Nevertheless, the book is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Treadwell; much of it focuses on the many mistakes he made and plainly idiotic notions in which he clearly believed about his relationship with the Katmai bears. Jans shows how Treadwell either broke or blatantly ignored basic rules when camping in bear habitats, including making actual contact with the bears, refusing to use any type of bear spray or electric fence, and deliberately setting up his camp at some areas highly trafficked by bears. Treadwell also clearly became emotionally attached to the bears, giving them names and attributing to them human emotions that were clearly not there.

Jans also shows how both Treadwell and his Grizzly People organization’s claim that Treadwell’s presence was necessary to discourage poaching was misleading at best and irrelevant at worst. Poaching incidents in the Katmai region Treadwell camped in were non-existent; in addition, poaching was a far larger threat in other parts of Alaska and during the non-summer months, when Treadwell had left Alaska for the year. Jans shows the added irony that by interacting and living closely with bears, Treadwell might have actually made the bears less safe: by making himself a constant presence in the bears’ lives, Treadwell might have caused the bears to be more relaxed around other humans, including poachers.

Whether Timothy Treadwell’s incredible 13-year run of surviving with bears is attributable to some innate sense of bear psychology that he had, or is simply a testament to the high tolerance level of bears toward humans, is open to debate. It would be too easy to dismiss Treadwell as a mentally-disturbed amateur intent on playing grabass with bears for his own selfish reasons. At the same time, the ultimate irony of Treadwell’s tragic end is that both the deaths of Huguenard and two of the bears he so desperately tried to protect are on his hands. Far more balanced than Herzog’s Grizzly Man, Jans’ The Grizzly Maze allows the reader a fuller glimpse into the life, motives, and psychology of Timothy Treadwell.