The grizzly bear had already poked around the camping site before being shooed away, but this time it wasn’t to be deterred. After it caught the waft of stashed food in its nostrils, the bear tore into the tent’s canvas.
The outcome was grim. Leah Davis Lokan, a 65-year-old described posthumously as “incredibly strong, incredibly athletic, brave, fearless” lay mortally wounded, the collapsed tent partly covering her body.
Lokan succumbed to her injuries quickly, Valiton says, mimicking the hefty swipe of a bear’s paw. “They’re very strong and they’re made to kill things,” he says. The rescue team attempted to save her regardless, albeit with some nervousness. “You certainly don’t need a bear sneaking up on you while you’re trying to do CPR in the dark,” says Valiton.
The grizzly had fled after being doused in anti-bear spray by Kim Lokan and was spotted two nights later by wildlife officials using night vision goggles as it raided a chicken coop. The 400lb male bear was felled by marksmen, and DNA tests confirmed it was responsible for the death. Locals say Lokan had a granola bar and perhaps some berries in her tent, which attracted the bear even after she had moved the food, although an official investigation is pending.
Two decades ago a hunter was killed by a grizzly in woodlands not far from Ovando, but no one in this village of 50 souls had known anything like this to happen right in the heart of town. “It shocked us to our core,” says Valiton. “It was our absolute worst nightmare.”
A flier warns campers about grizzly bear activity in Ovando.
A fatal encounter with a grizzly bear, or any bear, is exceptionally rare. “You’re literally more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a bear,” says Kim Johnston, who has worked as a bear specialist for the state government – but many in Montana view Lokan’s death as further evidence that a burgeoning and spreading grizzly population, aided by four decades of federal protection, is now increasingly bumping up against residents and visitors of the US west.