(CNN) -- Authorities shot and killed a grizzly bear that mauled a 70-year-old man near Yellowstone National Park, a Wyoming Game and Fish Department spokesman said Saturday.
Agents tracked the bear via a radio collar and killed it near the site of the attack, said the spokesman, Eric Kezsler.
The Park County Sheriff's Office had closed part of the Shoshone National Forest while they searched for the large adult male bear, which apparently attacked Erwin Frank Evert after being captured and tranquilized there by researchers Thursday.
Evert was unarmed and fatally wounded, the sheriff's office said. He was in the forest with his wife, a member of a federal team of researchers studying grizzly bears, authorities said.
Members of the team had packed up their equipment and left the area after tranquilizing the bear and putting the radio collar on it, the sheriff's office said. But officials said Evert was attacked when he wandered back into the capture area, located in the Kitty Creek Drainage.
Game wardens and federal authorities began searching for the bear Friday.
The 2.4-million-acre Shoshone National Forest is just east of Yellowstone National Park.
