A recent Facebook post by a Libby resident living near the elementary school has area folks on the alert for the presence of a male grizzly.

Two photos from the Sept. 13 Facebook post showed a grizzly bear in the Ski Dale area. One photo was timestamped 1:13 a.m. Sunday morning.

The bear was seen on a game camera in the area of Parmenter Creek Road and Billadeau Road. 

The Libby resident who shared the photos said they came from the game camera her brother uses monitor cows and chickens. The bear was reportedly headed toward Kootenai National Forest land that is interspersed with private land in the area.

A substantial rain and wind storm in the middle of April blew the blossoms off shrubs that typically provide food for bears, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks bear conflict specialist Garrett Tovey told The Western News a few weeks ago.

Service berries, thimble berries, hucks, choke cherries and hawthorns were all affected and by the middle of May, conflict calls had plateaued and still haven't ended, Tovey said.

Tovey provided an update earlier this week.

“We always like to remind people anywhere in Montana is bear country,” he said. “In this case we’ve put up game cameras in the area and want to keep monitoring it if possible. In the past 24 hours, the bear hasn’t been seen and we don’t have any plans to trap it yet. 

“Certainly, with it in close proximity to the elementary school, we take that seriously and we would err on the side of human safety,” Tovey added. “But we remind people if they see a grizzly, particularly close to town, to call us as soon as possible so we can plan how to handle it.”

Tovey said the man’s chickens had electric fence around them, but not the cows. The plan is to put electric fence where the cows are. 

“We plan to remedy that today,” he said.

Tovey said one encouraging thing about the grizzly was that it looked to be very healthy.

“That’s a good sign that it looks well fed,” he said. “Bears wander a lot, even in good food years, and normally they are never seen, but with the amount of game cams out, Ring cameras and others, bears and other animals are seen a lot more.”

The last time a grizzly bear was reported seen in and around city limits was late October 2021 and it was the same area as this bear. Officials with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service trapped a male grizzly near Parmenter Creek Road in late October that year and it was moved to a remote location in the southern Cabinet Mountains.

That 2021 grizzly is not the same bear that was seen recently near Ski Dale. That bear was moved into the Yaak and accidentally shot by hunters during the 2026 spring black bear season. Grizzlies are still listed as a threatened species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and hunting of them in the lower 48 states is not allowed.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Cabinet/Yaak Ecosystem Program grizzly bear biologist Wayne Kasworm said he had seen the photos of the Ski Dale bear and noted it didn’t have a collar or ear tags.

Federal officials who trap grizzlies do so on national forest land to monitor their populations. Using collars and ear tags is an identifier for a specific bear.

Tovey explained that when the state traps a bear it can be for a variety of reasons.

“Not all bears that are tagged have had conflicts or are considered a ‘problem’ animal,” he said. “If we tranquilize a bear for any reason, we have to tag it because if a hunter harvests it, they need to know that so they don’t ingest the meat because the drug may still be present in its system.”

Residents should report bear activity around Libby to Tovey at 406-291-1320 or at [email protected].