Black Bear Attacks Great Smoky Mountains National Park Visitor on Popular Hiking Trail as Horrified Crowd Watches Helpless in Disbelief.

Last Wednesday as Mr. and Mrs. McQueen were hiking along the Laurel Falls Hiking Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains national park admiring the wildflowers, lush forest growth and pretty views along the way to the Laurel Falls Waterfall, a large female black bear which had been food conditioned and lost its natural fear of humans, jumped out of bushes along the trail and proceeded to gnaw off appendages from the couple as a group of horrified people looked on.

Blood, shredded shoes, clothing, and other remnants of the carnage lay scattered along the trail a gruesome reminder to all of the danger and power that a black bear welds with its bone crushing jaws, large teeth and razor sharp claws.

Great Smoky Mountains national park wildlife biologists going on the description of the dangerous human conditioned black bear trapped all the bear they could in the area that the attack on the hiker occurred.

Since they only had a general description, they systemically slaughtered every black bear they could find including the orphaned black bear cubs that are only a few months old and could not fend for themselves.

This story is loosely based upon a true event that just happened in the Great Smoky Mountains national park. Well make that very loosely. Well make that a compete exaggeration to make a very valid point.

A 26 year old hiker from Wilton, Connecticut named Sean Konover did in fact sustain minor injuries last week when in an effort to get a picture of a small 60 pound female black bear, he and dozens of other visitors around him insisted in disregarding common sense by allowing a bear to approach them too closely. Close enough in fact to bite the hiker, Sean Konovers foot, leaving a small puncture would that did not require any medical attention.

This dangerous black bear encounter occurred along the extremely popular Laurel Falls hiking trail, which traditionally not only has a tremendous amount of hikers but black bear as well, many which are food conditioned each year.

Black bear along with other wildlife get food conditioned when people intentionally or inadvertently allow wildlife to consume food or garbage. People sometimes throw food at wildlife to coax it to come closer than it normally would just to see it up close and or photograph it.

Unfortunately, a good conditioned animal is trained that humans and human scent means food and it will lose some or all of its fear of humans making it more likely to beg for more food, steal food or attack someone for food. It may attack to protect territory where it would have normally run away before food conditioning.

Food conditioned animals generally lose half their life expectancy as their health can be adversely effected by human food and garbage, they are more susceptible to getting hit by cars, or have to be killed because they no longer are acting wild and they damaged property or threatened the safety of humans. What a tragic waste.

Though you may only be giving human food to an animal, you are teaching it to eat or at least examine anything that has a human scent.

Food conditioned animals may also eat non-food items such as foil potato chip bags because it smells like food and taste salty. Can you imagine what you would feel like if you ate a foil potato chip bag?

Animals cannot discriminate as to what garbage is because what smells like food in a natural environment is in fact food. Only humans produce garbage.

Peanut shells, apple cores and orange peels though biodegradable are enticements that make good wildlife go bad. Throw it on the ground and if you are caught, expect to get a nice ticket from a not so happy park ranger.

After the minor black bear attack the GSMNP officials initially learned of the incident from other visitors that were also on the Laurel Falls trail, but later, the injured man Sean Konover also reported his injury.

Intentionally approaching a bear or elk closer than 50 yards (150 feet) or close enough that it changes the animals behavior, is a violation of park regulation meant to protect humans as well as the parks wildlife. No citations were issued by the park service at this incident.

As for the young 60-pound black bear, she is not so lucky. A bullet to head is her fate. Why? Because some people wanted to take a picture of a black bear up close after others who came to visit the Great Smoky Mountains national park were slobs and left garbage along a hiking trail or may have thrown food at wildlife in violation of park rules and a ticketable offense.

Fortunately, she was not a mother bear with young cubs where as her death sentence would mean a death sentence for her offspring. She had identifiable features so fortunately a large number of bear did not have to be captured and killed to be sure to get the offending black bear that attacked the hiker was stopped form hurting anyone else. Also fortunate was the fact that she was able to be caught within 24 hours and no one else was injured.

As expected this has been a very active year for black bear in the Great Smoky Mountains national park already mainly due to the lighter than normal mast crop in mid elevations of the park so that the fall feeding frenzy did not fatten up the black bear as much as a good year would. As a result, this spring they emerged a little more hungry and desperate for food than most years.

This year has also been tough on young black bear cubs in the park some of which had to be rescued and brought to the Appalachian Bear Rescue center who desperately needs more food to feed and funding and supplies to help house all of the rescued black bears that have been brought to them.

