Timothy Treadwell

This article is about the bear enthusiast. For the American businessman, see Timothy Dexter.

Timothy Treadwell
Born	Timothy William Dexter (1957-04-29)April 29, 1957 Long Island, New York, U.S.
Died	October 6, 2003(2003-10-06) (aged 46) Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska, U.S.
Cause of death	Fatal bear attack
Occupation(s)	Environmentalist Naturalist Documentary filmmaker
Years active	1990–2003

Timothy Treadwell (born Timothy William Dexter; April 29, 1957 – October 5, 2003) was an American bear enthusiast, environmentalist, documentary filmmaker, founder of the bear-protection organization Grizzly People. He lived among grizzly bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska for 13 summers. At the end of his 13th summer in the park, in 2003, he and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed and almost fully eaten by a 28-year-old brown bear, whose stomach was later found to contain human remains and clothing. Treadwell's life, work, and death were the subject of Werner Herzog's critically acclaimed documentary film Grizzly Man (2005).

Early life

Treadwell was born on Long Island, New York, one of five children of Val and Carol Dexter. He attended Connetquot High School, where he achieved B average grades and was the swimming team's star diver. He was very fond of animals and kept a squirrel named Willie as a pet. In an interview in the film Grizzly Man (2005), his parents say he was an ordinary young man until he went away to college. There, he claimed that he was a British orphan who was born in Australia. According to this account, his father said Timothy "spiraled down" and became an alcoholic after he lost the role of Woody Boyd to Woody Harrelson in the sitcom Cheers.

Treadwell studied grizzly bears during summer seasons for 13 years, before being killed by one of them. According to his book, Among Grizzlies: Living with Wild Bears in Alaska, his mission to protect bears began in the late 1980s after surviving a near fatal heroin overdose. He claims in his book that his drug addiction grew from his alcoholism.

A lover of animals since he was a child, Treadwell traveled to Alaska to watch bears after a close friend convinced him to do so. He wrote that after his first encounter with a wild bear, he knew he had found his calling in life, and that now his destiny was entwined with that of the bears. He attributed his recovery from drug and alcohol addictions entirely to his relationship with bears.

Alaskan expeditions

From Grizzly Sanctuary to Grizzly Maze

Treadwell spent the early part of each season camping on the "Big Green", an open area of bear grass in Hallo Bay on the Katmai Coast. He called the area "The Grizzly Sanctuary". Treadwell was known for getting extremely close to the bears he observed, sometimes even touching them and playing with bear cubs. However, in his book, he claimed that he was always careful with the bears and actually developed a sense of mutual trust and respect with the animals. He habitually named the bears he encountered and consistently saw many of the same bears each summer, and thus claimed to build a standing relationship with them. In contrast, Tom Smith, a research ecologist with the Alaska Science Center of the U.S. Geological Service declared that Treadwell "...was breaking every park rule that there was, in terms of distance to the bears, harassing wildlife and interfering with natural processes. Right off the bat, his personal mission was at odds with the park service. He had been warned repeatedly." Referring to Treadwell's death, Smith concluded "It's a tragic thing, but it's not unpredictable."

During the later part of each summer he would move to Kaflia Bay and camp in an area of especially thick brush he called the "Grizzly Maze". Here the chances of crossing paths with grizzlies were much higher, since the location intersected bear trails. Treadwell recorded almost 100 hours of video footage (some of which was later used to create the documentary Grizzly Man) and produced a large collection of still photographs.

Treadwell claimed to be alone with the wildlife on several occasions in his videos. However, his girlfriend Amie was with him during parts of the last three summers (the documentary says two summers) and at the time of his death. Other people possibly accompanied Treadwell during the other summer trips.

By 2001, Treadwell became sufficiently notable to receive extensive media attention both on television and in environmental circles, and he made frequent public appearances as an environmental activist. He traveled throughout the United States to educate school children about bears and appeared on the Discovery Channel, the Late Show with David Letterman, and Dateline NBC to discuss his experiences.

He also co-authored Among Grizzlies: Living with Wild Bears in Alaska with Jewel Palovak (his co-worker with whom he lived for 20 years), which describes Treadwell's adventures on the Alaska Peninsula. Treadwell and Palovak founded Grizzly People, an organization devoted to protecting bears and preserving their wilderness habitat.

