True, not may people in Alberta are eaten by gators, so perhaps we should restrict it to those area where alligators are present (Florida, Louisiana, Texas). Of course some of those people the gators got were visitors to Florida, as was the recent child at Disney, so we probably need to somehow include all those many tourists who visit Florida.

On the other hand, bears are present to some extent in almost all parts of North America. Indeed the Wikipedia article on bear fatalities has some nice maps showing that people tangle with bears in most regions of N America. So putting those 17 bear fatalities against all or at least a large portion of the population of N America isn't quite so unreasonable as it seems.

That is the beauty of the National Park Statistics. The data is from one agency, which provides some measure of consistency in the data (as opposed to compilations of anecdotal accounts). And the data is only from the parks, and so doesn't include urban areas outside the parks.


Yes, that was exactly of the point of my original post. For example, (in a general sense) the data quite clearly shows that "cold exposure" kills almost 5 times as many park visitors as bears. And "heat exposure" (nods towards hikermor's desert SAR experiences) kills more that 8 times as many park visitors as bears.

Please note that I am NOT saying that there is no risk from bears in the wild (or alligators or rattlesnakes or cougars, or whatever). "Low risk" is not the same as "no risk". What I am saying is that people's fears about various outdoor dangers are often way out of sync with what the real data shows about those dangers.