The department’s bear specialist, Rich Beausoleil, said Cinder’s radio collar stopped transmitting in October 2017, but he hoped it was because she was holed up in a den somewhere within the Cascades for the winter. This September, a team set out to find Cinder’s den and instead found her skeletal remains not far from where she was set free after her recovery.

Beausoleil said it appears the collar stopped working because a hunter shot her and cut the collar, rendering it inoperable.