Timothy Treadwell

Whenever someone dies for a cause, I ask myself: Matyr, or moron?
With Timothy Treadwell, it isn't a tough call.
Like Dian Fossey with her mountain gorillas, Treadwell (real name Dexter) felt he was both a family member and the sole protector of the grizzlies in Katmai National Park - defending them from poachers. The bears had saved him from a life of drugs, booze, and unemployment (he had tried his hand at acting), and in return he was going to save them.
In reality, one unarmed guy doesn't stand a chance against poachers. Fossey, unfortunately, didn't realize that, either.
For 13 summers, Treadwell camped in Katmai's grizzly preserve and in an area of alder thickets he called the Grizzly Maze, flagrantly violating park rules that stipulate you must move your campsite every few days and stay 100 yards from the bears. With his ever-present videocamera, he captured himself lecturing about "his" grizzlies for the benefit of schoolchildren and donors (Treadwell started the Grizzly People foundation, www.grizzlypeople.com), and living in such close proximity to the bears that he could reach out and touch their snouts as they tentatively approached his tent. Mother bears turned to him for protection when big males threatened their cubs. He gave them cute names like Mr. Chocolate, Demon, Rowdy, Downey, Ed, Saturn. Foxes cavorted around his campsites, snoozing in the grass as Treadwell stroked their fur and complained bitterly about English foxhunts.
He had a highly conflicted relationship to the wild. He'd talk about making himself unobtrusive, and in the same sentence brag of standing his ground with the grizzlies - as though he could become one of them.
At times, Treadwell could accept nature's cruelty with equanimity, gazing dry-eyed and helpless at the skull of a grizzly murdered by his fellows or the corpse of a baby fox. At other times he would sob over the death of a bumblebee, voice squeaky with indignation and grief. "I loved that bee!" The unfairness occasionally cracked him. Seated in his little tent, he raged at the camera, "If there's a God, he needs to get down here and KICK SOME ASS. We need some WATER. Downey needs to eat!" Downey was his favourite favourite. It was his love for Downey that would indirectly result in his death in October '03.
Treadwell's passion for the bears spilled into everything he said. He marvelled at clumps of bear scat. He chanted "I love you I love you I love you," like a forceful mantra when the bears lumbered past him, or declared, "I will die for these animals I will die for these animals I will DIE for these animals!"
Like most people who spend time alone in the wilderness, he grew lonely and a little paranoid every summer. He talked a lot to the camera, bemoaning romantic failures or praising the foxes. He narrated a bear brawl like it was a WWF championship, or pretended to be Australian. When footage was intended as instructional material, he always did 3-4 takes, but even these could go wildly off course. On one occasion he started ranting furiously against the park service, which he believed was persecuting him by trying to enforce its rules, and not doing enough to protect the grizzlies. "F**k you. F**K YOU. I won. I am the champion. F**king losers. F**king F**K YOU," Treadwell screamed, pacing the ground.
The paranoia worsened in direct proportion to his fame. Friendly greetings written on logs and rocks by tourists became threats; a smiley face on a rock was "Freddy Krueger creepy." He wore camo and spied on tourists from the woods, infuriated that they could toss rocks at the bears.
This was his land, his bears. In a video shot three days before his death, he boasted that he had found a way to coexist with the bears, had spent more time among them than any unarmed human ever had. If anyone else camped in the Maze as he did, he warned, they would be killed. But as Alaskan writer/photographer Nick Jans has pointed out in an interview with Failure magazine (read it here), the grizzly population of Kodiak Island is so dense and the bears are so habituated to tourists that it's easy to get close to them. In addition, most of the bears had grown up around him. Treadwell wasn't exactly the Grizzly Whisperer. In the end, he did more harm than good to the grizzlies. Two were killed in the wake of his death, and all the rest grew even more accustomed to humans, losing their natural fear. It's a dangerous situation. These bears could now pose a threat.
Treadwell sometimes expressed a complete unwillingness to become bear food, saying he would fight to the death, be a "warrior". At other times he opined that the cause would gain the attention it deserved only if he died. He always said if a bear got him, he didn't want it to be killed. "Let it go," he told the bush pilot and others. He must have known this wouldn't be the case. He knew just what he was getting into, knew he was breaking every rule and living on borrowed time. As an Alaska native comments in Grizzly Man, "He lost perspective."
Even in his lifetime, people resented the risks he was taking. He received hate mail, much of it aimed not only at Treadwell but at environmentals in general. ("The bear diet consists of liberals and Democrats," one letter read.) Alaskans disdain anyone who doesn't have respect for the wilderness and wildlife, as evidenced by the response to the death of Chris McCandless.
Without a doubt, Tim Treadwell was responsible for his own death and for the death of his girlfriend, a health worker named Amie Hugenard. She spent part of the final two summers with him in the Maze. She was fearful of the bears and always kept a healthy distance, but she must have believed - like the staff and benefactors of Grizzly People - that someone who had spent so many years among grizzlies without getting mauled must have the magic touch. In bringing her into the Maze, Treadwell broke a cardinal rule: If you're going to take foolish risks, do it alone.
Amie was getting fed up with Treadwell's risk-taking. At the conclusion of the 2003 "expedition", she and Treadwell got all the way to the airport before Tim decided he had to return to the maze. He hadn't said goodbye to Downey.
Amie returned to the Maze with him, but she spoke of moving out of their house in Malibu. She told Tim he was on a path to destruction.
On the day that The Big Red Machine charged Treadwell just outside his tent, Treadwell screamed for Amie to run away, save herself. She didn't. We know this because a videocamera inside the tent was recording the sounds of the attack.
Later, The Machine charged after the bush pilot who arrived to pick up Tim and Amie; if he hadn't made it back to his plane in the nick of time, he would have been victim #3. Park authorities, uncertain as to which grizzly was the killer, took down two bears in the area. Only the Machine proved to have human remains in his stomach. Park officials who listened to the audio and hauled partially digested pieces of Tim and Amie to a helicopter in trash bags will have to live with the experience for the rest of their lives.

I have to give Werner Herzog credit for Grizzly Man. Rather than hamming it up, he allowed Tim's own footage (and he did get some spectacular footage of the grizzlies) to speak for itself, with minimal narration and no obviously staged moments. I feared that Herzog, being the tasteless bastard he is, might play the audio of the attacks, but he didn't. After listening to it himself, he advised Tim's friend Jewel Palovak never to listen it. He suggested she destroy it.