By Sarah Pye
Living Editor
Famed wildlife adventurer and Malibu resident Timothy Treadwell reached the end of his 13-year career as a self-taught grizzly bear expert, when his body was found Oct. 6 after he was fatally mauled by a bear while camping in the Alaskan wilderness.
Treadwell, 46, and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard, 37, were found dead at their campsite in a remote corner of Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, where they had been camping for several days to study bears feeding on salmon from a nearby stream.
For the past 13 summers, Treadwell had left Malibu to live among the grizzlies in the Alaskan wilderness. There, he tried to become one with the bears, camping very near their dens and adopting some of their mannerisms.
He frequently photographed the bears, set up his camp on their trails and crawled into their dens when they were away. His aim was to study the grizzlies and protect them from poachers.
Huguenard, who moved to California from Boulder, Colo., in February to be closer to Treadwell, had accompanied him on two previous trips to Alaska, according to friends of the pair.
She joined Treadwell once more in Alaska in September, and was scheduled to return with him to Southern California the day after the two were killed.
Three park rangers and an Alaskan State Trooper went to Treadwell and Huguenard’s campsite on Oct. 6 to retrieve the bodies, after the pilot who came to pick the two up reported that their campsite was torn apart and speculated that Treadwell and Huguenard may have been killed.
“We didn’t know at the time we were going if we had two dead people or if someone was still alive,” said John Quinley, spokesman for the National Park Service.
According to Quinley, while the rangers and State Trooper were at Treadwell’s campsite recovering the remains of the two adventurers and their belongings, they were charged by an adult male bear that came out of the brush surrounding the campsite.
Quinley described the bear as male, weighing more than 1,000 pounds, and said it was 10 to 12 feet away when three of the men shot and killed it.
“In a sense of scale, it was about one big step from being on top of the park rangers,” Quinley said.
The group was approached by another bear, this one a younger male about 3 to 4 years old, while preparing to leave the area after collecting the remains. The rangers attempted to scare the bear away by yelling and firing a warning shot into the air above its head. However, when the bear continued advancing, they fatally shot it as well.
Quinley described this bold and curious behavior as fairly common among young male bears.
“In both cases, the rangers were firing in defense of their own lives, not because the bears were suspected in Timothy and Amie’s deaths,” Quinley said.
A later necropsy on the older bear did indicate that it had fed on the bodies, according to Quinley.
Among Treadwell and Huguenard’s possessions recovered from the camp was a video camera that contained three minutes of audio recording of the fatal attack on Treadwell.
Though there is no picture, Treadwell can be heard shouting to Huguenard on the tape, “Come out here. I’m being killed out here.”
Huguenard then urged Treadwell to “play dead,” but he responded that this strategy, often used to fend off angry bears during an attack, was not working. She then urged him to “fight back.”
Treadwell can then be heard shouting for Huguenard to get a pan and hit the bear; he was never armed when camping in the wilderness. At that point, the tape ends.
According to officials, the same tape included video footage of Treadwell interacting with the bears. At one point on the tape, a bear approaches Treadwell from behind, causing him to get a panicked look on his face.
Quinley said that Treadwell’s method of interacting with the bears had made his relationship with park officials rocky over the years.
“I would characterize it as a mixed bag,” Quinley said. “There were times, more in the past than recently, when we were concerned with his portrayal on national television of his approaching the bears almost to the point of touching them.”
Treadwell was featured on David Letterman’s late night talk show in February of 1991 to promote his book, “Among Grizzlies,” and also appeared on “Dateline” in late 1996, talking about his wilderness adventures.
Quinley also said the Park Service had warned Treadwell several times about improperly storing food and approaching bears at unsafe distances.
However, Quinley said there were some positive points to Treadwell’s efforts at sharing his experiences.
“Timothy did go into schools and a lot of other venues to talk about the need for wildlife parks that protect wild animals,” he said.
Rochelle Jacobs, a third-grade teacher at Malibu’s Juan Cabrillo Elementary School, experienced Treadwell’s commitment to education firsthand. For the past 10 years, Treadwell had been coming to her class to give presentations on bears and his experiences in the wilds. It was Jacobs’ class that Treadwell was featured giving a presentation to on his “Dateline” appearance.
“His presentation was so dynamic,” Jacobs said. “What he did was so awesome. The children knew there was always this dangerous element and that they should never try to do what Timothy did.”
Jacobs recalled the first time she met Treadwell. She said when she was teaching third grade at Franklin Elementary in Santa Monica, a parent of one of her students suggested Jacobs contact Treadwell to aid the unit on bears that she had long presented to her classes.
After Jacobs contacted Treadwell, he came to see her in her classroom so she could preview his presentation.
Jacobs said that when he rolled up to her classroom on his motorcycle, “I thought, ‘What the heck did I get myself into?’”
However, Jacobs said she was so impressed by what Treadwell had to show her, she invited him to make the presentation for her class.
“From that point on, it was like a marriage between two educators,” she said.
Jacobs said that her students were so enthralled with Treadwell’s presentation that they brought their lunches into the classroom and “camped out with him for the rest of the afternoon.”
Treadwell’s presentations included video footage that he shot while camping in the Alaskan wilderness, and slides of some of his favorite bears, including one female he named Tabitha and her cubs. He also spoke about what it is like to live in Alaska, and gave a brief geography lesson on the U.S.’s northernmost state.
A particular favorite with the children was always Treadwell’s photos and stories about Timmy the Fox, a wild fox who Treadwell befriended after the animal, according to Treadwell, brought him fish to eat when he had run out of food while camping.
Timmy became like a pet to Treadwell, who taught him to fetch tennis balls and let him sleep inside his tent.
“The presentations were always very special,” Jacobs said. “You felt like he was doing it for you and no one else.”
Through her interactions with him in the classroom, Jacobs said she and Treadwell had become close friends. She characterized him as “a very caring, warm and gentle man,” and said Treadwell frequently called her at home to discuss his television appearances.
However, Jacobs said that for as long as she had known Treadwell, she had feared for his well-being.
“I always worried about his safety,” she said. “I thought, and he knew how I felt, that it was just so dangerous.
“I don’t know how much longer he would have been doing this,” Jacobs said. She said that because of Treadwell’s age, the trips were becoming more of a hardship on him, and he had told her before his fatal trip to Katami that he would only be making one or two more trips to the Alaskan wilderness.
Jacobs said she supported her friend’s decision: “I remember telling him that I thought that was a good idea.”
October 23, 2003
