Keith
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People, bears can learn to coexist
ANGLERS: More people at river might scare bears away.
By CRAIG MEDRED
(Published: August 3, 2003)
What would you say if state and federal wildlife officials tomorrow announced they were stopping this fall's moose hunt on the Kenai Peninsula in the name of public safety and bear preservation?
Hunters, after all, have a disproportionate number of run-ins with grizzly bears.
When bear researchers Stephen Herrero and Andrew Higgins looked at grizzly bear attacks in British Columbia from 1960-97, for instance, they found more than a third involved hunters.
"Hunting was the activity most commonly associated with grizzly bear attacks,'' the two Canadian researchers wrote. Hunters were attacked 17 times -- once more than hikers, even though the population of hunters is a fraction that of hikers.
The difference in the number of participants is only a small part of the equation too. Given that hunting is allowed for only short periods of time each fall, hunters should have far less opportunity to encounter bears than hikers, who can walk almost year round.
And yet, hunters get into more ugly encounters with bears. The reasons are obvious. Hunters sneak around in the woods. Bears that might hear hikers coming and get out of the way end up meeting hunters by surprise at close range. Most such encounters end with the bear beating a fearful retreat, but there are no givens in short-range encounters between bears and people.
I myself had to shoot a Kenai grizzly sow off my foot some years back after stumbling into her cubs while moose hunting not far from the Russian River. The curious cubs followed me through thick timber. There wasn't anyplace for me to go.
When the cubs got uncomfortably close, the sow charged. She ended up, unfortunately, losing out in the encounter. Given that hunters are armed, that's usually what happens. But the bears have sent more than a few people to the hospital and killed others.
Good arguments could thus be made for closing the upcoming Kenai moose season, which is a lot more than can be said for the nighttime fishing closure on the Russian River. The nighttime fishing ban on the Russian is, according to state and federal officials, being done for reasons of "public safety.''
This is the simplistic reaction to the tragic mauling of angler Daniel Bigley by a brown bear earlier this month. We now have a fishing closure in place even though the brown bear sow with yearling cubs involved in that attack hasn't been since seen.
For all anyone knows, given the large home ranges of brown bears, she could be 10 miles away by now. She could even be the aggressive sow with cubs shot and killed at Hidden Creek, about 12 miles to the west, only days after the attack on Bigley.
The fact is, no one knows.
But here is some of what we do know and a few observations:
• Rare attack: The mauling of Bigley was the first of an angler in more than 1 million angler-days of fishing on Alaska's most popular salmon stream. An angler-day is one angler fishing one day. Clearly, this attack was a rarity. In contrast, the National Safety Council says the odds of your dying in an automobile accident this year alone are 1 in 18,500. Have authorities closed the Seward Highway? The odds you will end up dying from heart disease are about 1 in 400. Have the authorities boarded up the Burger Kings?
• Fewer anglers: The mauling is not attributable to people suddenly invading the bears' territory. This is a popular misconception. Use of the Russian by people has actually declined in recent years. For the decade 1985 through 1994, angler use averaged 71,191 angler-days per year. Since then, it has dropped to 56,923 angler-days per year. It is well documented that human use of wild areas tends to displace grizzly bears. Maybe the problem at the Russian is that not enough people use it now. Maybe use has dropped just enough to make the bears think they should move back in. Instead of a nighttime closure, maybe authorities should be leading nighttime hikes up and down the Angler Trail to help keep the bears aware this is a human-use area.
• Not all nocturnal: A nighttime closure creates a dangerously false sense of security. Bears can't tell time. Though some are generally nocturnal, that's not necessarily the case. Of those photographs we've all seen of bears lined up to fish at the Brooks River in Katmai National Park or the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, how many do you think were taken at night? A nighttime closure could well spawn more day-time problems. If night-feeding Russian River bears are led to believe human activity is declining, what's to keep them from becoming day-feeding Russian bears? And even if they stick to night feeding, who wants to be the first to walk down the Angler Trail at 6 a.m. after the bears have been fed all night and crawled into the grass along the riverbank to sleep? I wouldn't want to start my day by stepping on a sleeping brown bear.
