear and show him who's boss", which he
did, running at the bear screaming and waving his arms. The bear fled but I
wondered at the time how many times he could get away with that.

Next time I'm in Katmai, probably next September, I'll be a lot more cautious.

Here are links to news stories about the attacks or go to Google news and enter
"Katmai bear attack Treadwell" for reams of info.

breaking news, a video recorder recovered from the site has the sounds of the
actual mauling (at least the first 6 minutes) ...
http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,...686848,00.html

Be careful out there.

Bill