From Adventure Journal

Utah Family Seeks $2 Million from Forest Service After Bear Killed Son

By Steve Casimiro, Guest Writer, 2-24-11

	Photo by Flickr user alh1.

Tragically, a bear killed a boy. Sliced a hole in his tent in a national forest in southern Utah four years ago, pulled him out, and that was that.

The question before a federal judge in Salt Lake City now is: Who (or what) is to blame? His parents accuse the U.S. Forest Service and want $2 million in damages. The Forest Service says the bear is to blame, but suggest contributing factors from the mom. Attorneys for both sides made their final arguments last week and U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball is deliberating.

A bear attack might appear to be a relatively simple event to investigate, but there are complications. Samuel Ives, 11, and his parents were camping in an undeveloped area (i.e., not in a campground) in American Fork Canyon in June 2007, when the boy was snatched from his tent in the middle of the night. His cries for help woke his mother, Rebecca Ives, who rushed to his aid but he was gone. A clean slice in the wall of his tent looked it had been done with a knife, and she thought he had been kidnapped.

“You hear horror stories of people taking your children in the night and doing horrible things to them,” she told the court last week. “I thought someone had taken him.”

Authorities who responded saw immediately it was a bear. Several hours later, they found Ives’s body 200 yards away.

Sam’s family filed the lawsuit after they learned that another camper in American Fork had had an encounter with a bear the morning of Sam’s death: The bear reached into a tent and stole a pillow and also rummaged through coolers. The Iveses argued that the Forest Service was negligent in not alerting other campers to the bear’s presence, although there were signs posted throughout the forest about the presence of bears and state officials did chase the nuisance bear away. (This was the first known fatality by a bear attack in Utah, which has black bear population of approximately 2,700.)

Jeffery Nelson, defense attorney, argued that “the Forest Service didn’t have a responsibility to protect the plaintiffs from an unforeseeable harm” and suggested that the Ives family contributed to attracting the bear. An empty granola wrapper and half-finished can of Coke Zero were found in Sam’s tent, and they suggested that Rebecca was inebriated and inattentive. She reeked so badly of alcohol, Detective Melissa Stout testified, that as they waited in Stout’s vehicle for searchers to find Sam, she had to roll the windows down. “My whole truck smelled like a alcoholic beverage,” Stout said.

Sam’s father, Kevan Francis, rebutted, “It’s basically the government saying we don’t have to protect you if you drink.”

The Ives are also suing the Utah Division of Wildlife, which tracked the bear for five hours after its first encounter with a camper.

Suing the government over a wild animal attack (and winning) is not unprecedented: In 1986, $1.5 million was awarded to the family of a girl who was mauled by a mountain lion in Caspers Wilderness Park, Orange County, California.

Steve Casimiro is a writer and editor for Adventure Journal.

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