Writer and filmmaker Doug Peacock stands up for the grizzly bears that saved his life |

“So I was out of my mind and there were grizzly bears around,” he recalls, recalling 1968 as he recently sat at his dining table. This is the year Peacock returned from Vietnam where he served as the Green Beret medic.

“I saw the leads, I knew they were there, but I wasn’t sure if they were real or not,” he said.

As the fever subsided, Peacock set out to explore the area, bathing in hot springs until he was lobster red and fever free. Not far from where he was camping, he discovered grizzly bears gathering for food at a parks service dump. For days, Peacock watched from a distance, once climbing a skinny tree to avoid the charge of an angry sow.

“You know, grizzly bears get your attention, and that’s exactly what I needed in 1968 when I first crawled out of the jungle,” he said. “It was magical.”

Peacock said he sought such remote places to escape the demons of war that haunted him, long before a mental health issue now known as post-traumatic stress disorder had a name.

“I thought the Viet Cong were chasing me half the time,” he said.

“Sitting in a big mountain storm in search of what some consider the most ferocious animal on the continent instills a certain humility, an attitude that opens up a surprising openness to me.” – Grizzly Years.

A lover of the Big Dicks, in 1975 Peacock began spending up to four months a year for the next 15 years filming grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. While working as a fire watchman at Glacier, he began writing the memoir “Grizzly Years, In Search of American Wilderness,” which was published in 1990. It was the first of five books.

Peacock’s work earned him a reputation as a “renegade naturalist” and “environmental individualist”.

“I’ve been fighting for the grizzly bear for 50 years,” he said.

Now 80, Peacock built his home on the leeward side of a hill in Montana’s Paradise Valley, about 30 miles north of Yellowstone. Next to it is a subdivision created by members of an apocalyptic religious group, their fallout shelters dot a few yards away. Looking out of his dining room window in winter, Peacock occasionally sees elk congregating. Once a group fidgeted nervously as a black wolf approached the foothills.

The large windows in his house also offer views of the Gallatin and Absaroka Mountains which stretch south to Yellowstone, a place where in his youth he regularly carried 100 pounds of snowshoe gear in the back. -country, feeding on granola, protein powder and jerky so he could film grizzly bears.

On a trip to the 1980s, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger accompanied him to the Pelican Valley of Yellowstone for an edition of “American Sportsman.”

“Bears have become the center of my world and all of my activities have been structured around their movements. The smell of danger hung in the mountain air. I felt like I was part of an older world where man no longer reigned.

Peacock’s interest in the grizzly bears of Yellowstone flared up just before the Park Service decided in 1970 to close its five surface dumps. At the time, bear biologist twin brothers John and Frank Craighead estimated the grizzly bear population in the park at 174 animals.

With the sudden loss of a stable food source, many “incorrigible bears” clashed with park managers and were shot or trapped and euthanized. In 1970, park staff “carried out 70 enforcement actions involving 50 different grizzly bears,” according to an article in the 2008 edition of Yellowstone Science magazine. “Twenty bears have been permanently removed, including 12 sent to zoos.”

The deletions were one more sign for Peacock of human intolerance for grizzly bears, an issue that dates back to the 1800s, when bears – along with other species – were effectively wiped out in “constant genocide” . As a result, grizzly bear populations decline by 100,000, he wrote in “Grizzly Years,” “an example of a Native American species that did not bow to our goals.”

“The thought of someone killing the grizzly bears in Yellowstone drove me crazy. These bears saved my life. The grizzly was the living embodiment of the wilderness, the original landscape that was once our home. The fact that they weren’t hunted to extinction here told me that America still has a chance to make a difference. “

After the dumpsites closed and grizzly bears were listed as endangered in 1975, Yellowstone’s population gradually increased to what is now estimated to be over 690 animals.

