Arkansas authorities have shot and killed a male black bear believed to have fatally mauled a 60-year-old Missouri man at his campsite in the Ozark National Forest last week. The victim, Max Thomas from Springfield, Missouri, was found dead on Thursday several yards from the Sam's Throne campground in remote northwest Arkansas, according to Newton County Sheriff Glenn Wheeler.
Sheriff Wheeler stated that Thomas had sent his family pictures of a black bear at his camp on Tuesday morning. A deputy dispatched after Thomas's son reported no contact found evidence of a struggle, including drag marks leading from the campground into the woods. The state medical examiner's office ruled the death an 'animal mauling.'
On Sunday, a bear captured on a trail camera near the campground matched the size and facial colourations of the one in Thomas's photos and was also seen by another man at a roadside overlook. Local hunters and hounds tracked the bear, which was killed and transported to Little Rock for DNA testing to confirm it was the attacker.
This incident marks the second fatal bear attack in Arkansas in recent weeks. In September, a 72-year-old man died after a bear attack in nearby Franklin County. Despite these events, large mammal ecologist Don White Jr. of the University of Arkansas at Monticello described fatal bear attacks in the state as 'exceedingly rare,' with the last confirmed case in 1892.
Black bear populations in Arkansas have rebounded from fewer than 50 in the 1930s to an estimated 5,000 today, following reintroduction efforts in the 1950s and 1960s. Keith Stephens of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission noted the rarity of such attacks, emphasizing the state's successful conservation efforts.