• Thirteen bears seen: More bears appear to be using the lower Russian than at any time in at least 25 years. Once this summer, 13 of them were within sight of the ferry crossing. No one keeps a count of bears in the area, and bear populations are notoriously hard to survey. But according to wildlife officials who have worked on the ground here for decades, no one in the past 25 years has seen this many bears at one time near the confluence of the Kenai and Russian rivers. The sighting of 13 bears could simply be an oddity -- just one data point on a line that needs a whole lot of data before conclusions can be reached. But clearly, at least once there were more bears here than anyone has seen before.
• Beware stray bullets: I can't find anyone who has been hit by a stray bullet in or near the Russian. I raise this because so many people, myself included, are worried about the proliferation of guns in and around the river since Bigley was mauled. Frankly, some of the gun handling I've seen scares me more than the bears. But the reality is that people who don't know how to use guns safely usually end up shooting themselves or their friends. The stray bullet that hits someone else is rare. The safety council puts the odds at about 1 in 1.2 million a year. Clearly the perception of danger here is greater than the reality.
• Can't we live with bears? Bears are doomed in North America if the message of wildlife managers is that bears and people can't live together. Efforts to reintroduce grizzlies to Lower 48 areas where they're extinct inevitably run into opposition out of fear that a) the bears will kill someone; or b) no one will be able to hike, camp, climb, hunt, fish, etc. in the area once the bears are reintroduced. What is the message from Alaska? That they will almost kill you, and then your recreational opportunities will be taken away too?
I think bears and people can live together. Bears live in my back yard on the Hillside. I like bears. I also recognize their danger. Grizzly bears are pit bulls on steroids. They can look tame and peaceful one second and try to tear you apart the next. They are particularly dangerous when unafraid or untrained, or -- worst of all -- trained improperly.
If there is really a problem at the Russian, that might be it. The three bears causing concern at the moment have been able to get fish from people either by grabbing stringers or dipping into coolers. Others have been drawn to the river by the fish-cleaning stations the U.S. Forest Service built some years back. These are little more than bear-feeding stations. Most of the people who use them do so to filet their salmon. Often, they toss the remainder of the carcass -- complete with brains and eggs -- back into the river. Brains and eggs are the bears' favorite food.
If someone were giving away your favorite food free, wouldn't you show up?
If the authorities want to do something productive at the Russian, they can start by solving the carcass disposal problem. Then they can work on an educational program to teach anglers it's a bad idea to let bears get human-caught salmon. Better that the animals get a snout full of pepper spray to tell them humans are to be avoided.
Instead of spending money to enforce a nighttime fishing ban on the Russian, government officials could spend the money to buy a few cases of bear spray. Hand it out to anglers with instructions. Let's get people to become part of the solution instead of simply treating them like they're part of the problem.
Because if someone doesn't come up with a way to teach the bears the rules, it seems inevitable we are faced with one of two outcomes: Angling is shut down in favor of giving the river to the bears; or a lot of bears get shot to make people feel perfectly safe.
There are better options.
ANGLERS: More people at river might scare bears away.
By CRAIG MEDRED
(Published: August 3, 2003)
What would you say if state and federal wildlife officials tomorrow announced they were stopping this fall's moose hunt on the Kenai Peninsula in the name of public safety and bear preservation?
Hunters, after all, have a disproportionate number of run-ins with grizzly bears.
When bear researchers Stephen Herrero and Andrew Higgins looked at grizzly bear attacks in British Columbia from 1960-97, for instance, they found more than a third involved hunters.
"Hunting was the activity most commonly associated with grizzly bear attacks,'' the two Canadian researchers wrote. Hunters were attacked 17 times -- once more than hikers, even though the population of hunters is a fraction that of hikers.
The difference in the number of participants is only a small part of the equation too. Given that hunting is allowed for only short periods of time each fall, hunters should have far less opportunity to encounter bears than hikers, who can walk almost year round.
