'Grizzly Man'

Experts worry film will mislead people about bears

When the movie ended and the credits rolled for "Grizzly Man," the bear experts who had watched the closed screening seemed speechless.

But they had plenty to say that was not said in the movie about Timothy Treadwell, a self-made wildlife celebrity who was killed along with his girlfriend by bears in Alaska's Katmai National Park on Oct. 5, 2003.

The film, which had a premiere opening in Whitefish Thursday night and is scheduled for seven more local showings, is a documentary that reveals Treadwell's psychological instability and obsession with filming and "protecting" huge Alaskan brown bears.

The documentary, which won the Alfred B. Sloan Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, was billed in the Hollywood Reporter as "a mesmerizing portrait of a man who staged a 13-year dance with death."

What's missing from the film is Treadwell's broader, harmful legacy of misleading the public about how to behave around wild bears, said bear managers, park rangers and wildlife education advocates who watched it Wednesday.

The group was assembled by the Glacier Institute, which sponsored the film's local showings, for a panel discussion following Thursday night's premiere.

Treadwell was at the leading edge of a wildlife entertainment industry that "is completely out of control," said Chuck Bartlebaugh, executive director of the Center for Wildlife Information in MIssoula.

Bartlebaugh referred to a newspaper story about a North Carolina man who intends to follow in Treadwell's footsteps in Alaska. Like Treadwell, the man has no formal training or experience pertaining to bears. But unlike Treadwell, the man plans to carry a .44 Magnum handgun for protection even though guns are banned in national parks.

Park rangers at Katmai regularly see people getting far too close to bears, despite park regulations that require set distances from the animals and in some cases they attribute it to Treadwell's influence, Bartlebaugh said.

Even in Glacier National Park, it is a "constant challenge" to educate visitors about how to behave in bear country, said Gary Moses, a veteran Glacier ranger.

Moses and Dave Dahlen, the park's chief of interpretation, agree that "Grizzly Man" will have an influence on future visitors for years to come.

Moses has seen it before, following the release of a movie called "Peacock's War," a sort of docu-drama that recounted Doug Peacock's experiences of living among grizzly bears when he worked at Glacier's Huckleberry Lookout.

After the movie's release, Moses said visitors would regularly inquire about how to get to an area that Peacock referred to as "the Grizzly Hilton."

"Grizzly Man" opens with Treadwell standing in the foreground as two large brown bears roam no more than 20 yards behind him. Further footage shows Treadwell literally brushing up against a bear with his camera, swimming with bears, touching bears and on several occasions, standing with his back to bears less than 10 yards behind him.

That kind of footage found its way into productions featuring Treadwell that were shown on television and in classrooms across the country.

The documentary shows how Treadwell, a failed actor from Southern California, transformed himself into a wildlife showman who was featured in national magazines and television programs. David Letterman is shown asking Treadwell if the public should expect to read about him being killed by grizzly bears someday.

"People really glommed onto him as being sort of a bear whisperer, and he figured that out," said Mike Lapinski, an author from Superior who recently published a book about Treadwell called "Death in the Grizzly Maze."

Treadwell marketed himself as being a person who had a unique relationship with bears, and he incorrectly presented the Alaskan browns as "grizzly" bears for marketing purposes, Bartlebaugh said.

"Grizzly" is a regional term applied to the ursus arctos bear species of interior North America. It's an important distinction, Bartlebaugh said, because the larger, salmon-fed Alaskan browns congregate and can be tolerant of nearby humans.

Grizzly bears of the Northern Rockies, however, are far more solitary animals that establish large home ranges where there are less abundant food sources. The ones that live the longest are the ones that tend to avoid humans.

Eric Wenum, a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wildlife conflict specialist, is concerned about the potential behavior of people who have been influenced by how Treadwell behaved around the coastal brown bears.

"To walk out and try to touch a bear here, oh man, it's not going to go so well," Wenum said.

Lapinski contends that Treadwell suffered from bipolar disorder. Manic behavior is obvious in the documentary.

"What was interesting to me was how much he talked about death and dying," said Tim Manley, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks grizzly bear management specialist in the Flathead and Glacier areas.

The documentary shows Treadwell musing on camera over his own possible death, and at one point, boasting that he is camping in the most dangerous place on the planet.

Treadwell is shown at times frantically telling nearby bears how much he loves them. In another scene, he is weeping over a fox that had apparently been killed by wolves and a bee that had died on a flower.

Repeatedly, Treadwell talks about how he is a lone guardian for the bears against "poachers," even though the bears are well protected within the boundaries of a national park where hunting and firearms are prohibited.

"I'm the only person out here protecting the bears," Treadwell says at one point, later going on an expletive-riddled tirade against the National Park Service.

Treadwell refused to comply with park regulations that require visitors to periodically move their camps, and he was in constant violation of regulations that require visitors to maintain set distances from bears.

But somehow Treadwell was never cited or banned from the park.

Near the end the documentary, German director Werner Herzog concludes that Treadwell never had any special bond with the bears, which express only "the overwhelming indifference of nature."

Wenum and Manley said Treadwell didn't seem to recognize basic behavioral responses of bears that were captured on film. The two noted that there are scenes where bears are laying back their ears, but Treadwell seems oblivious to the subtle, aggressive posturing.

In footage of Treadwell's girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, taken by Treadwell just days before her death, there is a large bear right behind her, rocking from side to side.

"That's a huge, huge stress indicator," Wenum said.

Brian Peck, a consultant with the Great Bear Foundation, said that he and others urged, even begged Treadwell to change his practices around bears. Treadwell indicated that he would, but "Grizzly Man" shows that he didn't.

"Did anybody see anything of value that Tim did for bears?" Bartlebaugh asked the panelists. None had any response.

The two bears that were found feeding on Treadwell and Huguenard's bodies were killed by park rangers.

Even though the documentary reflects Treadwell's emotional instability and it paints a true picture of his background, some viewers are going to admire him, Lipinski predicts.

"I think you experts have a daunting task," he told the panelists. If there's an audience of 250 people, he said, "there's going to be at least 50 who think he's a really great guy."

And when the film is shown to audiences in Ohio or New York, there will be no panel of bear experts on hand.

"Grizzly Man" will be shown at the O'Shaugnessy Center in Whitefish at 8 p.m. today and at 1, 4 and 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $7.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com