# List of fatal bear attacks in North America
Fatal bear attacks in North America are documented deaths of people caused by wild bears of three species: the [American black bear](https://www.edgepedia.org/american-black-bear) (*Ursus americanus*), the brown or grizzly bear (*Ursus arctos*), and the polar bear (*Ursus maritimus*). Such attacks are rare events against millions of bear-human interactions each year, but they are recorded in detail because each fatality is usually investigated by a wildlife agency, and researchers have compiled them into species-wide databases covering more than a century.[1](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72) • [2](https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/species-risk-public-registry/cosewic-assessments-status-reports/grizzly-bear/chapter-5.html)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Black bear fatalities, 1900–2009 | At least 63 people killed in 59 incidents by non-captive black bears; 49 in Canada and Alaska, 14 in the lower 48 states[1](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72) |
| Black bear motivation | The bear acted as a predator in 88% (49 of 56) of fatal incidents; male bears were involved in 92% of fatal predatory incidents[1](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72) |
| Timing | 86% of fatal black bear attacks (54 of 63, about 1.08 per year) occurred between 1960 and 2009[1](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72) |
| Brown bear attacks, 2000–2015 | 183 attacks in North America in a worldwide study; 6 were predatory, and the most prevalent scenario was an encounter with a female bear with cubs (47% of attacks globally)[3](https://doi.org/10.1038/S41598-019-44341-W) |
| Polar bear attacks, 1870–2014 | 73 attacks by wild polar bears across the five range states, resulting in 20 human fatalities and 63 injuries[4](https://www.usgs.gov/publications/polar-bear-attacks-humans-implications-a-changing-climate) |
| Yellowstone risk | 1 grizzly-bear fatality for every 26.2 million park visits; only 1 fatal attack there was classified as predatory[5](https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/hwi/vol16/iss3/8/) |
| Recent toll, 2018–2023 | An estimated 26 bear-attack fatalities reported in North America: 8 attributed to black bears, 15 to brown bears, and 2 to polar bears[6](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/11786302251355353) |
## Black bear attacks
The most complete species-wide accounting is Stephen Herrero's study with colleagues at the [University of Calgary](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-calgary) and collaborating agencies, published in *The Journal of Wildlife Management* in 2011. It found that at least 63 people were killed in 59 incidents by non-captive black bears during 1900–2009, with 49 fatalities in Canada and Alaska and 14 in the lower 48 states.[1](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72) Canada and Alaska recorded a rate of fatal black bear attacks 3.5 times higher, despite hosting only 1.75 times the number of black bears, and human contact with black bears there was far rarer.[1](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72)
**Predation, not defense, drives most black bear fatalities.** The authors judged that the bear acted as a predator in 88% of fatal incidents, and adult or subadult male bears were involved in 92% (33 of 36) of fatal predatory incidents. Because most fatal black bear attacks were predatory and carried out by a single bear, females with young are not the most dangerous black bears, a pattern that differs from brown bears.[1](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72) In an earlier analysis of 34 incidents where the bear's behavior after the attack could be inferred, the bear was judged to be acting as a predator in 29.[7](https://wafwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/5th-Western-Black-Bear-Workshop.pdf)
**Circumstances of the attacks** follow consistent patterns. Of fatal attacks, 91% (49 of 54) occurred on parties of 1 or 2 persons, and 69% were on a person alone. In 38% (15 of 40) of incidents, people's food or garbage probably influenced the bear being in the attack location. Attacks occurred between April and November, with 85% between May and September, and 70% of those with a known time took place during daytime. In 95% of incidents, survivors reported not sensing the bear until it was less than 50 m away.