From the New York Post article about Anthony Pollio, 33, who was, apparently, killed by a bear in Glacier National Park.
Here's a picture from Pollio's Facebook account:
May 12, 2026
"When Anthony wasn’t clearing trails at parks across the country, the 'motorhead' could be found cruising around Florida or preaching at his local Catholic church...."
"Before his final excursion in Montana, Anthony hiked through the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and the connected Grand Teton National Park, Starved Rock State Park and the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, his father said. 'His life experiences in 33 years — some people don’t get to do ’til they’re 90 or their whole life,' [his father said]."
From the New York Post article about Anthony Pollio, 33, who was, apparently, killed by a bear in Glacier National Park.
From the New York Post article about Anthony Pollio, 33, who was, apparently, killed by a bear in Glacier National Park.
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68 comments:
Good time to remind people that over 90% of on-the-job deaths are suffered by men. Women and minorities hardest hit.
When I'm afoot in bear country I am always armed with a large caliber pistol or with rifle and the admonition always front and center to not let the dead bear fall on you.
Thanks to the Endangered Species Act we have given the wild areas back to the predators. Best to stay home, or maybe go to a movie.
I don't like grizz...
You really don't like bears, do you? Why not report on people killed by lightning? There are about 20 of those deaths a year. Bear deaths amount to an average of about 2 a year.
It's surprising how many people with a genuine love of nature have an insufficient respect for its dangers.
or maybe go to a movie.
Were you planning on driving! Traffic accidents kill close to 40,000 deaths a year (and are the primary cause of death of on-duty police).
It's surprising how many people with a genuine love of nature have an insufficient respect for its dangers.
It's surprising how many people with a genuine hatred of nature overestimate the dangers (like getting killed by mountain lions, bears, or wolves)
Perhaps surprisingly, Japan has more bear attacks and deaths every year than the USA.
"His life experiences in 33 years — some people don’t get to do ’til they’re 90 or their whole life"
Compared to Anthony, other men are bearly man enough.
Freder Frederson said...You really don't like bears, do you?
Poor Freder...clearly in the pay of Big Bear.
Two great books, Death in Yellowstone and its companion Death in the Grand Canyon. Most frequent cause of death are people choosing to leave a marked path. Hence, they either stumble into a boiling hot spring or else go flying off a cliff. Bears, snakes, elk are minimal risks compared to human arrogance.
Freder Frederson said...It's surprising how many people with a genuine hatred of nature overestimate the dangers
Odd stance to take over a story about a guy killed by a bear. Are you saying he wasn't killed by a bear? Because I can't think of any other way to make sense of your posts.
Bear? what kind of bear? I'm sure the Park is "investigating" but surely they know what kind of bear is around those parts.
Staying on the trail reduces the risk, it doesn't eliminate it. And sometimes Humans aren't to blame for a wild predator attacking them. At least the NY Post didnt give us the usual propaganda about how the attack was probably just a "mistake" because the bears don't usually attack people.
Are you saying he wasn't killed by a bear?
Althouse has an obsession with people being killed by wild animals (especially predators). These deaths are extremely rare and there are much greater dangers (hypo and hyper thermia, falls, etc.) in the back country.
Its a good thing he wasn't Jewish. Otherwise, it'd be chalked up to antisemitism.
I've run into black bears on trails a couple of times. They bolt very quickly. But the thought is constantly on my mind.
A grown man treating the AMNH as the backdrop for his jejune clowning. Duh, Look at me! I'm a dinosaur! Grrrrrr!
I think its pretty clear how Anthony came to be mauled to death by a park bear. Duh, here ya go, Mister Bear, have a Twinkie...
I had a very close encounter with a mama grizzly and her cub while fishing in Alaska, about 30 years ago. About 15 feet away. She just looked at me, sniffed in apparent disdain, collected her fractious cub and moved on.
It made a strong impression on me.
the usual propaganda about how the attack was probably just a "mistake" because the bears don't usually attack people.
Being a true statement usually isn't considered propaganda. You need go no further than YouTube to see people being absolute morons by approaching wild animals, feeding bears, etc.
His father said he was fearless. Most people think this is a compliment indicating that someone is extremely brave. The opposite is true. It's impossible to be brave or courageous if you don't have to overcome fear. This is what I tell adults who don't know how to swim when they first get in the pool. They are usually terrified. I tell them that's because they are smart and normal. They should be terrified of water if you can't swim. Then I remind them that they are being extremely brave because they are overcoming their fear and getting into the water and trying to go beyond and gain full control of themselves in a terrifying situation. Then I tell them to put their face in the water and blow bubbles like a 5-Year-Old making motorboat sounds.
Thanks to the Endangered Species Act we have given the wild areas back to the predators. Best to stay home, or maybe go to a movie.
And watch a movie about a guy who got himself eaten by a bear.
Freder Frederson said...
..There are about 20 of those deaths a year. Bear deaths amount to an average of about 2 a year..
