Timothy Treadwell describes his experience with the bears in Katmai National Park and explains that "Bears are very misunderstood." While he may be right in saying that bears have a bad reputation for attacking people, Timothy Treadwell was ironically mangled, partially eaten, and killed by a bear. According to Wikipedia, grizzly bears normally avoid human contact, and they do need to be provoked to attack people, but they are still wild animals. Mother bears will do whatever it takes to protect their cubs, and while this makes them seem like threatening animals, this response is natural. Timothy Treadwell seems to have a distorted view of the grizzly bears and believes that he is their protector.
Although I think his efforts to protect the bears were admirable, Treadwell failed to take into account the fact that bears are not human and they did not understand his mission. They could easily have seen him as a threat. He tries to recreate the truth about bears by showing people that they are harmless. However, while he may be right that bears are portrayed as overly aggressive animals that will attack anyone, there is a reason for this portrayal, and the counterargument was only reinforced when he was killed by a grizzly bear. He also claims that his presence at the National Park was the reason that no bears were killed, but according to Wikipedia, two bears were killed in order to retrieve his body. These bears would not have had to be killed if he had not been there in the first place.
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