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Alaska is home to well over 100,000 bears that can pose a threat when you wander into its wilderness. There’s unfortunately only so much you can do to defend yourself even if you’re prepared for a potential encounter, which was the case with a couple of soldiers who are recovering from the injuries they sustained during a recent training mission.
The United States military goes to great lengths to ensure its members are prepared for any situation they might encounter in combat. It also harnesses training that’s frequently designed to push people to their limits in what is usually a safe and monitored environment, but there are many factors that can’t be controlled when the wilderness serves as the backdrop for those exercises.
That tends to be the case for land navigation, which is used to train soldiers to read maps and, well, navigate terrain while using compasses and other tools to plot routes after being deposited into a foreign location.
The officials tasked with organizing and overseeing those excursions do what they can to keep tabs on the people taking part, but they are also intended to see how they fare when left up to their own devices.
There’s not much that can be done when it comes to preventing local fauna from interfering, but the Army may need to reconsider its approach to how it handles things near a base in Alaska after a bear was once again responsible for a harrowing incident.
Two soldiers suffered serious injuries after being attacked by a bear during an Army training exercise in Alaska
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson is an Army outpost in Anchorage that is operated by the Air Force but is also home to the Army’s 11th Airborne Division.
You don’t have to travel very far from the base to end up in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, and according to ABC News, that’s where some members of that division were ferried for a “land navigation training event” that took place near the base on Thursday, April 16th.
Alaska is home to an estimated 100,000 black bears as well as approximately 30,000 brown (or grizzly) bears, and a member of that second species was reportedly responsible for an attack that led to two soldiers being rushed to the hospital with “serious injuries” after crossing paths with one during the exercise.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued a statement that said the attack occurred “in a remote area of JBER…on the west side of the Glenn Highway.” They noted the unidentified victims were armed with bear spray, which they were able to deploy during what was described as a “defensive attack by a bear recently emerged from a den.”
Wildlife officials were unable to track down any bears in the vicinity of the area where the attack transpired, and while the two soldiers were listed in stable condition, a spokesperson said they will “require ongoing care to support a full recovery.”
This isn’t the first time a bear has caused an issue during a land nav event at the base, as a soldier suffered fatal injuries during an excursion where another one was injured in 2022.