The Wilds Project.

Graphic content warning.

August 13, 1967. By sunrise, Glacier was in shock. Two young women were gone. Two families shattered. A park forever changed.

The headlines screamed “killer bears.” But what came next revealed the real story.

In the days that followed, rangers hunted grizzlies near the attack sites. Some were killed immediately. Others were cut open. What they found told a different story.

One had nothing but berries in its stomach.
Others had teeth shattered with glass from years of eating out of Glacier’s open garbage dumps.

These weren’t monsters. They were animals living inside a system we created. For decades, bears had been lured into trash pits, hand-fed by rangers, turned into nighttime entertainment for tourists. What looked harmless—funny, even—rewired a wild predator to associate people with food. It didn’t just bring bears closer to camps. It made that night inevitable.

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The reckoning came fast. The garbage pits closed. The feeding shows ended. New rules were written. Modern bear management was born.

The Night of the Grizzlies wasn’t just a one-night tragedy. It became a turning point that reshaped wildlife policy in parks across America. And its lesson still echoes.

When we blur the line between wild and human, it’s not the predators who fail us. It’s us who fail them.

This story is a responsibility we carry forward. Pack out your trash. Store your food. Teach your kids what “wild” really means. Let bears stay bears—and let the wild stay wild.

This was the Night of the Grizzlies.
History gave us the warning, it’s on us not to forget.