Big, Dark and Beautiful: Mother Nature's Bears

                Well, it’s happened again. Another bear killed without having actually committed anything that could be called a crime.

                It happened in the town of Newmarket in Ontario, Canada. A black bear wandered into the outskirts of town and was exploring the various yards in the area, likely in search of food. That’s the first problem. Bears develop a taste for human food, even in the form of trash, and it’s something they can’t quite forget. They keep looking for more. And, of course, where better to find more human food than over where the humans play?
                It took local authorities a few days to catch up with the bear, who seems to have been pretty good at the game of hide-and-seek. Finally, they cornered the animal when it climbed a tree for refuge. The first choice was to tranquilize the animal and release back in the wild, far from the municipality. However the police don’t carry tranks. All they have are regular guns. So they called the local animal control agency, which had all the correct supplies. Meanwhile, the police banged on garbage pail lids and ran the sirens on their cars in the hopes of scaring that bear into staying put on his branch until animal control could arrive.

                But the bear had other ideas. As soon as he started to climb down the tree, the police determined he was an immediate threat to the people of the town and they pulled out those regular guns and destroyed the bear.

                Three minutes later animal control arrived with all their best tranquilizers in tow.

                Whenever this happens, debate, anger and accusations rage. Police argue that their first and highest priority is to protect the citizens, and when that bear came down from the tree, the citizens were at risk of being attacked and hurt. Others argue, however, that the bear had shown no intention of injuring anyone, and the police should have left the bear be unless he actually did begin to show signs of aggression. Still others would argue that once the bear shows those signs, it may already be too late.

                So who’s right? Bears are beautiful and amazing animals. As someone who’s seen one in the wild, I can tell you it’s a sight that you never forget. We certainly can’t risk removing these stately animals forever. They’ve already gone from ruling the continent to being limited to a few small corners of it. Let’s not push the envelope much harder, please.
                However, it’s a stone cold given that we can’t endanger human lives either. Bears are very defensive creatures when they feel they have a reason, and they are very large and very powerful. If your pet cat gets defensive, you can usually shoo her away. If you’re big enough and strong enough, you can usually even best your pet dog. But no person on this earth can out-fight or out-run an enraged bear.

                But, between their legendary strength, and the stories we tell one another about bears devouring little blonde girls as punishment for taking a couple spoonfuls of porridge, we’re determined that they are intolerable beasts and they must be kept away at any cost. ANY cost. And we are doing a terrifying job of wiping them off the earth. Here are some examples:

·         In a small town in Western Canada in 2009, twelve black bears were shot all at once because they were eating at the town dump.

·         This past week a bear was found shot to death near a camp in Florida

·         A short time before that, Fish and Game killed a bear in Desert Springs, Arizona
  
Unbelievable? Go online and search the phrase "bear shot" or "bears shot" to see for yourself. The list goes on and shockingly on. A dozen more bears killed on the coast. Another 145 in the prairies. North. South. East. West.
In fact, research data shows that in 70 percent of cases where authorities are called regarding a bear in the area, the bear ends up losing its life. That means that in only 30% of cases, are the bears tranquilized and protected.

And that’s just simply not enough. Especially when you consider the fact that it is we who have caused this issue in the first place. It is we who leave trash all over for the bears to route through, convincing them that it’s something good to eat and they need more. Indeed it is we who, occasionally, go out and very deliberately FEED the bears! It sounds unbelievable, I know, that anyone would engage in any act so seemingly foolish, but, believe it or not, it really does happen. That, according to reports, is what happened with those twelve bears in  Western Canada. Folks got them stuck on human food by feeding them for entertainment. Then they suddenly got declared a threat and were disposed of. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?

The problem is, once a bear is food-habituated like that, he becomes awful hard to get rid of. There have been cases of bears who have been placed way out in the wilds, only to wander back to human civilization over and over.

But all is not lost. Things are being done. People object loudly every time it happens. Others provide training on how to pack away your trash and follow other bear-safe practices when you’re in a part of the world that has a high bear population. And reserves are firmly and strictly protected by the government.

So why are they still falling?

 File:Black bear at Woburn Safari Park.jpg
Photo by: Karen Abeyasekere, U.S. Air Force

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