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Officials had to shoot a grizzly bear late Tuesday night after it was hit by a car near Gardiner, MT.
The accident happened 10 miles north of Gardiner on Highway 89 at about 10:30 p.m. when a southbound Nissan Versa passenger car hit the bear as it was crossing the road.
Kevin Frey, a bear specialist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said it appears the bear was following a drainage that crosses the highway and flows into the Yellowstone river.
"That's a pretty normal travel corridor for bears," he said.
The four occupants of the car were not injured, but the vehicle appeared to be totaled, Frey said. The occupants were from Illinois.
The bear traveled 40 to 50 feet down an embankment on the side of the road, where officials found it lying a short time after the crash. A U.S. Forest Service employee shot the bear a short time later, Frey said.
"The bear was critically wounded," said Joe Knarr, a game warden sergeant with the FWP. "It was already practically dead."
The grizzly's body was taken to an FWP lab. Frey, who examined the bear, said it was quite old - more than 20 years - and weighed 417 pounds. An autopsy showed the bear was healthy for his age but also revealed teeth worn down over the years, which may have lead him to the area where he was hit.
There are plenty of berry bushes and apple trees around and there are homes in the area that may provide an easy source of food.
"Sometimes with these older bears, it gets harder for them to make a good living," Frey said. "They'll resort to these easier foods, which is where we happen to be."
Residents had been calling reports of a large, dark-colored grizzly in the area over the past year, and Frey believes it is the one that died Wednesday. He said the bear wasn't aggressive and was mostly raiding garbage cans at night, but that people need to be aware that there is a healthy bear population nearby.
"Eliminate attractants like garbage, food and pet food," he said.
Grizzly-versus-car collisions are rare in Montana, but they do happen on occasion. Before Wednesday, the most recent was in the fall of 2008 near West Yellowstone. Both Knarr and Frey said that before that, there hadn't been one in three to four years.
The bear was part of a population of more than 600 grizzlies scattered throughout the Yellowstone National Park area of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. They were removed from the endangered species list in May 2007. The grizzly population in the Yellowstone ecosystem has grown steadily from anywhere between 130 and 312 in 1975 to today's numbers.


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