[1](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72) Fatal attacks per decade rose along with human population size in the United States and Canada (r² = 0.92), and 86% of the fatalities occurred between 1960 and 2009.[1](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72)
Non-fatal black bear attacks are far more common: a later study analyzed all 210 agency-confirmed non-fatal attacks by black bears in the 48 conterminous United States during 2000 to 2017.[8](https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/hwi/vol15/iss1/23/) Some large black bear populations have produced no recorded fatalities; jurisdictions with no fatal attacks in the Herrero study included California (about 31,000 bears), Idaho (22,500), Maine (23,000), Montana (20,000), and Oregon (27,500) in the early 2000s.[1](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72) California's first documented fatal black bear attack on a human was confirmed only in 2024, for the November 2023 death of 71-year-old Patrice Miller in Downieville, in the [Sierra Nevada](https://www.edgepedia.org/sierra-nevada).[9](https://apnews.com/article/0e511f4dd2f07f2df9b06802847105b9) In 2025, Arkansas recorded two fatal black bear attacks in separate incidents within weeks, which the state game commission described as rare and under investigation.[10](https://www.axios.com/local/nw-arkansas/2025/10/15/arkansas-bear-attacks-investigation)
## Brown (grizzly) bear attacks
A worldwide study of brown bear attacks from 2000 to 2015 recorded 664 attacks, of which 183 were in North America; 85.7% of attacks globally ended in injury and 14.3% in death. The most prevalent attack scenario was an encounter with a female bear with cubs (47% of classified attacks), followed by sudden encounters (20%), dog presence (17%), attacks after the bear was shot or trapped (10%), and predatory attacks (5%, including 6 in North America).[3](https://doi.org/10.1038/S41598-019-44341-W) The most common motivation for a brown bear attack is generally described as defensive, in contrast to the predatory pattern of fatal black bear attacks.[11](https://www.hwctf.org/_files/ugd/7acc16_6776298d913645c0b59d9bb297ab0c06.pdf)
In North America, brown bears have been estimated to fatally injure 1 to 2 persons and non-fatally injure 3 to 4 persons per year.[11](https://www.hwctf.org/_files/ugd/7acc16_6776298d913645c0b59d9bb297ab0c06.pdf) A Canadian status report estimated an annual average of 9.0 serious and fatal grizzly attacks on humans in North America during the 1990s, and found that over a 30-year period in Alberta and [British Columbia](https://www.edgepedia.org/british-columbia) there were about 4 times as many serious injuries as fatalities.[2](https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/species-risk-public-registry/cosewic-assessments-status-reports/grizzly-bear/chapter-5.html)
**National park records** show how concentrated these events are. In [Yellowstone National Park](https://www.edgepedia.org/yellowstone-national-park), the per capita risk of being killed by a grizzly bear was 1 fatality for every 26.2 million park visits, and only 1 fatal bear attack there was classified as predatory.[5](https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/hwi/vol16/iss3/8/) Glacier National Park's fatal history is often traced to 1967, when two 19-year-old women were mauled to death by grizzlies at separate campsites on the same night, an episode linked to garbage-conditioned bears; as of 2015, TIME reported 10 people killed by bears in Glacier's history compared with 7 at Yellowstone.[12](https://time.com/3847731/grizzly-problem-glacier-national-park/)
## Polar bear attacks
[Polar bear](https://www.edgepedia.org/polar-bear) attacks differ from those of the other North American species. A USGS-documented study covering 1870 to 2014 recorded 73 attacks by wild polar bears across the five polar bear range states (Canada, [Greenland](https://www.edgepedia.org/greenland), Norway, Russia, and the United States), resulting in 20 human fatalities and 63 injuries.[4](https://www.usgs.gov/publications/polar-bear-attacks-humans-implications-a-changing-climate) Analyses of these attacks found that bears acted as a predator in 61% of attacks and in 87% of fatal attacks, that only single polar bears were involved in fatal attacks on people, and that even independent yearling polar bears have killed people, a difference from black and brown bears. Twenty-six percent of polar bear attacks occurred in towns.[13](https://www.bearbiology.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/24th-IBA-2016-June-12-%E2%80%93-16-Anchorage-AK-USA.pdf)
