History Book: The wild around us

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, August 12th, 2024. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Summer is just about over and school is around the corner. So today, three stories from the history of the great outdoors—including dozens of beavers catching a flight to a new destination.

And, a T-Rex skeleton is caught up in an ownership dispute.

EICHER: But first, two deadly grizzly bear attacks decades ago in a Montana national park lead to a policy change. Here’s WORLD Radio Reporter Emma Perley.

EMMA PERLEY: August 12th, 1967, a teenager named Julie Helgeson hunkers down for the night in Glacier National Park, Montana.

Julie and her boyfriend, Roy Ducat, crawl into their sleeping bags and drift off. In a PBS documentary interview Ducat recalls being awakened by an aggressive bear.

DUCAT: I remember Julie saying, whispering to me, ‘Play dead.’ He started biting me, he bit me on my back, my legs, it just happened so fast … I felt overwhelmed, helpless …

Roy plays dead, and that works for him. But the bear heads for Julie and drags her away. Roy alerts the lodge, and soon a park service helicopter brings in armed rangers and medical supplies.

A search party finds Julie, still conscious but badly hurt, and the rescuers bring her back to the lodge. But even with two doctors, a surgeon, and a nurse attending to her , they soon realize there’s nothing they can do. Pastor Tom Connelly baptizes Julie with a wet rag and gives her last rites.

CONNELLY: I’d asked her to hold my hand, because she was able to have a little bit of a grip and gave me some awareness that we were in contact with each other, and that she was following the prayer …

Earlier that evening, five teenagers hike down to a nearby lake. 19 year-old Michele Koons keeps an eye on her friend’s puppy, while the rest head out to fish. Paul Dunn remembers the peaceful day.

DUNN: It was just a nice, easygoing afternoon for awhile.

But a grizzly appears after dark. As it starts slashing into Paul’s sleeping bag, he jumps out and up a tree. The others wake up to the noise, and clamber into the trees, dragging the puppy with them. But Michele’s sleeping-bag zipper is stuck, and she can’t get away.

Rangers find Michele’s body a few hundred feet away from the campsite the next morning. The two female bears who killed Michele and Julie are found and shot by rangers.

The tragedy causes the park service to put in place strict bear-management policies. Bear-proof garbage cans are installed around the park, and authorities begin strictly enforcing rules against park visitors feeding bears.

DOCUMENTARY: Certainly the incidents that night marked a watershed event in managing bears. There had to be some criteria for what was acceptable bear behavior.

Next, August 12th, 1990. Paleontologist Sue Hendrickson is part of a field team on an archaeological dig in South Dakota. And she finds mysterious bone fragments at the base of a cliff. Audio here from a National Geographic documentary in an interview with Hendrickson.

HENDRICKSON: I looked up the hill and about 7, 8 feet up there was quite a few bones so then I crawled up beside it to look closer and there were three vertebrae in a row, and there was a rib sticking out.

Hendrickson heads back to tell team leader Peter Larson about the discovery. Eventually the crew uncovers the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex twice as tall as a man, and as long as a bus. The excavation team dubs the T-Rex Sue, in Hendrickson’s honor.

HENDRICKSON: When I found her and then while you’re digging her, it’s like, wow I’m the first person to see her? I really felt like she was meant to be found.

But Sue is soon caught in controversy. The tribal landowner, Maurice Williams, believes he has a claim to Sue’s skeleton, but Larson argues finders keepers. The situation escalates. Even the FBI gets involved raiding Larson’s museum. Here’s Larson speaking with National Geographic.

LARSON: When the FBI came and took Sue, it was probably one of the lowest points in my life.

Finally, a federal court gives Sue back to Williams as well as the U.S. Government … while pressuring Williams to sell Sue to the highest bidder.

AUDIO: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Sotheby’s. We have for auction today the fossil of a Tyrannosaurus Rex known as Sue. One million dollars, do I hear one million?

Sue ends up going for $7.6 million dollars to the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. By 2020, it’s sold again to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, where it remains on display today.

Finally, August 14th, 1948. An old beaver named Geronimo skydives out of a plane, not once, not twice, but several times. Each time he lands safely, only to be whisked away again for another jump. The reason? To test a rather unusual solution for wildlife relocation. Audio here from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

AUDIO: In preparing for the operation, beavers must be sorted for even size and weight, with one pair of beaver for each box …

Beavers were making it difficult for farmers settling in Northwest Idaho in the 19-40s … often damaging irrigation systems and farmland. But the beavers rarely survived relocation by truck across the mountains to central Idaho. So the conservation officials take to the skies..

AUDIO: The drop crates are loaded into the airplane, parachutes are attached to cargo lines, and the boxes are stacked in rows along the waist of the plane. Ten boxes to a load, 20 beaver ready for the flight to Mountain Meadows.

The beavers take a scenic trip in a plane over the mountains and forests, then parachute down to the ground below. The operation proves successful—76 beavers land safely in central Idaho to begin a new life.

AUDIO: The plane makes a careful approach, ready for the drop. Now, into the air and down they swing! Down to the ground near a stream or a lake, the box opens, and a most unusual and novel trip ends for Mr. Beaver.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Perley.

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