A father of four was killed in a suspected grizzly bear attack while hiking in a Montana park.
The remains of Craig Clouatre, 40, of Livingston, were discovered Friday near Yellowstone National Park by Park County Search and Rescue.
According to The Living Enterprise, Clouatre went missing Wednesday after hiking in the Six Mile Creek area of Paradise Valley.
Park County Sheriff Brad Bichler confirmed Clouatre’s death in a statement Saturday.
“It is with a heavy heart that I am writing this update. After an extensive search this morning, we located Craig,” Bichler wrote. “It appears he had an encounter with a grizzly and unfortunately did not survive.”
“Please keep his family and everyone involved in your thoughts and prayers.”
Clouatre leaves behind a wife, Jamie, and their four children. A GoFundMe for his family raised over $55,000 from a $75,000 goal as of Sunday morning.
Pictured: Craig Clouatre, 40, of Livingston, was reportedly missing Wednesday after hiking in the Six Mile Creek area of Paradise Valley
Clouatre is survived by a wife, Jamie, and their four children pictured above
Pictured: the site of the deadly grizzly attack that reportedly took Clouatre’s life in connection with Yellowstone National Park
Father-of-four was killed in a suspected grizzly bear attack while hiking in a Montana park (file image)
Search teams on the ground and in helicopters had been looking for Clouatre on Wednesday after he failed to return from a hike that morning.
He had gone with a friend, but the couple split up, possibly to hunt antlers.
“They broke up sometime later that morning. When the other man returned to his vehicle and his friend wasn’t there, he called us and we began the search on Wednesday evening.”
The search began that night and focused on the Six Mile Creek area in the Absaroka Mountains, about 30 miles south of Livingston, Montana.
“We are fortunate to have a group of experienced volunteers in our SAR [Search and Rescue] Team and we are grateful for the people who came to help,” Bichler told the newspaper.
Authorities were working to return Clouatre’s body to his family on Friday, Bichler said in a social media post.
Clouatre’s father told The Associated Press his son grew up in Massachusetts and moved to Montana more than two decades ago, where Clouatre met his future wife Jamie and decided to make a home for themselves.
Clouatre grew up in Massachusetts and moved to Montana more than two decades ago, where Clouatre met his future wife Jamie and decided to make a home
Jamie paid tribute to her husband today, saying she needs to “relearn how to be and who I am … for our children.”
Clouatre and his family, pictured, had suffered the fire at their home just two years earlier, from which the family was still recovering at the time of Clouatre’s death
“It was a pleasure to have him as a son,” said David Clouatre.
“He was a good man, a good, hard-working family man.”
Meanwhile, his wife Jamie said she needed to “relearn how to be and who I am … for our kids.”
“I don’t really have many words right now and I’m not reaching out to everyone who has reached out to me…but I cherish every single one of the feelings and memories of the most amazing person I’ve ever known. my husband,” she wrote on Facebook.
“I loved him with every fiber of my being… he was an important part of me and our children and it will be a struggle for the rest of our lives.” To say we’re broken is an understatement. I need to relearn how to be and who I am and stay strong enough for our children.”
“Not an easy way to put it, that’s not fair, they didn’t deserve this. The support in this community is incredible and I know it comes from Craig… who he was, a joy, a really kind, good, GOOD man. There is nobody like him in the whole world. Many thanks for everything! We’ve all lost something and the world has gotten a whole lot darker,” she wrote.
The mountains in the area where Craig Clouatre died rise steeply above the Yellowstone River, which flows through Paradise Valley.
Dense forests at higher elevations are home to bears and other wildlife, although dangerous encounters with humans are relatively rare.
Clouatre visited those mountains and others in the park, hiking in the summer and climbing in the winter when he wasn’t home with his wife and their four young children, said Anne Tanner, a friend of the victim.
Tanner said she’s known Clouatre for about a decade because he worked for commercial food companies and delivered to her restaurant, the Emigrant Outpost.
The mountains in the area where pictured Craig Clouatre died rise steeply above the Yellowstone River, which flows through Paradise Valley
The restaurant served the Clouatre family after their home burned down two years ago. Tanner said they only recently recovered from the fire.
“He was in the process of putting her house together,” she said.
“It just makes me angry that something like this could happen to such a good man… Of all the men I know, I can’t believe he would die in the wild. He was so strong and he was so smart.’
State wildlife officials responded to the scene, but Greg Lemon, spokesman for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said he had no further information.
Grizzlies have killed at least eight people in the Yellowstone region since 2010.
Among them was a mountain guide who was killed by a bear on Yellowstone’s western border last year. Guide Charles ‘Carl’ Mock was killed in April after being mauled by a 400+ pound male grizzly while fishing alone at a favorite spot on Montana’s Madison River, where it gushes out of the park.
Grizzlies are protected by federal law outside of Alaska. Elected officials in the Yellowstone region are pushing to lift protections and allow grizzly hunting.
More than 700 bears live in the Yellowstone region, which spans parts of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
Fatal attacks on humans are rare, but have increased in recent decades as grizzly populations grew and more humans moved to rural areas near bear habitat.