‘Los osos salvaron mi vida’
Comenzó a trabajar como camarero y a medida que pasaban los años su adicción al alcohol y las drogas se hizo insostenible hasta que tuvo una sobredosis casi fatal.
En ese momento tuvo una epifanía. Descubrió "la tierra de los osos" y creyó que para ser redimido, debía rehabilitarse.
"Los osos necesitaban a alguien que los cuidara, pero no a alguien que fuera un desastre. Así que les prometí a los osos cuidarlos y que ellos me ayudaran a ser mejor persona. Fueron una inspiración. Pude dejar la bebida. Fue un milagro", aseguró.
Había encontrado finalmente un consuelo a su vida, pero también una misión y se creía el único capaz de salvar a los grizzly que vivían en la remota Alaska de los cazadores furtivos.
"Moriría por estos animales. Gracias a estos animales tengo una vida, antes no tenía", se lo escucha decir en una grabación mientras las lágrimas comienzan a aparecer en sus ojos.
Learning To Love The Grizzly Bears At Katmai National Park
Wikimedia Commons Grizzly Bears feeding at Brooks Falls in Alaska’s Katmai National Park.
At first, Amie Huguenard was wary of the apex predators, which can weigh up to 1,000 pounds. But Treadwell had charm and a passion for the bears that assuaged her fear. He even once told David Letterman that they were nothing but “party animals.”
And during their summer visits, the bears were largely docile, spending much of their days resting and feeding, helping Huguenard to feel safe around them. Although she and Treadwell were anything but.
“Amie had a kind of naïveté about her that added a real sweetness to her entire persona. At times it was easy to convince her of things that were not entirely true,” Stephen Bunch, one of Amie’s old boyfriends, wrote after her death.
“But I always felt I could trust her because she bestowed the same trust in you unconditionally.”
Still, Amie Huguenard also witnessed Treadwell’s confrontations with the National Park Service. Park rangers were concerned that Treadwell was placing himself and others in danger by approaching the bears so closely and that he was maintaining dangerous camping practices on his quest to stop poachers.
Huguenard and Treadwell were sinking deeper into some critical mistakes. Crucially, and contrary to generations of Alaskan received wisdom and wildlife expertise, Amie Huguenard and Timothy Treadwell believed that the grizzlies were becoming “[their] animals.”
“Tim would honestly die if it meant these animals could live,” Huguenard wrote.
Amie Huguenard Pays For Treadwell’s Mistake
National Park Service This 28-year old bear, dubbed Bear 141, was shot dead after park rangers found it feeding on Amie Huguenard and Timothy Treadwell’s remains.
As the summer of 2003 drew to a close, the couple prepared to head home to California. But when Treadwell argued with a ticket agent over the cost of their flights, he decided to head back to Katmai for another week with Amie Huguenard in tow.
Fall is an exceptionally risky time to be around bears of all species, as they can become aggressive in their search for additional food to build up the fat reserves needed to survive hibernation. On October 1, Huguenard described a fight between bears over dwindling food supplies, and wrote that “seeing them claw, bite, and growl at each other made all of my fears come flooding back.”
The last sounds captured on the six minutes of tape were her screams before she too was carried off by the grizzly bear and killed.
National Park Service Pilot Willy Fulton assumed that Huguenard and Treadwell’s tent had been flattened in preparation for their departure.
Near the tent, they found Treadwell’s severed head and an arm. The body on which the bear had been feeding was that of Amie Huguenard. In the stomach of the bear they’d shot were other human body parts. And exactly why Treadwell chose to return to Katmai so late in the year, and why Huguenard chose to follow him, has never been explained.
La confianza le pasó factura
Tras haber estado más de una década investigando el comportamiento de los osos, fue perdiendo el temor hacía ellos y cada vez se acercaba más para poder registrarlos. Según dicen algunos documentales, empezó a irrespetar el espacio de seguridad.
Timothy los rastreaba para acercarse a ellos y tocarlos. Consideraba que había lograba conectar e interaccionar con ellos.
Algunas personas que lo conocían y que trabajabaron con él aseguraban que Timothy actuaba como si los osos fueran personas disfrazadas y no animales salvajes. Su hipersensibilidad hacia la naturaleza lo hacía llorar cuando encontraba a algún animal muerto, le hablaba a los cadáveres, los acariciaba y dedicaba sentidas palabras, que eran grabadas por su cámara.
Cuando le preguntaban cómo se animaba a convivir con animales salvajes, simplemente respondía: “Ellos son incomprendidos”. Al ser consultado sobre qué haría en caso de ser atacado por uno de ellos, reiteraba: “Nunca mataría a un oso en defensa propia”.
Timothy treadwell y su novia video
Willy Fulton Amie Lynn Huguenard was Timothy Treadwell’s constant companion on his final three trips to visit the grizzly bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park.
The film became one of Herzog’s most highly regarded works for its laser focus on Treadwell, an environmentalist with a troubled past who spent his summers with the bears of Alaska’s Katmai National Park. His eventual death in their jaws was something which surprised no one, least of all himself.
In the years since their fate came to light, much of the conversation around them has ignored Huguenard, but hers is a tragic cautionary tale and one of promise cut short.