## Patterns and risk
Across species, the absolute risk is small. There are millions of bear-human interactions in North America each year, nearly all with peaceful outcomes.[2](https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/species-risk-public-registry/cosewic-assessments-status-reports/grizzly-bear/chapter-5.html) A compilation of documented incidents from publicly available sources estimated bear-attack fatalities in North America between 2018 and 2023, attributed as 8 to black bears, 15 to brown bears, and 2 to polar bears.[6](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/11786302251355353) Factors that promote attacks include surprising a bear at close range, the presence of a dog, group size, the victim's activity such as hunting or tending livestock, wounding the bear, and a bear defending cubs, a carcass, or a den site.[14](https://www.bearstudy.org/images/stories/Publications/Trends_in_Human_Fatalities_by_Griz_%26_Black_Bears.pdf) Human food and garbage play a recurring role: peoples' food or garbage probably influenced the bear's presence in 38% of fatal black bear incidents, and wildlife managers commonly euthanize bears that have learned to associate people with food after serious incidents.[1](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72) • [15](https://apnews.com/article/4e348e9319f2bc66fd667ba299dfb24e)
## References
1. [Herrero, S., Higgins, A., Cardoza, J. E., Hajduk, L. I., and Smith, T. S. (2011). Fatal attacks by American black bear on people: 1900–2009. The Journal of Wildlife Management 75(3): 596–603.](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.72)
2. [Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) COSEWIC assessment and update status report, chapter 5, Government of Canada](https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/species-risk-public-registry/cosewic-assessments-status-reports/grizzly-bear/chapter-5.html)
3. [Bombieri, G., et al. (2019). Brown bear attacks on humans: a worldwide perspective. Scientific Reports 9: 8573.](https://doi.org/10.1038/S41598-019-44341-W)
4. [Polar bear attacks on humans: Implications of a changing climate, U.S. Geological Survey](https://www.usgs.gov/publications/polar-bear-attacks-humans-implications-a-changing-climate)
5. [Gunther, K. A. Bear-Caused Human Fatalities in Yellowstone National Park: Characteristics, Human–Wildlife Interactions 16(3)](https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/hwi/vol16/iss3/8/)
6. [Langley, R. L., and Kearney, G. D. (2025). Animal-Related Fatalities in the United States (2018–2023).](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/11786302251355353)
7. [Herrero, S., and Higgins, A. Fatal injuries inflicted to people by black bear, Proceedings of the 5th Western Black Bear Workshop](https://wafwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/5th-Western-Black-Bear-Workshop.pdf)
8. [Scharhag, J. M., Sartini, C., et al. Characteristics of Non-Fatal Attacks by Black Bears: Conterminous United States, 2000–2017, Human–Wildlife Interactions 15(1)](https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/hwi/vol15/iss1/23/)
9. [Woman's 2023 death was first fatal black bear attack on a human in California records, Associated Press (2024)](https://apnews.com/article/0e511f4dd2f07f2df9b06802847105b9)
10. [Arkansas officials investigate rare fatal bear attacks, Axios (2025)](https://www.axios.com/local/nw-arkansas/2025/10/15/arkansas-bear-attacks-investigation)
11. [Scharhag et al., Characteristics of Non-Fatal Attacks by Black Bears (PDF version)](https://www.hwctf.org/_files/ugd/7acc16_6776298d913645c0b59d9bb297ab0c06.pdf)
12. [How Garbage Spawned a Grizzly Problem at Glacier National Park, TIME (2015)](https://time.com/3847731/grizzly-problem-glacier-national-park/)
13. [2016 IBA Abstract Compilation, International Bear Association](https://www.bearbiology.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/24th-IBA-2016-June-12-%E2%80%93-16-Anchorage-AK-USA.pdf)
14. [Trends in Human Fatalities by Grizzly and Black Bears, bearstudy.org](https://www.bearstudy.org/images/stories/Publications/Trends_in_Human_Fatalities_by_Griz_%26_Black_Bears.pdf)
15. [Bear with 3 cubs attacks man after breaking into Colorado home, Associated Press (2024)](https://apnews.com/article/4e348e9319f2bc66fd667ba299dfb24e)
---
*Topic: Encyclopedia › Life and health › Animals › Vertebrates › Mammals › Carnivorans › Bears*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 21, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 21, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license