Ruth Marcus: The sad demise of Grizzly 399 — and the success story behind her life

“There has never been a bear in history that has beaten the odds like 399,” her quasi-official photographer, Thomas D. Mangelsen, said of the world-famous grizzly in February.

Named for the research number on her ear tag, Grizzly 399 was both local diva in Jackson, Wyoming – police closed roads to let her and the cubs stroll through town – and international celebrity, “Queen of the Tetons,” as this year’s marvelous documentary about her was titled.

She was the oldest documented grizzly in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to reproduce, at the age of 27, in 2023. This April, she emerged from hibernation with that yearling cub in tow, to ecstatic headlines: “She’s Awake!”

And then, on Oct. 22, the roughly 400-pound grizzly who knew to look both ways before crossing the highway was hit and killed by a driver in the Snake River Canyon, south of the town that adored her. She was believed to be 28, the mother of 18 offspring, including one adorable litter of four cubs in 2020.

Where grizzlies tend to be elusive and stick to the isolated backcountry, 399 made a habit of gamboling with her cubs along the roadsides of Grand Teton National Park and, increasingly, the busy highway outside the park.

She shepherded her cubs across the asphalt while “bear jams” of glimpse-seeking tourists piled up; supervised them climbing trees and swimming in ponds; and then, when it was finally time for them to strike out on their own, chased them off.

I never managed a viewing – I saw her daughter 610, with her cubs, last fall – but my husband got a glimpse a few months before, when he stopped by the highway after seeing a clutch of cars. “A bear?” He asked the ranger who was directing traffic. “Not a bear, it is the bear,” the ranger told him, and no more identification was required.

But 399 represented more than a captivating insight into the behavior of Ursus arctos horribilis. Her spectacular life and heart-rending death – in retrospect, the tragedy seems almost foreordained – embodies the tensions, inherent and increasing, in the interface between humans and bears.

The pressure generated by the mounting population of residents and tourists in grizzly territory; the impact of climate change, pushing grizzlies to seek food outside their ordinary habitat; the inevitable conflicts between bears and humans spurred by the recovery of grizzly populations since they were added to the endangered species list in 1975 – all of these are evoked by 399’s story.

As much attention as her death received – “Death of an icon,” the Jackson Hole News & Guide lamented, in just one of five 399 stories, plus a family tree – she is the 66th known grizzly bear to die in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem this year. To look at the spreadsheet federal officials use is to get a sense of the competing imperatives: 28 grizzlies “removed” (the government euphemism) for cattle or sheep “depredation” – that is, killing livestock. Another 10 killed because of “human safety concerns” – they were going after human food, attacking dogs, destroying crops. One other besides 399 was hit by a vehicle.

Significantly, and alarmingly, more than one-third of these deaths were outside the usual boundaries for monitoring local grizzly activity, suggesting that the bears are straying beyond their ordinary habitat, into more populated zones and therefore more trouble.

I grab my bear spray these days even for a neighborhood walk. The neighbors were over for dinner the other night, regaling us with a video of a grizzly determinedly wrestling with the trash container in their backyard. To look at their photos, to marvel at the immense claws, is to understand: These are creatures to be avoided.

399 had the proclivity to stray beyond the confines of the national park where she was born. It might have been that she was smarter than your average bear, and her range was a calculated bid to protect her cubs. Male grizzlies have a nasty habit of killing cubs to make the sows available for mating, but males don’t want to be around humans, so 399 was wise to plant herself among them.

But there are other, more troubling reasons for bears straying beyond the accustomed limits. Climate change has meant berries ripen – and get eaten – earlier, pressuring grizzlies to forage more widely during the weeks before hibernation when they are trying to pile on the pounds. Another major food source, the seeds of white bark pine, has been devastated by a beetle infestation – that, too, is linked to global warming. So, grizzlies roam farther, and – unlike 399, who for the most part managed not to tangle with humans – get into difficulty.

In a sense, this is good news, a reflection of the conservation achievement that is the grizzly bear. Grizzlies once ranged widely through the American West; the population in the Lower 48 states was reduced to below 800 by 1975, when they were listed as a threatened species. Since then, the grizzly population has recovered, to close to 2,000, and there is a raging debate about whether they should be delisted.

“From a conservation perspective, we’re really talking about an incredible success story given the nature of this animal and given the landscape that it’s in,” Frank van Manen, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who heads the government’s Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, told me. “This is an ecosystem that has a lot of human visitation, quite a few residents, growing human population, so it’s pretty amazing that … we’re in a situation now where bears and people can coexist at this healthy population level.”

Coexist, but with limitations. 399’s death “wasn’t entirely surprising, because all these years we wondered – she’s so vulnerable to those type of risks,” van Manen said. “Her death was in a way emblematic of the landscape she was in.”