BILLINGS — Last July, Terry Bybee and his family had a wildlife encounter they never expected, and one they hope to never have again: A run-in with a grizzly bear in Red Lodge.
“I'd been going up to this cabin for years and years, 20 years or so. And I'd never seen a grizzly bear up there,” Bybee said. “As we took a few steps forward, we heard the worst sound you've ever heard in your entire life. It was terrible...It was a grizzly bear.”
Bybee and his family didn't have bear spray with them.
“My wife screamed and when my wife screamed, it stopped charging. And so, then I screamed, 'Run!' And we turned around and started running away and then you have that realization, 'Oh shoot, you're not supposed to run away from bears or from grizzly bears,'" Bybee said.
The Bybee family got away unharmed, but human and bear conflicts in Carbon County have been on the rise.
“We had 24 conflicts with grizzly bears, again, looking at a wide range of those different conflicts. Last year, there were just eight, so a pretty significant increase for grizzly bears in the area,” said Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks communications manager Chrissy Webb.
The conflicts can be a variety of instances such as bears not showing a natural fear of humans, getting into unsecured attractions such as trash, human encounters or killing livestock.
“There were right around 110 conflicts with black bears over 2024... 66% of those happened in Carbon County, predominantly, you know, right around Red Lodge and those surrounding communities,” Webb said. “This year we had to euthanize 11 black bears and six of those were in Carbon County. Last year, we had to euthanize eight black bears and four of them were in Carbon County.”
In 2024, FWP relocated eight black bears and one grizzly bear. Last year, FWP relocated four black bears and didn't relocated any grizzly bears.
According to Webb, the conflicts with black bears in the county are becoming more severe.
In August, a 3-year-old girl was attacked by a black bear at a Red Lodge campground.
FWP held a community meeting in Red Lodge earlier this week, asking for the communities help to mitigate the human-bear conflicts, from securing garbage and food properly to reporting bear activity by calling the Billings office at 406-247-2940.
“So a lot of this, you know, unfortunately does come from humans," Webb said. "We as a government agency can only do so much. We also need, you know, community help.”
Click here for more information on living with bears and ways to reduce conflict.