Charlie Russell, who studied bears, raised them, and lived with them in Kamchatka, Russia, for a decade, worked with Treadwell. Russell wrote a lengthy critique of Treadwell's lack of basic safety precautions, such as pepper spray and electric fences. He also commented on what he considered the standard reaction of Alaskans to hearing of Treadwell's death, writing, "If Timothy had spent those thirteen years killing bears and guiding others to do the same, eventually being killed by one, he would have been remembered in Alaska with great admiration." Russell was also critical of the film Grizzly Man, saying it was inaccurate, and if Palovak "really was a protector of bears, she should have looked for a filmmaker who would have been sympathetic towards them."

According to the organization Treadwell founded, Grizzly People, five bears were poached in the year following his death, while none had been poached while he was present in Katmai. However, according to court records as reported by the Anchorage Daily News, the guilty parties were charged with poaching wildlife along Funnel Creek in the Preserve, an area open to hunting that borders the National Park. According to several sources, including Nick Jans' book, The Grizzly Maze, Treadwell camped only near the Katmai Coast, mainly in areas around Hallo Bay and Kaflia Bay, and never in or near the Preserve. The only effective way to patrol all 6,000 square miles (16,000 km²) of Katmai National Park is by airplane, the method used by authorities.

Conflicts with the National Park Service

Treadwell's years with the grizzlies were not without disruption. Almost from the start, the National Park Service expressed their worries about his behavior. The Park's restrictions made him increasingly irate. According to the file kept on Treadwell by the Park Service, rangers reported he had at least six violations from 1994 to 2003. Included among these violations were guiding tourists without a license, camping in the same area longer than the Park Service's seven-day limit, improper food storage, wildlife harassment, and conflicts with visitors and their guides. Treadwell also frustrated authorities by refusing to install an electric fence around his camp and refusing to carry bear spray to use as a deterrent. In fact, Treadwell had carried pepper spray with him and had resorted to using it at least one time, but wrote that he had felt terrible grief over the pain he perceived it had caused the bear and refused to use it on subsequent occasions.

In 1998, park rangers issued Treadwell a citation for storing an ice chest filled with food in his tent. A separate incident involved rangers ordering him to remove a prohibited portable generator. When the Park Service imposed a new rule—often referred to as the "Treadwell Rule"—requiring all campers to move their camps at least one mile (1.6 km) every seven days, Treadwell initially obeyed the order by using a small motorboat to move his camp up and down the coast. Finding this method impractical, he later hid his camp from the Park Service in stands of trees with heavy brush. He was cited at least once for this violation.

Death

In October 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend, physician assistant Amie Huguenard (born October 23, 1965, in Buffalo, New York), visited Katmai National Park, which is on the Alaska Peninsula across Shelikof Strait from Kodiak Island. In Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog states that according to Treadwell's diaries, Huguenard feared bears and felt deeply uncomfortable in their presence. Her final journal entries indicated that she wanted to be away from Katmai. Treadwell chose to set his campsite near a salmon stream where grizzlies commonly feed in autumn. Treadwell was in the park later in the year than usual, at a time when bears attempt to gain as much fat as possible before winter. Food was scarce that fall, causing the grizzly bears to be even more aggressive than usual.

Treadwell was to leave the park at his usual time of year but extended his stay a week in an effort to locate a favorite female brown bear. He said he hated modern civilization and felt better in nature with the bears than he did in big cities around humans. The bears he had been used to during the summer had already gone into hibernation, and bears that Treadwell did not know from other parts of the park were moving into the area. Some of the last footage taken by Treadwell, hours before his death, includes video of a bear diving into the river repeatedly for a piece of dead salmon. Treadwell mentioned in the footage that he did not feel entirely comfortable around that particular bear. In Grizzly Man, Herzog posits that Treadwell may have filmed the very bear that killed him.

Diagram of attack site showing positions of bodies. Longitude incorrectly marked as East rather than West. 58°14′50.63″N 154°15′24.68″W

Around noon on Sunday, October 5, 2003, Treadwell spoke with an associate in Malibu, California, by satellite phone; Treadwell mentioned no problems with any bears. The next day, October 6, Willy Fulton, a Kodiak air taxi pilot, arrived at Treadwell and Huguenard's campsite to pick them up but found the area abandoned, except for a bear, and contacted the local park rangers. The couple's mangled remains were discovered quickly upon investigation. Treadwell's disfigured head, partial spine, and right forearm and hand, with his wristwatch still on, were recovered a short distance from the camp. Huguenard's partial remains were found next to the torn and collapsed tents, partially buried in a mound of twigs and dirt. A large male grizzly (tagged Bear 141) protecting the campsite was killed by park rangers during their attempt to retrieve the bodies. A second adolescent bear was also killed a short time later, when it charged the park rangers. An on-site necropsy of Bear 141 revealed human body parts such as fingers and limbs. The younger bear was consumed by other animals before it could be necropsied. In the 85-year history of Katmai National Park, this was the first known incident of a person being killed by a bear.

