A drug overdose, not a bear attack, killed a man poaching ginseng in Great Smoky Mountains National Park last fall/NPS file
Drugs, not a bear, killed a Tennessee man who headed into Great Smoky Mountains National Park last fall to poach ginseng roots, according to the autopsy results.
Unfortunately, park officials decided in September that a bear believed to have fed on William Lee Hill, Jr.'s body might have attacked and killed him, so they killed it.
Hill had gone into the park last September 7 to hunt for ginseng, a high-priced root used by some as a traditional home medicine. Prices can go as high as $800 a pound for ginseng. While the root can be collected outside the park, it is illegal to do so inside the boundaries.
The man's body was found September 9 in the woods about 2 miles north of Cades Cove and about a half-mile from the Rich Mountain Road. When searchers found his body, which had signs of being fed on by predators, they also encountered a black bear that was acting aggressively towards them.
Since it wasn't known whether the bear had killed Hill or fed on his body, a decision was made to sedate the bear and place a GPS radio collar on it and let it go pending further information, park staff said at the time. The next day, park staff, in discussions with Superintendent Cassius Cash, decided to destroy the bear. Park staff announced on September 16 that the bear was killed that morning near where Hill's body was found.
The effort to kill the bear was complicated, requiring five shots over three days.
"The biologists spent several days tracking the bear and were consistently challenged by weather, terrain, thick vegetation, and the elusive behavior of the bear," park spokeswoman Dana Soehn told the Traveler in October. "The bear was located on the second day of tracking in a thick stand of rhododendron, and a biologist did attempt to shoot it, but the shot was not lethal. Three days later, park staff successfully located and euthanized the bear via gunshot (four shots)."
A necropsy on the bear indicated that it was not in a weakened condition and desperate for food. Its teeth were in good shape, and its belly was "full" of acorn meat," noted the pathologist, who made no mention of human remains in the stomach.
Park staff said Monday that they recently had received the autopsy report on Hill, and pathologists had determined that he had died of accidental methamphetamine intoxication.
"An autopsy revealed extensive postmortem animal predation, but no findings of antemortem/perimortem trauma (i.e. Mr. Hill was not attacked by a bear)," the report added.
Great Smoky is home to an estimated 1,500 bears. Very few bears exhibit aggressive behavior towards humans. Wildlife biologists and park rangers work hard to prevent bears from becoming food-conditioned or habituated to high-use areas. Out of an abundance of caution for the park's 11 million park visitors, park staff implement aversive-conditioning techniques and, on rare occasions, euthanize individual bears that pose a threat to visitor safety.
Comments
Did the Superintendent, Cassius Cash, follow NPS protocol in putting this bear down? Seems like the investigation was not complete when the bear was euthanized.
The NPS needs target practice in order to humanely kill an innocent bear. This is reeks of incompetence.
I'd be surprised if the policy isn't to put down a bear after consuming human flesh, even if the bear didn't directly cause the death.
Carl--
I honestly don't know whether the Superintendent or Chief of Natural Resources followed the policy & procedures, and I don't know their specific policies, which may or may not explicitly cover this case. But even if the written policy & procedures was against killing a bear who _might_ have scavanged the human body absent stronger proof than the bear aggressively defending the corpse, I don't know how many days the Superintendent could have held out against public outcry & pressure, as they'd presumably have to close that part of the park to visitors. [The policies would be different for a park in Alaska or even the Rockies vs Great Smoky Mountains or Shenandoah.]
From my peripheral understanding of the science (grizzly bear DNA & environmental DNA, plus scat analyses), I don't think there was any good way to "complete" the investigation before taking action. If they didn't kill the bear and test stomach contents, they'd have to track it and stay close enough to collect its scat for several days to test for human DNA in the scat. That's putting staff in danger for several days, and has a possibility of missing scat or not enough human DNA surviving the digestion. I could be wrong, but I don't think that they could have held the bear in a pen to collect scat for a couple of days, then released it afterward. Collecting bear DNA around the body, then testing for a match against that bear's DNA collected during the sedation, is theoretically possible, but still several years away from being readily do-able.
I suspect it was a judgement call: they were damned either way, and they'd never get a definitive answer if they made the other call. At least they tested the stomach contents to find out if they made the right call for this particular bear. I'm willing to give them a pass on this one, and be thankful I'm not in their shoes. If you want to attack the Superintendent, there are almost certainly other better grounds to do so.
Tomp2 has very good points, but they could have waited for the autopsy on the dead man. That gave all the answers they needed. The bear wasn't a threat to anyone at the time. I agree it was a judgement call, but he should have waited for that autopsy report.
i believe there was someone with the deceased and was hunting ginseng in the park also. They become separated and the ither man did not notify authorities for several days that his part was missing. the Other man supposedly admitted to hunting ginseng in the park. My question is "has this man been prosecuted" for his crime? If not, he should be.
His friend, Joshua David Morgan did inorm the authorities, resulting in the search, and is now dead.
The story said this bear was full on acorn meant. There wasn't any human flesh in it. The poor bear was just living it's life until a meth head overdosed! The bear was innocen!