‘Peacock’s War’ gives glimpse of lifelong study of grizzlies

Doug Peacock prefers grizzly bears to some people.

Maybe even most people.

He certainly prefers them to people who have no respect for the environment — a sentiment that’s likely to be on display Saturday night at Sandpoint’s Panida Theater when Peacock presents his documentary film “Peacock’s War.”

Released in 1989, “Peacock’s War” is a 60-minute look at Peacock and what has been both his career and salvation: studying grizzlies. The documentary has won awards in numerous film festivals, including the Banff Festival of Mountain Films, and has been shown on public television.

A combat medic in Vietnam, Peacock wrote about his experiences in his 1990 book “The Grizzly Years: In Search of the American Wilderness.”

His story includes returning from the war a shattered man; finding a sense of peace in the wilderness; being one of the influences for Edward Abbey’s novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang”; finding a purpose in following and filming grizzlies, and then working to preserve their habitats.

Peacock told National Geographic magazine in a 2003 interview that grizzly habitats around Yellowstone Park are being ruined by the “development of trophy second homes — the worst kind of development in the world, by rich people who don’t need these places, who don’t live in them.”

As novelist Jim Harrison wrote of “The Grizzly Years,” it’s “ultimately a love story about a man who returns from war shorn of his soul, and recovers his soul through his efforts to study and protect the grandest predator on earth, Ursus horribilis.”

Peacock and writer Rick Bass, who lives in northwestern Montana’s Yaak Valley, will be at Saturday’s screening, which starts at 7:30 p.m. Bass will introduce Peacock, and then both will be available for a post-film discussion.