Visitors to Alaska's Denali National Park this summer may be able to catch a glimpse of something you don't see every day: a three-pawed grizzly bear.
A picture of the bear shows it to be missing about half of its right front leg.
"We call him Tri-pawed," park biologist Pat Owen told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. "He kind of hops around."
The bear, the first Owen has seen missing a paw in 23 years with the Park Service, was first spotted in the park last year, when the wound was still bloody, she told the paper. She wondered at that time whether the injury would prevent the bear from getting food, digging its winter den or defending itself.
But it seems to have done just fine, she said.
One person at the park even saw the bear leap a highway guardrail, Owen told the Daily News-Miner.
"They said he looked very agile. I don't think he has any trouble getting around," she was quoted as saying.
Owen said park officials don't know how the bear was injured, but did not think it was from a trap because the wound was a clean cut.
The Park Service won't track the bear and won't do anything special to help it, she said. While the grizzly is listed as a threatened species in the lower 48 states, there are about 30,000 grizzlies in Alaska, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"For now, we'll let him do his thing and see what happens," Owen told the Daily News-Miner. But she said that if the grizzly is still around when visitor season opens on May 20, the park may post signs so rangers won't have to repeatedly answer the same questions about it.
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FYI: Animals missing limbs is fairly common.
Yeah, you're a forest ranger right? When you're not in the internet schooling people on animals
FYI: People missing brains is fairly common, too.
actually people missing brains is extremely common– especially if they are republicans
Still wouldn't wanna be the slowest person in the group. If there was an encounter!
The bear appears to be doing will because he has no other choice. He's not covered by disability insurance and can't vote.
You nailed it.
Although Sarah is working on including him in a special policy for Alaska's wildlife
Yes, and as you can see he doesn't have the right to bear arms either
Then no need for Obamacare.
Ted Neutant took it.
awww look at that big brown bear
This is the kind of bear that could be very dangerous down the road. Better to put it out of it's misery now.
Did it hurt much when your mother dropped you, or were you too young to remember?
"People" like you should be shot dead and your families billed for the cost of the ammunition
Maybe a hiker in the woods tried to eat *him* for a change.
Only Obama goes for change, but does not succeed.
Still, it is unusual; most grizzlies that age are much larger than 3 feet.
Ted Nugent must have shot it.
I actually saw this bear in Denali last summer and have some good pictures of it as it was feeding by the road. The wound looked fresh then. We wondered if the grizzly bear could survive the winter, it obviously did. Pretty cool.
Probably a trap it escaped from.
I guess Sarah is not the good shot she claims to be.
Aw look, Chinese are practicing conservation! Taking only one paw instead of all four. How thoughtful!
I wouldn't call the bear Tri-pawed, instead I would call him a poor baby. That must have been a human-related activity caused the injury. There would be an obviously trouble for the animal. If there is anything we, human can do, we need to capture him and raise him in a captivity, and if necessary, the bear needs to be killed.