The attack occurred shortly after dawn on August 28, said Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness spokesperson Dawn Grisi in a prepared statement. “The bear apparently attacked without provocation. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a grizzly bear has fatally attacked humans in the Wilderness.”

Kazin, sleeping in a separate tent, was awakened by the sounds of screams and scuffling and emerged to find Mr. Borba frantically punching at the bear, which was hunched over the prostrate form of his wife. Kazin saw the bear slap at Borba, sending him several feet through the air and apparently fracturing his skull and shoulder blade.

“I ran back into my tent and got the pepper spray,” said a distraught Kazin, clad in a borrowed ranger uniform, “but by then the bear was gnawing at Mary’s body and you could see that she was beyond help by then. I was able to drag Doug a few yards away, but I think he was already dead, too. There was just nothing I could do. I tried calling 911 but the damn cell phone wouldn’t work. I’m telling you, there was absolutely nothing I could do to help them. I feel terrible. But all I could do was grab my shoes and trek on out to the pickup and drive back up to Darby, to the West Fork Ranger Station, to tell them what happened. I was in my underwear. I still don’t have my own clothes.”

When rangers arrived at the scene they found both bodies partially eaten. They were able to track the radio-collared bear for a quarter of a mile, then shoot it.

“Doug and Mary were the cream of the crop of our grad students,” Kazin told this reporter. “Mary was on her way to becoming a topflight ecologist, following in her father’s footsteps, and Doug had already been offered a lecturer slot on the faculty for next year. It’s not only an awful personal tragedy, it’s a terrible loss to science.”