Man charged with killing three young griz

A Ferndale man has been charged in federal court in Missoula with shooting and killing three young grizzly bears that he says killed his chickens and posed a threat to his family in May 2014.

Dan Calvert Wallen is charged with three counts of unlawful taking of a threatened species, in violation of the Endangered Species Act. He faces a possible civil penalty of up to $25,000 per bear and a criminal fine of up to $50,000 and one year in prison for each bear.

The case was investigated by state game wardens and federal investigators who determined Wallen had shot the three bears with his .22-caliber Mossberg rifle.

According to a federal affidavit filed Dec. 22 by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agent Brian Lakes, Wallen told investigators that he returned home from a trip on May 26 and discovered numerous dead chickens in his yard the next morning. He said only seven of his 35-some chickens were still alive, and part of the non-electrified chicken coop fence had been torn down.

Wallen said he shot at a grizzly near the coop in hopes of scaring it away but didn’t know if he had hit it. About 20 minutes later, his neighbor Tim Clark called to say a grizzly was laying in the road behind their homes. Wallen met Clark about 25 yards from the grizzly, and Clark shot the severely injured bear once with a .300-caliber Remington.

The next day, May 28, state grizzly bear management specialist Tim Manley contacted Wallen’s wife Alison to see about setting traps for the remaining bears. While setting up a trap, Manley found another dead grizzly in tall grass near where the first dead bear was found.

Wallen explained to state game warden Chuck Bartos that his children and their friend were playing baseball in the backyard when the grizzlies started coming around. Wallen said he chased the bears away several times with his truck, but they kept heading back to the chicken coop. He also said he fired some shots to scare off the bears.

A third dead grizzly was found by another of Wallen’s neighbors when she returned from a trip on June 4 and smelled something dead in tall grass near her home. Bartos responded to the neighbor’s home the next day and found a grizzly that had been dead for about a week.

A state veterinarian completed necropsies of the first two dead grizzlies in August. She concluded that the first died from a gunshot wound to the abdomen, and the second died from a gunshot wound to the chest.

A federal forensic scientist who completed a criminalistics examination of the bullets taken from the first two grizzlies concluded that the first bear could have been killed with a .300 Remington, as reported by Clark, and the second had been killed with a .22-caliber bullet.

According to Manly, speaking shortly after the incidents, the grizzly bear family of bears had been coming to the Ferndale neighborhood for a while, eating chickens and getting into garbage cans, bird seed and dog food that weren’t properly stored. State bear managers had set six traps to catch the bears when Manley learned they had been shot.

“We were dealing with those bears for basically about a month,” he said.

The mother grizzly had separated from three cubs about two weeks earlier so she could go mate, Manley said. Newly independent, the cubs had returned to Ferndale where they were killed.

Ferndale resident Zena Pirone said at the time that she had grown fond of watching the sow and her three young periodically wander through her property. When she learned the young bears had been shot and killed, she was upset.

“I just want to cry, it’s just horrible,” she said.