MemeMachineGo!

Funny you didn't link to the story a couple of weeks ago--you know, the one about the bear-rights activists in Alaska, who were trying to prove that people and bears could co-exist peacefully, and who were killed and eaten by bears.

Not that gall-bladder poachers shouldn't have various of their organs nailed to the nearest door--we have those assholes here in BC too. But I've spent most of my life in bear country, have lived in close proximity with bears, and while I deeply respect and like them, I have problems seeing them as my big fuzzy friends. I've just never gotten the feeling that the fondness was mutual.

Love them, but carry a 12 gauge, that's my motto!

Of course, that's my motto for dealing with people, too...At least you can't accuse me of speciesism!

Ya got me, Geoff -- my currency on bear-related news is capricious and I hadn't heard of that story. But I probably wouldn't have linked to it -- like the cliche goes, "dog bites man" isn't news.

Further, that grizzlies are our "big fuzzy friends" is a ludicrous straw man. What they were saying is that the bears can learn to lose their fear of humans, and thus needn't always be a threat.

I'd want a shotgun in grizzly territory, too.

"Big fuzzy friends" was meant to be a little ludicrous--though one of the two who got eaten referred to bears, if I recall correctly, as "big harmless party animals", which is only slightly less ludicrous--and every year some tourist gets mauled because he or she does in fact think that bears are our big fuzzy friends. (I'm thinking of one particularly gruesome case, a few years back, where a doting parent smeared honey on her little daughter's hands, to get a picture of a big old friendly bear licking the honey off, which I'm sure the bear did, after having carried the girl's hands off to a nice quiet place.)

But my point is that even when predators learn to lose their fear of people, even when they seem friendly, they still remain predators--and thus remain, to some extent, ALWAYS a threat. To think otherwise is to disrespect them. And, despite the work and conclusions of those two naturalists in Russia, there is some evidence that losing their fear of people makes bears more prone to attack, not less. I would say that if the bears lose their fear, AND the people they are in contact with are naturalists who know how bears think and act, and who strictly observe bear protocol, it's pretty harmonious. The average tourist might be in for a diiferent dynamic. And even with naturalists, it's not completely safe. Bears, if nothing else, are moody. Sooner or later, you're going to startle or annoy the bear you're with, and bears tend to react poorly to being startled or annoyed.

Familiarity is one thing, instinct another.

This reminds me of a funny story: when we were homesteading in the northern Canadian wilderness, we lived for several years in a shack with a very low roof--there was a BIG boar grizzly in that valley, and when we weren't around, he would wander by and tear portions of the roof off. He was kind of a destructive bastard. Shortly after one of these acts of petty ursine vandalism, ma was in the shack, cooking away, and pa wandered in from the field, and suffered some kind of massive brainfart, and, just for fun, picked up a branch and scratched on the roof with it. (See? I came by my sense of humour honestly!) Mom came around the corner with a snarl on her face and a shotgun in her hands, and that was almost the end of their marriage. Frontier divorce. Never seen anyone backpedal that fast while apologizing. You'd have thought he was French.

So, anyway, the moral is, don't be a dumbass in bear country.

Geoff

Again with the straw men, Geoff. Who was suggesting mixing tourists and grizzlies?

I haven't examined the researchers' position and know nothing about it save what was presented in the linked article. But that's enough to know it has more in common with the position you're advancing than the one you're ridiculing.