Despite the gains, Peacock remains discouraged by federal management of the species, denouncing attempts by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the animals from the list in 2007 and 2017. With state control seemingly on the horizon, wildlife agencies in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have plans to resume grizzly bear hunting seasons.

A 2018 court decision by a federal judge blocked the deregistration and therefore the hunts, but Peacock is not satisfied.

“My job these days is to try to get federal agencies to… get out of their heads, which is difficult because it’s only a few people, or to take them to court and sue them. in court, “he said.

The guidelines agencies use date back to 1986, ignore climate change and resist outside influence, Peacock argued. So in 2016, he created the non-profit group Save the Yellowstone Grizzly to give a voice to animals.

He’s also written a new book, due out soon, pleading for the big dicks.

Recently released to YouTube is a 28-minute film that he co-wrote and helped produce, which includes some of his original footage, titled “The Beast of Our Time: Climate Change and Grizzly Bears.” His friend, actor Jeff Bridges, narrates the film, which also stars Livingston grizzly biologist Dave Mattson and lawyer Louisa Willcox, former Forest Service entomologist Jesse Logan and breeder Tom Miner Basin. Hannibal Anderson and his daughter Malou Anderson-Ramirez. Author Rick Bass helped write the script.

“We don’t mourn the loss of cash. We don’t mourn the fires that burn, ”writer Terry Tempest Williams said in the film. “We continue as if everything is fine. “

Bridges’ final words are, “We know what we have to do. The fate of the grizzly bears and ours are one.

The film highlights Peacock’s growing concerns about the effects of climate change. A recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration highlighted the dangers, calling attention to global sea level rise and increasing concentrations of methane, a greenhouse gas.

“Starting this summer, everyone can see that there isn’t a species you know that won’t be on the endangered list, including the two-legged species,” a- he said, pointing to drought, huge forest fires, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and dangerously high temperatures in parts of the ocean. “(Climate change) is happening for all of us.”

Grizzly bears have already been forced to adapt their diets following the decline of major food sources like whitebark pine nuts, cutthroat trout and elk, he noted, but even they have their own. limits.

“I might have been numb, but I was not indifferent. Once I got to know grizzly bears and committed to trying to keep a few, all traces of complacency were gone.

In addition to his nonprofit work, films and books, Peacock is working with conservationist Lance Craighead (son of Frank Craighead) to find ways for grizzly bears to safely wander the ecosystem of the Greater Yellowstone, a key to connecting the ecosystem of Yellowstone and the Northern Continental Divide. bear for genetic diversity.

East of Livingston, along Interstate 90, there are underpasses grizzly bears could use to head into the Crazy Mountains, he said. Other wildlife, including pumas, black bears, and moose, could also benefit from safe routes between habitats.

These explorer grizzly bears face challenges beyond highways, including landowner acceptance of their presence and avoiding the temptation of predation by livestock. Other explorer bears didn’t get very far before they came into conflict with humans and were killed.

“A dialogue must be initiated on the value of a sacred cow,” said Peacock.

This conversation must include a discussion of how tolerant grizzly bears are in the landscape when they roam, he added.

“… I was appalled by the intolerance of border pastoralism, which believed, in its endless quest to domesticate the planet, that it had to shoot, kill, blow, trap or poison every wild dog, cat, bear, eagle. , skunk. , badger or weasel – all this to protect weak and slow cattle.

As a self-proclaimed “geezer” suffering from lung damage caused by the Vietnamese-era herbicide Agent Orange, Peacock sees his work as a way to provide his descendants with a better world.

“My god, check this out. What a gift from the Earth has been given to us, ”he said. “We have to look around, appreciate it and love it.”

He sees the current era as a tipping point for the human race and other species, but doesn’t have much faith in the current crop of politicians or agency officials to tackle difficult issues like climate change. Time is precious, he noted, as species dependent on disappearing ice and snow, such as polar bears and wolverines, are under imminent threat.

“I’m too old for this stuff, but I’m still stuck.”