We reported this attack several days ago. Now comes a better explanation.
Bear that attacked man on Vancouver island was diseased. CanWest news service
Bear that attacked man on Vancouver island was old and sick
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We reported this attack several days ago. Now comes a better explanation.
Bear that attacked man on Vancouver island was diseased. CanWest news service
by
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Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
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I just returned from my first visit to Yellowstone and was gifted with an hour’s view of the Druid Pack rendezvousing and traveling up the Lamar Valley. A truly magical experience as we watched 12 animals from this mythic pack out on their daily wolf business. We would like to contribute to the Yellowstone Wolf Project. Can you send us in the right direction? Also, which are the best sites for following current wolf updates?
Wendy
Speaking of bears.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/16/grizzly.bears.montana.ap/index.html
“If it is going to remove it from the list, it is money well spent,” said former Montana Gov. Judy Martz, a Republican, McCain supporter, and backer of the research. When asked about McCain’s stance, Martz said “unless you live among these issues it is pretty hard to understand what is going on.”
Martz insinuates that (1) the money was only “well spent” because it will help remove the bear–which is still clearly endangered–from ESA protections, and (2) that no one who lives outside of the West can truly understand these issues. This is the type of rhetoric that really makes my blood boil.
Biologist Stephen Herrero and others have pointed out that bears that prey on people are rarely old, injured, starving, or so desperate for food they decide to prey on people. Generally, they’re healthy, happy bears and we just can’t accept that they eat people. When a bear takes down an 82 pound moose calf on Animal Planet, that’s OK. We cheer. It’s just a bear being a bear, a predator being a predator. When a bear takes down a 82 pound child that couldn’t begin to defend itself as well as a moose calf, we ask, “what the heck is wrong with that bear? Is it injured? Wounded? Crazy?”
We can’t accept that it’s a perfectly normal bear trying to pack on calories for winter and it went after the prey least able to defend itself.
I don’t know what a bear going after someone on Vancouver Island has to do with a George Bush sanctioned population count of grizzlies in Montana meant to get them damn grizzlies off the endangered species list, but since JB brought it up . . . I sure hope everybody notices the flip-flop 100% contradictory message we’re getting. On the one hand, we’re told we never knew what the grizzly population was in the Glacier/great bear wilderness/bob marshall wilderness area. On the other hand, we’re told the grizzly bear population is increasing. Duh. Logic dictates that if you didn’t know what the grizzly bear population was to begin with, you can’t prove it’s increased.
$5 million worth of DNA grizzly bear population studies give us a snapshot in time of the population. That’s all.
Chuck:
I was responding to the article posted (above) by timz.
JB
First of all – what’s wrong with being “old and sick”? Was it the bear…or the man? The older I get the less I find “old & sick” to be something bad…:-)
I think it was the bear.