The Native American community in New Mexico is reeling after a bear attack killed a man on Thursday. It was the second fatal bear attack recorded in the state since 2001.
A bear mauled the victim to death in Crystal, New Mexico. The Navajo Police Department did not publicly identify the man, whom Navajo Nation President Buu Van Nygren called “one of our Diné relatives.”
The shocking attack appears to be the first fatal bear mauling reported in New Mexico since 2001, according to records tracking bear attacks.
That 2001 killing was the state’s first fatal bear attack in roughly a century, a grim milestone, the Associated Press reported. The victim was Adelia Trujillo, who was killed after a 250-pound male bear broke into her home.
Deadly attacks are rare in North America. New Mexico has recorded a fatal encounter with a bear in 2020 involving a 37-year-old woman. She was attacked by a bear while sitting with her husband on the deck of a ski lodge in Los Alamos.
The animal came very near to where the couple sat before chasing the woman and attacking her in a parking lot. New Mexico Wildlife officials said she suffered serious injuries, including broken bones, a collapsed lung, bite wounds and scratches. She survived, but the bear did not, after authorities killed the animal following the attack.
Despite the terrifying encounters, experts said that the chances of being killed by a bear are rare. The North American Bear Center says a person is about 60,000 times more likely to be murdered by fellow human beings than to die at the hands of a black bear.
National Park Service statistics likewise placed the odds of being injured by a bear at about one in 2.1 million. But for the residents of Crystal, those statistics offer little comfort after Thursday’s deadly encounter.
The fatal incident was a stark reminder that an encounter with a bear can be deadly even in communities that traditionally treated bears as “sacred beings of the mountains. In his post on X, the Navajo Nation said, “Our elders have taught us to respect these beings, keep our distance and approach encounters with wildlife carefully and with reverence.”
