While visiting Yellowstone National Park Jody & I ran into a story about an amazing Grizzly. Why was she so famous? Read on…
Born in Wyoming in 1996, this badass mama grizzly became one of the most famous bears on the planet. For 28 years, she roamed Grand Teton National Park and the surrounding wilderness, raising cubs and doing things her own way.
She was no ordinary bear. She raised 22 cubs and grandcubs, including a litter of four cubs at the ripe old age of 24. She even became the oldest known female grizzly to reproduce in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Why did she hang around roads and people? Scientists believe it offered some protection for her cubs from aggressive male bears. She learned to live alongside humans without becoming a threat, and she never killed a person.
Her fame was legendary. Photographers followed her, traffic stopped for her, and people traveled from all over the world just to catch a glimpse of her and her cubs.
But life in the wild is no fairy tale. She lost several of her offspring to vehicles and other bears. Half of her descendants were lost to encounters with humans or male bears.
Then, on October 22, 2024, her luck ran out. Grizzly 399 was struck and killed by a vehicle on Highway 26/89 south of Jackson, Wyoming.
She was 28 years old.
Twenty-eight years of surviving in a world that doesn’t give a damn how special you are.
399 wasn’t tame. She was wild, and she figured out how to survive in a world increasingly crowded with people.
Her story is a reminder that we’re visitors in their world, not the other way around. Slow down, pay attention, and give wildlife room to live.
Rest easy, Mama 399. You left a hell of a legacy.