..Traffic accidents kill close to 40,000 deaths a year..
Let's have FUN WITH NUMBERS!
Freder? let's suppose..
suppose an activity (A) is done by EVERYONE, 4 hours a day..
and another activity (B) is done by TWO people, for TWO minutes.
activity (A) results in a thousand deaths..
activity (B) results in only TWO deaths..
which is safer?
can YOU do the math?
ps (A) and (B) are hypothetical.. that means i made them up
Gentle Ben was a Floridian too.
Yeah, I hear ya Freder. Shark attacks are also very rare. However, there is a very deep and primal fear that humans have when they are in an environment where they are no longer the Apex predator. These fears are hardwired deep in our lizard brains. You can rationalize all you want but you get in their territory and the hair on the back of your neck stands up and your spidey sense is on full blast. I'll never forgot body surfing at 4 Mile Beach and having the theme music to Jaws. Play over and over in my ad until it got so loud and intimidating. I just decided to swim in. This was Thanksgiving morning 1993. When I got to the beach a guy greeted me and said hey. Did you swim in because of that triangular fin that was swimming by you? I never saw it.
this "bears" directly on the whole "man or bear" question
Freder, it seems to me that the rarity is what makes the story. And of course the fact that it's almost 100% possible to avoid being killed by a bear, so readers can feel that frisson of terror and yet know that they don't have to face it IRL. But I do take your point that stories like this give people a false sense of their odds.
I am irrationally afraid of grizzlies and sharks. (At least I know it's irrational.) I know that I'm much more likely to die from a fall or drowning, respectively, in areas where I might conceivably encounter these predators, but that knowledge doesn't eliminate my feelings. Is there any value at all to them? [shrug]
But I did just do a couple of hikes in Capitol Reef this past week that involved pretty tilted slickrock leading to dropoffs, with one knee that's seven months old and one that's three months old, and while I took great care with planting my feet, I was, I think, properly freaked out by the possibility that I might miss the presence of a rounded pebble and plummet to my death. The difference is that I don't think about those situations while I'm lying in bed at night, whereas sometimes I do think about those animal attacks. Irrational, as I said. I didn't like getting out of bed at night after seeing Jaws as a kid for fear that the shark might be under my bed...
California wants to reintroduce Grizzly Bears. California also bans carrying weapons or Bear Spray in its Parks. This won’t end well - as most other progressive policies.
The Marine Mammal protection act is what brought back the great white sharks, Cape Cod and New England in general. It's funny, a lot of people even better swimmers than me. Don't like swimming in ponds because it's creepy you can't see the bottom. The bottom is all squishy and yucky etc etc. however, the fact that there are no great white sharks completely takes the pressure off.
(A) and (B) are hypothetical.. that means i made them up
Of course you made it up. It's a stupid example. Both examples are ridiculously over and underestimated if you are trying to compare traffic to bear attack deaths.
Howard @8:48, well said! Courage is the opposite of the absence of fear.
I'm surprised Althouse doesn't have a Florida Man tag
Jamie, those fears are not irrational. They are programmed into your hardware. They form the essential basic motivation for calculating risk and taking necessary precautions.
But Freder @8:59, the statistical point is correct even if the examples are extreme. Comparing a ubiquitous activity resulting in a high absolute number of deaths and a relatively unusual activity resulting in a low absolute number of deaths is apples and oranges. You have to look at the deaths per person-hour spent engaging in the activity. (People won't instinctively do this - they'll still overestimate their risk of dying from the rare activity - but it's a more defensible metric.)
You seem to take our host's choice of this subject personally for some reason. What's up?
I don't think people fully appreciate how conflicting it is to try and rationalize and avoid deep programming from millions of years of evolution just because we've had a hundred years of dominance over the wilds.
Jamie, those fears are not irrational. They are programmed into your hardware.
Evolutionarily, you're right. But on a quotidian basis, they're not particularly useful. If I were confident that they were generalized to "deadly threat" and I could use the same feelings in a modern, urban (not necessarily in the "gangland" sense, just in the "not wilderness" sense) environment, I'd like them more - but I have made some pretty dumb decisions in the modern urban environment because my lizard brain, as you say, isn't tuned to those threats.
Crossed in the ether, Howard!
Grizzley Bears and sharks attack people and eat them. Its not a "mistake". G.B.'s don't do it often because their arent a lot of them, and we stay out of their way for the most part. Shooting GB's that have tasted human flesh helps.
Big Whites are rarely in a position to attack us. But its not a "mistake". Go swimming off the Coast with a bunch of seals, and you'll see why.
old/slow: "Perhaps surprisingly, Japan has more bear attacks and deaths every year than the USA."