A video camera was recovered at the site that proved to have been operating during the attack, but police said that the six-minute tape contained only voices and cries as a brown bear mauled Treadwell to death. The tape begins with Treadwell yelling that he is being attacked. "Come out here; I'm being killed out here," he screams. That the tape contained only sound led troopers to believe the attack might have happened while the camera was stuffed in a duffel bag or during the dark of night. In Grizzly Man, filmmaker Herzog claims that the lens cap of the camera was left on, suggesting that Treadwell and Huguenard were in the process of setting up for another video sequence when the attack happened. The camera had been turned on just before the attack, presumably by sound activation, but the camera recorded only six minutes of audio before running out of tape. This, however, was enough time to record the bear's initial attack on Treadwell and his agonized screams, its retreat after Huguenard tells Treadwell to play dead and when she attacked it and its return to carry Treadwell off into the forest.

Media attention

• Grizzly Man (2005), directed by Werner Herzog, is a documentary about Treadwell's work with wildlife in Alaska. Released theatrically by Lions Gate Films, it later was telecast on the Discovery Channel. Treadwell's own footage is featured, along with interviews with people who knew him. Although Herzog praises Treadwell's video footage and photographs, he states his belief that Treadwell was a disturbed individual with a death wish. Treadwell's anthropomorphic treatment of wild animals is apparent in the documentary.
• The Grizzly Man Diaries is an eight-episode mini-series that premiered on August 22, 2008, on Animal Planet and is a spin-off of Grizzly Man. Produced by Creative Differences, the series chronicles the last 10 years of Treadwell's life with diary entries, and footage and photographs taken by Treadwell during his expeditions.

See also

• Bear attack
• List of fatal bear attacks in North America
• Lillian Alling
• Christopher McCandless, subject of Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild (1996), later adapted as a 2007 film directed by Sean Penn
• Carl McCunn, wildlife photographer who became stranded in the Alaskan wilderness and eventually committed suicide when he ran out of supplies (1981)
• Lars Monsen, Norwegian adventurer and TV personality who once traveled by foot, canoe, and dog sled from the east coast of Canada to the west coast, a project which took over two years to complete
• Richard Proenneke, who survived in the Alaskan wilderness for 30 years
• Everett Ruess, who disappeared in the Utah wilderness in 1934
• Sankebetsu brown bear incident (1915), the worst bear attack in Japanese history, in which seven people were killed
• Ed Wardle, who documented his solo wilderness adventure in the 2009 television series Alone in the Wild
• Backcountry (film), film based upon a real life story.

Further reading

• Conesa-Sevilla, J. (2008). Walking With Bears: An Ecopsychological Study of Timothy (Dexter) Treadwell.The Trumpeter, 24, 1, 136-150.
• Dewberry, Eric; Conceiving Grizzly Man through the "Powers of the False"; 2008
• Associated Press: Grizzly mauls, kills a bear 'expert' Alaska attack also takes life of female companion in park: 2003
• Lapinski, Mike. Death in the Grizzly Maze: The Timothy Treadwell Story. Falcon, 2005. ISBN 0-7627-3677-1
• Treadwell, Timothy and Palovak, Jewel. Among Grizzlies: Living With Wild Bears in Alaska. HarperCollins, 1997. ISBN 0-06-017393-9

External links

• Grizzly People, founded by Treadwell to preserve bears and their habitat
• Timothy Treadwell at IMDb
• Timothy Treadwell's Biography
• Timothy Treadwell's Journals
• Timothy Treadwell's Wildlife Photography
• "Wildlife author killed, eaten by bears he loved" at Anchorage Daily News, October 8, 2003
• "Treadwell: 'Get out here. I'm getting killed'" at Anchorage Daily News, October 9, 2003
• "Biologist believes errors led to attack" at Anchorage Daily News, October 10, 2003
• The Myth of Timothy Treadwell at Coastal Bears of Katmai National Park: First-hand account of encounters with Timothy Treadwell in Katmai, by John Rogers
• Timothy Treadwell at Find a Grave