With more than 9 million visitors a year coming to the Great Smoky Mountains national park, which has a black bear population of more than 2 per square mile, it's not a question of if there will be another fatal or serious black bear attack will occur but when. If all of us who are on the park behave appropriately and do not feed animal or approach them too closely, maybe the next attack will not be in our lifetime.

Not feeding wildlife intentionally or approaching them too close are important first steps. Securing garbage in sealed bear proof garbage pails is also important as well as not leaving coolers with food or the smell of food or even garbage in the back of a pickup truck. If you are camping in the backcountry all food, garbage, toiletries and smelly clothes have to be hung on the bear proof wires and elevated where bear cannot reach it.

Finally, I have seen many crazy and foolish things in the Great Smoky Mountains National park, but this one amazes me every time I think about it. Last May a black bear was causing serious issues on the Abrams Falls Hiking trail in Cades Cove, so much so, a warning was posted at the trailhead and the bear was so dangerous that the Abrams Falls Hiking trail was closed due to aggressive black bear activity the next day.

Pictured above is a dog that was tied up attached to a car parked as close as possible to where there was a black bear warning sign. Left out in case the dog got thirsty was a dirty spaghetti can filled with water that had a slick of oil and tomato sauce on the top.

She left her dog this way for more than 3 hours as she hiked. This is enticing a bear with both food and a pet which is tied up that certainly can't run away or fend for itself.

Please act responsibly around wildlife and the life you may save could be your own.

Related Smokies News Stories:

• Bear Spray: Now Legal to Carry and Use in the Great Smoky Mountains national park
• Black Bear attacks Child and injures father in Great Smoky Mountains national park
  
   

Recent Bear attacks in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

• Bear Attacks Camper: Campsite 84 Hazel Creek NC 6/7/2015
• Hiker bitten by black bear: Laurel Falls Hiking Trail 5/17/2010
• Child attacked by bear: Rainbow Falls Hiking Trial 8/12/2008
• Woman Killed by 2 bear: Little River Hiking Trail 5/21/2000

Laurel Falls Hiking Trail Fire Damage Report

Wild fires in the Great Smoky Mountains national park are inevitable and in fact in some cases even encouraged under controlled circumstances. This is not the case with this week's Laurel Falls Wildfire which threatened one of the parks most valuable natural resources as well as homes and businesses close by.

The Laurel Falls wild fire was set accidentally by an illegal campfire similar to the one pictures here I found 2 days ago in the Greenbrier section of the park. There was a wildfire warning the day this fire was made and since the weather conditions were right and there was plenty of fuel to feed a brush fire with all of the hardwood litter on the forest floor and beetle damaged trees, the fire quickly got out of hand.

Dozens and dozens of firefighters worked with hand tools making scratch lines and fire breaks to slow the spread of the wild fire, along with setting small controllable fires to burn up any fuel they could before the main fire reached the area.

Along with almost 90 men on the ground fighting the fire, a light helicopter dropped loads of water taken from a pond in Wears Valley on the area, while a 2 engine reconnaissance plane used a spotter to help control the ground crew and lead in the water taker plane as it would drop its load of water and flame retardant flown in all the way from Chattanooga.

The hiking trail to Laurel Falls is a short paved trail less than 1-1/4 miles long which takes you to one of the most attractive waterfalls in the Great Smoky Mountains national park. This section of the trail has a limited incline gaining about 600 feet to the falls and year round has some overlooks affording visitors a view of mountains within the GSMNP.

The Laurel Falls waterfall is quite impressive and is where most of the visitors who come to the most poplar hiking trail in the Great Smoky Mountains national park stop. In fact the Laurel Falls Hiking trail continues far past where it is paved and continues another 1-1/2 miles gaining another 950 feet in elevation before it reaches the next trailhead where you can take a short 1-1/2 round trip hike up to the peak of Cove Mountain.

The stretch of the Laurel Falls Hiking Trail past the falls contains largest concentration and some of the best old growth trees that can be accessed in the Great Smoky Mountains national park. These huge old growth trees were never logged as they were not accessible to the Little River Logging Company who clear cut large areas of this wilderness before it became a national park.

The first quarter of the way up the waterfall trail, other than the smell of an old campfire in the air you would never know that a huge battle against a wild fire was just fought on this trail. Why look to the left and you will see one the first flaming azaleas still blooming in the park.

The last 2/3rd of the trail are another story. Clear fire damage is visible on both sides of the Laurel Falls Hiking Trail. Huge charged logs lay on the ground many of which are cut into more manageable sizes with the use of a chain saw.