I'm betting it's because: 1) Japan is more densely populated, so bears and humans mix more often'; 2) Japan has the whole hiking culture which brings non-rural people out into the wild, where bears are already mixing with humans; and 3) all that anime with cute anthropomorphic monsters. CC, JSM
John Mosby - I've read that Japan has a bear overpopulation problem. https://wildlife.org/deadly-bear-attacks-surge-in-japan/
I remember reading about a horrifying bear mauling of several people camping there years ago. I would never go hiking in Glacier National Park. Driving through with short stops is one thing. Hiking- alone- in that park in the spring? No thanks.
'Preaching at his local Catholic Church'? I guess it could be done, if the deceased was a deacon. Otherwise in my experience such a thing is very rare. RIP.
Gee is there an Althouse obsession at work here or just another assertion made without evidence?
The fact that he was found "off trail" doesnt mean anything. He could have hiked over there, but he could have been dragged by the bear. Some bears like privacy when they have dine.
"Nature, red in tooth and claw." Lord Tennyson
Sydney, that is a cool article. It also mentions something I didn't - the aging and shrinking of Japan's human population. Farmers don't have heirs to mend fences, hunters are aging out of the sport with no one to replace them, the people left in rural areas are older, maybe less able to hear or see a bear until it's too late, etc.
I like the NHK show "Cycling Through Japan" which a lot of PBS stations carry. It's mostly in these same sorts of rural, dying-out areas. I would laugh my ass off, though, if one of their gaijin hosts got grabbed off his bike and devoured by a bear. CC, JSM
His father said he was fearless
…one of the responsibilities of a parent is to instill rational fears in your children.
Severs, he was a deacon. Some versions of the article put it in the headline. I haven't seen it mentioned if he was a permanent deacon or a seminarian on his way to become a priest. He doesn't seem to fit the profile of most permanent deacons, but it's odd that he's not called a seminarian. CC, JSM
Dogs are much more likely to kill people. Bears aren't even in the top 10:
1. Mosquitoes (~725,000–1,000,000 deaths per year)
2. Humans (~400,000–600,000 deaths via homicide)
3. Snakes (~50,000–138,000 deaths)
4. Dogs (~25,000–59,000 deaths)
5. Freshwater snails (~10,000–200,000 deaths)
6. Assassin bugs (Kissing bugs) (~8,000–12,000 deaths)
7. Tsetse flies (~10,000 deaths)
8. Scorpions (~2,600–3,250 deaths)
9. Ascaris roundworms (~2,500–4,500 deaths)
10. Sandflies (5,000, for leishmaniasis)
Show of hands- who will donate a $10 to send Fredo to Glacier National Park for one year of hiking in the back country?
Touring Yellowstone we stopped at a gift shop. They sold bear spray at the checkout counter. It was the size of small fire extinguisher. Not easy to lug around on a hike. But if it will save your life …..
The ranger said, if confronted, you empty it completely.
“ His father said he was fearless.”
So was Timothy Treadwell. And foolish enough to take his gullible girl friend for a stroll.
Life has risks. I do some risky things, reduce it as much as I can, but it's worth it to me. I run trails at the south border of the Tonto National Forest and have run across* rattlesnakes and I know there are cougars around. I pay attention, but accept the risk (low as they are) as a cost of being in shape and having fun.
I also bike and roller blade on streets. Probably inarguably higher risk than encountering an animal that could theoretically kill me.
* Not literally, but almost once.
I go for nature walks in Central Park in the late afternoon. The chances of my dying at the hands of a mugger are not zero......He sounds like a decent person who led a worthy life. Some people just have shitty luck. There's no moral to this story. Random events happen. Some people win the bad luck lottery.
…the snails get a bad raps- It’s the flatworms that kill you. A case of blame the courier…
"I'm surprised Althouse doesn't have a Florida Man tag"
You shouldn't be. I don't pick up what's already a meme and just use it.
The God of Bears
Answers prayers
Too sometimes
Yancey, I'd be in if it was a one-way ticket.
Sometimes an "experienced" person has just been lucky many times before his foolish behavior gets tested.
It's true. Bear attacks are very rare. Especially brown bear attacks. You're more likely to get killed by a black bear. Still. There are things you can do to encourage a bear attack. One of those things is to go where bears hang out.
You really don't like bears, do you? Why not report on people killed by lightning? There are about 20 of those deaths a year. Bear deaths amount to an average of about 2 a year.
Why don't you start your own fucking blog?
"Assassin bugs usually bite people when they are sleeping, so if you plan a camping trip in an area with Chagas disease prevalence or high reports of assassin bugs, be sure to sleep in an enclosed space (like a tent) or take time to shake out clothing and bedding before calling it a night."
What a name for an insect!
Human vs. sandfly or tse-tse fly doesn't have any epic quality.
If assassin bugs were at least the size of squirrels they might get more ink.
And if he'd been killed by a green beetle the "Post" wouldn't have covered ...
Scratch that.
We call them Hualapai Tigers in Arizona, and they leave a hell of a welt. If you have them living around you, it's wise to check your ceiling before you go to bed. They dropped down when the lights go off and suck your blood.
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