I wrote to Andrew Timmins, the state’s leading bear biologist, with a request for copies of all paperwork related to the attack. But Timmins responded that there was no paperwork—no narrative of events, no analysis of the bear’s actions, no correspondence among officials. The only formal record of the whole incident was a single check mark among many check marks in the tally of bear encounters associated with the presence of human food. This is the end result—and the ultimate failing—of the quantitative approach: Tracey’s potentially fatal experience was treated on paper no differently than a
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