Yellowstone Kept Losing Its Grizzlies For Months - What Biologists Finally Found Is Terrifying

Yellowstone kept losing grizzlies. In 2025, more than 70 turned up dead around the park, tying the worst year anybody had counted. Most of those deaths had a human cause. But deep inside the park, where nobody hunts and nobody ranches, grizzly cubs were dying at about three times the rate they do outside it. Retired field biologist Vern Hale follows one family of Grand Teton grizzlies across three generations, and the science behind what is really happening to cubs in the safest bear country in America. THREE GENERATIONS, ONE STORY June 2022: Blondie, grizzly 793, is seen with three cubs of the year. By the next morning, all three are gone. May 2025: her daughter, grizzly 1063, loses two of her three yearlings in a closed area south of Colter Bay. Summer 2025: the surviving yearling, a young female people call Miracle, is trapped and moved away to make it on her own. June 2026: Miracle is back at Colter Bay, among the crowds. Rangers trap her again at about 80 pounds and move her again. And the bear that may have figured it out first: grizzly 399, the queen of the Tetons. She had 18 cubs over her life, and a lot of them grew up within sight of the road. If you were the ranger at Colter Bay, would you keep moving her back into the timber, or let her stay near the people? Vern's own field stories are told for illustration. The studies, bears, places and numbers he cites are real. #grizzly #yellowstone #wildlife