Animals: 50 Dead Gangsters

With Depression, Yellowstone tourists have grown fewer, hotel scraps scarcer, bears hungrier. In Washington last week Director Horace Marden Albright announced that the National Park Service had been forced to kill 49 Yellowstone black bears, one grizzly during last summer and autumn.

The worst offenders among the Park’s 550 black bears, 175 grizzlies were earmarked or had their feet painted so they would leave tracks when they broke into cabins or automobiles. For repeated offenses the penalty was death by bullet. Said Director Albright last week: “They didn’t mean any harm, but when they developed gangster habits among the tourists … we had to kill them.”