Alaska brown bear kills, partially eats camper

JUNEAU, Alaska - In a rare predatory attack, a brown bear killed and partially ate a man at a campground a few miles from a bear-viewing site in far southeastern Alaska.

The body of George Tullos, 41, of Ketchikan was found Saturday at the Run Amuck campground near Hyder, a small community on the Canadian border about 75 miles northeast of Ketchikan. The attack apparently happened sometime late Friday.

''The bear attacked him,'' state trooper Sgt. Steve Garrett said Monday. ''It was not a matter of slapping him around. The bear ate on him.''

After the bear was shot and killed, biologists found the victim's flesh in its stomach, said Bruce Dinneford, regional management coordinator for the state Division of Wildlife Conservation.

The U.S. Forest Service maintains a bear-viewing site near Hyder, but the campground is more than three miles away from the tourist attraction, said Paul Larkin, who operates the viewing area and also serves as the community's administrator.

The 300-pound male bear showed up about 10 days ago and quickly became a problem for a town of 140 accustomed to bears rummaging through garbage and scrounging for food, Larkin said.

Larkin said the bear ate garbage at the dump near the campground and sometimes scared locals as they disposed of their trash. The night before the attack, it drove a group of campers away from their gear and pawed through their supplies.

''This was a bear who was an opportunist, taking advantage of what he could find,'' Larkin said. ''We don't see many bears like this, thank goodness.''

The night before the attack, Larkin and others tried to trap the bear so it could be moved out of town, but were thwarted by a faulty trigger mechanism in the trap.

Tullos, who was in Hyder for the summer to work at a restaurant, had apparently gone to the secluded area of the campground to sleep, Larkin said.

After his body was found Saturday, workers at a nearby sawmill spotted the bear at the dump. Knowing he was suspected in the mauling, the workers shot the animal, Larkin said.

In addition to tissue from the victim, Larkin said the bear's stomach also contained grass and berries, indicating the animal wasn't completely a ''garbage bear'' accustomed to the easy pickings in human trash.

Predatory bear attacks are very rare because bears perceive humans as a threat rather than prey, said Bruce Bartley, a spokesman for the state wildlife division.

''Bears typically do not attack someone as dinner,'' Bartley said. ''There's generally about half a dozen cases a year where someone is injured by a bear. About four of those six cases tend to be hunters.''

Bartley could recall only three reported cases of bears attacking people and eating them in the past 20 years.

Last year, two people died from bear attacks. One was a deer hunter on Kodiak Island and the other a hiker on the Kenai Peninsula.

Trooper Sgt. Kurt Ludwig, Bartley and Larkin all said there have been no bear attacks at either the campground or the viewing area.

''The tourists have been known to get extremely close to the bears,'' Ludwig said.

Larkin said the attack would likely prompt his bear-savvy community to regard the animals with more respect.

''We tend to get kind of casual about them because they're so common,'' Larkin said.