Stephen Herrero wrote the book on bear attacks — his legacy doesn’t end there

In the fall of 1967, Dr. Stephen Herrero walked into a high school in Canmore, Alta., to ask about an open position for a biology teacher. 

Herrero, an accomplished rock climber and self-described hippie, had recently graduated with a PhD in behavioural ecology from the University of California, Berkeley, and unexpectedly found himself in Canada with his young family. 

The principal at the school said he’d love to hire him, but noted Herrero wasn’t accredited as a high school teacher in Alberta, suggesting he might find a better fit at a new university that had opened a year earlier in Calgary. 

“University? There’s a university?” Herrero recalls asking at the time. 

The University of Calgary, now one of the country’s top five research institutions, had opened in April 1966 on what was formerly a farmer’s field.

A year later, Herrero made the hour-long drive east from Canmore on the Trans-Canada Highway and visited campus. He left that day with teaching assignments in psychology and biology — and received an offer for a postdoctoral fellowship studying bears.

“I was fascinated with nature and with science,” Herrero, 86, a professor emeritus in biology and environmental science at UCalgary, said during one of several interviews during the past year.

“I had studied animal behaviour under some of the world’s leading thinkers in that field.”

Herrero would go on to become internationally recognized himself as a leading authority on bear ecology, behaviour and attacks.

The night of the grizzlies 

Perhaps fatefully, it was two prominent grizzly bear attacks that led to Herrero’s family arriving in Alberta.

They had been travelling in a Volkswagen bus to visit several national parks, including Yosemite and Rainer in the United States. The next stop on their family vacation was Glacier National Park in Montana.

On the morning of Aug. 13, 1967, though, two young women had been killed overnight by two different grizzly bears in different areas of the park. It became known as the Night of the Grizzlies.

“We are not going to Glacier,” Herrero recalls his then-wife saying at the time.

The attacks ultimately led to changes in bear-management practices in national parks. They also led to increased fear around grizzly bears.

For Herrero, it changed the trajectory of his career as he and his family diverted their road trip to Jasper and Banff in Canada. Both national parks are also home to grizzly bears.

“I wasn’t planning to be a long time in Canada, let alone move to Canada and retire in Canada,” he says.

Herrero ended up dedicating his postdoctoral research to studying bears, starting with black bears after it was noted that he didn’t have any field experience with grizzlies.

His research started in 1968 with monitoring bears at the dump in Jasper National Park, where he and a research assistant watched and learned about the behaviour of both black and grizzly bears.

Herrero studied bears further through research in Banff National Park. That work in the mid-1970s included a study of grizzly bears in the Cascade and Panther regions, and a food-and-habitat study in Lake Louise.

Herrero also worked with Waterton Lakes National Park on a smaller version of the Banff study that was requested in the early 1980s after a grizzly bear fatality involving a young girl.

His work, which resulted in changes in Canadian national parks, led to dozens of research papers and ultimately his must-read book for anyone who lives, works or plays in bear country.

Herrero wrote the book on bear attacks — literally 

Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance was first published in 1985, updated in 2002 and reissued with a third edition in 2018. About 150,000 copies have now been sold around the world.

“I wrote (the book) for people … who are drawn to nature and bears and their wildland environment,” Herrero wrote in his intro to the 2018 revision. “We can share what is left of our wildland areas, deriving joy from knowing bears are there.

“This co-existence, however, needs to be based on understanding bears’ behaviour and needs and minimizing the danger bears occasionally pose.”

The book, which has been translated into languages such as German and Japanese, is based on 17 years of research and scientific analysis of detailed records of 414 human-bear interactions, 357 of which have involved injury or aggression.

“This understanding has stood the test of time, as it should have, since the behaviour and ecology of bears were designed by millions of years of evolution and were not going to change in a few years,” Herrero noted.

Herrero, who became one of the foremost experts on bears, said that the knowledge of their behaviour and ecology can empower people to decrease the chance of unwanted bear encounters. 

His research on bears led to recommendations on how to respond to predatory vs. defensive attacks, food storage, and the use of capsaicin spray, commonly known as pepper spray, which he says is one of the “best tools” available to help prevent an attack.

Herrero’s research, however, didn’t stop at bears.

His 67 academic papers also included work on hummingbirds, endangered swift foxes, river otters and even rats.

By the time he officially retired from UCalgary, he had supervised at least 61 grad students and inspired an entire generation of scientists.

Bear biologists honour Herrero with dancing and tributes

During an Edmonton conference of the International Association for Bear Research and Management in 2024, Herrero and his wife Linda Wiggins reconnected with other biologists and danced late into the night.

Wiggins said she left his side at one point to turn around and see a “gaggle of people around Steve” when he took a rest in his wheelchair.

Herrero was still in the middle of the dance floor.

“They had taken off the brakes, and they had taken off the foot pedals, so he could move around with his feet and his hands, and he’s dancing,” she recalled.

Herrero added with a grin: “It’s amazing what motions can induce a wheelchair to perform.”

At that conference, many of those experts took turns writing in a small brown notebook embossed with a bear.

The book, Tributes to Steve Herrero, spoke to the magnitude of his work.

“My life was forever changed in the mid-1970s when I listened to you talk at the Missoula bear conference,” writes Dr. Chris Servheen, PhD, who was the grizzly bear recovery co-ordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 35 years until he retired in 2016. “You have been a friend, a mentor, guide, a co-author…

“You have inspired, guided and been a role model to hundreds of bear biologists throughout the world. Today, what we accomplish for bears is due in large part to you.”

Bill Hunt, a former manager of resource conservation in Banff National Park, noted that Parks Canada “relied on your wisdom and expertise on many occasions,” offering changes at the Lake Louise campground and Moraine Lake’s group of four hiking restrictions as examples. “You have played such a key leadership role in shaping the future of bear management and improving public safety.”

Others described his work as foundational, referred to him as a legend and noted his huge contribution to science.

He has “done so much for bears,” said one entry.

But Herrero, who beams every time he talks about bears, noted that his absolute favourite part of being a professor at the University of Calgary for 40-plus years was his students.

“It was a privilege,” he recalled proudly.