Book Review: Grizzly Confidential: An Astounding Journey into the Secret Life of North America’s Most Fearsome Predator (2024) by Kevin Grange
By Mary Ann Reuter
“Respect the bear, and the bear will respect you,” is an Alaska Native adage about brown bears, also known as grizzlies. But author Kevin Grange was not so convinced. He decided to explore whether or not bears and people can indeed coexist, and shares that journey in his recent book, Grizzly Confidential.
The key is managing human behavior—not bear behavior—to establish mutual respect, he learns. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when it comes to brown bear encounters—or in this case, about 300 to 800 pounds of prevention.
A former paramedic and park ranger at Yellowstone and Grand Teton, Grange first encountered the potential destructiveness of grizzlies when Bear 399 and her four cubs sauntered into his Jackson Hole neighborhood in the fall of 2021. The ursine clan was hungry and the town’s unsecured trash cans, compost bins, and accessible bird feeders provided the easy meals they sought.
The author’s tale ends where it begins, although this time his village has taken precautions to bear-proof—or at least bear-deter—it from unruly bruin visitors. (As he discovers, nothing is truly bear-proof.) The town’s successful example of managing human behavior to coexist with brown bears parallels Grange’s own journey to deprogram his mind of “the cult of the killer bear.”
Through his lively storytelling and descriptive dialogue with biologists, activists, and assorted “bear people,” I felt as though I was riding in the jeep beside him as my own mindset about bears shifted from fear to empathy. In his quest to understand the nature of Ursus arctos, Grange reminded me that living among wildlife is not always convenient, that the natural world has its own priorities.
As Baba Dioum once said, “In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught.” Grange’s book goes even further, suggesting that we can only teach what we first understand. Through his exploration into the lives of grizzlies, he shows us that loving—and conserving—wild bears begins with respecting them.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Sadly, the positive message in the book was underscored when the same mama bear that terrorized the author’s Teton community was fatally struck by a vehicle south of Jackson Hole in October 2024. At age 28, Bear 399 had remained in Grand Teton National Park once the town trash was secured, but succumbed to another danger of coexistence with humans, the highway.