There is now an obvious absence of normal understory plants and small bushes in most areas and blacked pine cones and scorched empty soda cans previously hidden on the first floor can now be seen scattered about on the forest floor or mountainside on the rest of the way the waterfalls.

Though it looks terrible now, this damage along the hiking trail is very minimal as most of the mid and upper level canopy has remained untouched and bright green in huge contrast the to the black scorched forest floor.

By the end of the summer, other than the scorched logs and tree trunks, most of the understory will have grown back and the rhododendrons and other bushes should be fine by next spring.

Luckily even though almost 270 acres of this beautiful forest between Elkmont and the Sugarlands was damaged by the wildfire, the area past the Laurel Falls remains untouched.

Once you pass the falls and hike up the double switchback to the other side of Chinquapin Mountains on the back end of the trail, larger trees become more and more numerous and the wildflowers more abundant. A few hundred yards more and you start to see the parks old growth giants scattered about.

This forest has always felt more primordial to me with its huge trees, dark green ferns and heavy low cover of wildflowers and is one of the most tranquil areas of the entire Great Smoky Mountains national park. I have hiked all of the trails in the park and time and time again I find myself taken aback by the beauty of this trail.

Within a few minutes along this section of the trail you forget you just went such major destruction. Back on this section of the trail you smell the fresh green of spring and the smell of old stale smoke is no longer discernible.

Today you can see plenty of wildflowers which have already peaked in other sections of the park including: Large Flowered Trillium, White Erect Trillium, Painted Trillium (pictured below), White Violets, Hepatica, Rue Anemone, Silverbell, Wild Strawberry, Star Grass, Smooth Yellow Violet, Common Blue Violet and Squaw root coming up through the leaves everywhere.

Thanks to the valiant efforts of our firefighter, one of the most precious resources on the Great Smoky Mountains has been saved form destruction. The economic cost to fight the Laurel Falls Wild Fire will be staggering.

GSM Wild Fire Report: Laurel Falls: Contained - Stony Ridge: Almost there

Thanks to rain and cooler spring weather in the Great Smoky Mountains national park, the Laurel Falls Wildfire has been contained a day earlier than predicted and the Stony Ridge wild fire should be contained shortly.

As of last night all the hiking trails closed by the Laurel Falls Wildfire in the Great Smoky Mountains national park have reopened.

Because of the Wears Cove wildfire, The Little Roundtop Hiking Trails off Wears Cove Road and ends at the Townsend Wye remains closed at this time.

The closed section of the Blue Ridge Parkway from US 441 to US 19 has been reopened and the command of the Stony Ridge Wildfire will be assumed by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians tomorrow and is expected to be completely contained by Monday.

Laurel Falls and Stony Ridge wildfires in the Great Smoky Mountsins national park update

Time and rain have been huge helps in the battling the 2 wildfires burning in the Great Smoky Mountains national park.

Presently the Laurel Falls fire which is East of Elkmont and West of the Sugarlands TN is still burning but is more than 75% contained.

As long as conditions keep improving as they have the past 2 hours we may see the following closed hiking trails reopen as soon as late this afternoon:

• Cove Mountain Hiking Trail
• Laurel Falls Hiking Trail
• Little Brier Gap
• Little Roundtop Hiking Trail
• Little Greenbrier Hiking Trail
• Metcalf Bottoms Hiking Trail

At this point 267 acres have been burned by the Laurel Falls wild fire and no structural damage or specimen old growth trees have been damaged.

The Stony Ridge Wildfire has already consumed 1,557 acres and is now 60% contained.

The only pubic access areas closed is a section of the Bluer Ridge parkway from Soco Road - US 19 to Newfound Gap Road - US 441 just a short distance north of the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains national park in Cherokee North Carolina.

Great Smoky Mountains national park Laurel Falls wild fire update

The Laurel Falls Hiking trail in the Great Smoky Mountains national park remains closed along with other hiking trails close by as 3 fire fighter crews continue to fight the stubborn blaze fueled by leaves, branches, and other hardwood litter as well as trees with heavy beetle kill damage.

Though open flames were no longer visible from the last areal reconnaissance of the Laurel Falls wild fire in the GSMNP, stump holes and logs are still smoking and could flare up at any time. The photo below was taken at the Laurel Falls wild fire and shows typical current fire behavior.

Though the Laurel Falls Hiking trail is only a moderate incline, the fire fighters are dealing what they have classified as an extremely rugged and steep terrain making battling the blaze very difficult.

The estimated current containment date of the Laurel Falls Wildfire is now May 3rd. The potential growth of this fire is minimal as long as the weather trends continue and the condition of the fire is now far better than it has been in the past 3 days.

Currently this wildfire is within the boundaries of the Great Smoky Mountains national park and Ober Gatlinburg and residences close by do not appear to be in any danger, but are still having to deal with varying degree of smoke.

Laurel Falls TN and Stony Ridge NC Wild Fires still burning in the Great Smoky Mountains national park

The national park service released management of the 2 wildfires still burning in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to an Interagency Incident Management Team. This team specializes in directing and providing logistical support to large incidents, especially fires.

Currently the Laurel Falls fire which was started by an illegal campfire has affected more than 250 acres and has shut down the extremely popular Laurel Falls hiking trail is only 25% contained despite days of intense firefighting efforts by almost 90 firefighters with air support. At this time the rare old growth forest behind Laurel Falls are not in danger.

Plenty of fuel for this wildfire was and still is available as a prescribed burn has not been done in this area for a very long time. This section of the park really did need the natural cleaning of fire to help increase the biodiversity. Firefighters are burning areas in front of the wildfire right now to reduce its fuel.

Expect the Laurel Falls hiking trail to be closed for some time even after the fire is out to be sure there are no hot spots are hanging trees that could fall onto visitors.

Since fire personnel are tied up fighting this fire it will take days for the Roundtop Trail to be reopened because crews need to examine the trail and surrounding area before it can be deemed safe.

The Stony Ridge Wildfire in the Great Smoky Mountains national park was started by a downed power line and has already scorched at least 1,200 acres in the Cherokee North Carolina area and has shut down the northern most section of the Blue Ridge Parkway between US 19 - Soco Road and US 441 Newfound Gap Road in the Great Smoky Mountains national park. US 441 Newfound Gap Road is not impacted at all other than occasional smoke.

More than 150 firefighters are working on the Stony Ridge Wildfire with the use of air support and at this time it is halfway contained. The western perimeter at this time is secured and crews are battling to secure the eastern perimeter by the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The cool damp weather from last night and now today has been some help and we can only hope that we get more rain though the forecasts are saying there is only a 30% chance of rain today.

More Hiking Trails Closed due to Wildfire activity in Great Smoky Mountains national park

Wildfire activity on the Great Smoky Mountains national park prompts the immediate closing of more hiking trails between Gatlinburg and Elkmont in the Metcalf area and Wears Valley

The Hiking Trails now closed in the GSMNP are:

• Cove Mountain Hiking Trail
• Laurel Falls Hiking Trail
• Little Brier Gap
• Little Roundtop Hiking Trail
• Little Greenbrier Hiking Trail
• Metcalf Bottoms Hiking Trail

We are on our way to the area for a first hand look and will report form the scene.

Wildfire closes Laurel Falls and Little Roundtop Trails in Great Smoky Mountains national park.

Last nights wildfire east of Elkmont in the Tennessee section of the Great Smoky Mountains national park lit up the night sky and forced the closure of the Laurel Falls Hiking Trail and parking area and the Little Roundtop hiking trail.

A combination of a few days without rain, unseasonably warm weather, very low humidity and winds gusting from 10 - 15 mph was the perfect storm for a wildfire.

Another wildfire burned at least burned at least 30 acres and some structures forcing evacuations in the Cobbly Nob area between Cosby and the Gatlinburg / Pittman Center area. Witnesses miles away still see and smell smoke from this fire.

Based upon today's weather forecast, the danger of wildfires is still high.

Road to Little Greenbrier School in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park closed because of black bear activity

The hiking trail starting at the Little Greenbrier School to the main Little Greenbrier hiking trail connecting Wears Cove with the Laurel Falls in the great Smoky Mountains National Park has been closed for nearly 3 weeks now due to excessive black bear activity which posses a serious risk to anyone entering the area. The park Service has recently closed the unimproved road from Wear Gap Road to the Little Greenbrier School with no opening date.

This road was closed with no public announcements and no clear answer from park staff and volunteers so the assumption offered to Your Smokies News is that some visitors to the national park were acting foolishly and even though the trail was closed people ignored the national park service posted warnings. Since park visitation is still high for leaf season and the bear in the national park are still active this road may remain closed for a while.

We will keep checking the road and will announce as soon as we see that the road to the Little Greenbrier School is open. We hope that it will open as soon as this road is slated to be closed New Years for the winter season.