And yet, hunters get into more ugly encounters with bears. The reasons are obvious. Hunters sneak around in the woods. Bears that might hear hikers coming and get out of the way end up meeting hunters by surprise at close range. Most such encounters end with the bear beating a fearful retreat, but there are no givens in short-range encounters between bears and people.
I myself had to shoot a Kenai grizzly sow off my foot some years back after stumbling into her cubs while moose hunting not far from the Russian River. The curious cubs followed me through thick timber. There wasn't anyplace for me to go.
When the cubs got uncomfortably close, the sow charged. She ended up, unfortunately, losing out in the encounter. Given that hunters are armed, that's usually what happens. But the bears have sent more than a few people to the hospital and killed others.
Good arguments could thus be made for closing the upcoming Kenai moose season, which is a lot more than can be said for the nighttime fishing closure on the Russian River. The nighttime fishing ban on the Russian is, according to state and federal officials, being done for reasons of "public safety.''
This is the simplistic reaction to the tragic mauling of angler Daniel Bigley by a brown bear earlier this month. We now have a fishing closure in place even though the brown bear sow with yearling cubs involved in that attack hasn't been since seen.
For all anyone knows, given the large home ranges of brown bears, she could be 10 miles away by now. She could even be the aggressive sow with cubs shot and killed at Hidden Creek, about 12 miles to the west, only days after the attack on Bigley.
The fact is, no one knows.
But here is some of what we do know and a few observations:
• Rare attack: The mauling of Bigley was the first of an angler in more than 1 million angler-days of fishing on Alaska's most popular salmon stream. An angler-day is one angler fishing one day. Clearly, this attack was a rarity. In contrast, the National Safety Council says the odds of your dying in an automobile accident this year alone are 1 in 18,500. Have authorities closed the Seward Highway? The odds you will end up dying from heart disease are about 1 in 400. Have the authorities boarded up the Burger Kings?
• Fewer anglers: The mauling is not attributable to people suddenly invading the bears' territory. This is a popular misconception. Use of the Russian by people has actually declined in recent years. For the decade 1985 through 1994, angler use averaged 71,191 angler-days per year. Since then, it has dropped to 56,923 angler-days per year. It is well documented that human use of wild areas tends to displace grizzly bears. Maybe the problem at the Russian is that not enough people use it now. Maybe use has dropped just enough to make the bears think they should move back in. Instead of a nighttime closure, maybe authorities should be leading nighttime hikes up and down the Angler Trail to help keep the bears aware this is a human-use area.
• Not all nocturnal: A nighttime closure creates a dangerously false sense of security. Bears can't tell time. Though some are generally nocturnal, that's not necessarily the case. Of those photographs we've all seen of bears lined up to fish at the Brooks River in Katmai National Park or the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, how many do you think were taken at night? A nighttime closure could well spawn more day-time problems. If night-feeding Russian River bears are led to believe human activity is declining, what's to keep them from becoming day-feeding Russian bears? And even if they stick to night feeding, who wants to be the first to walk down the Angler Trail at 6 a.m. after the bears have been fed all night and crawled into the grass along the riverbank to sleep? I wouldn't want to start my day by stepping on a sleeping brown bear.
• Thirteen bears seen: More bears appear to be using the lower Russian than at any time in at least 25 years. Once this summer, 13 of them were within sight of the ferry crossing. No one keeps a count of bears in the area, and bear populations are notoriously hard to survey. But according to wildlife officials who have worked on the ground here for decades, no one in the past 25 years has seen this many bears at one time near the confluence of the Kenai and Russian rivers. The sighting of 13 bears could simply be an oddity -- just one data point on a line that needs a whole lot of data before conclusions can be reached. But clearly, at least once there were more bears here than anyone has seen before.
• Beware stray bullets: I can't find anyone who has been hit by a stray bullet in or near the Russian. I raise this because so many people, myself included, are worried about the proliferation of guns in and around the river since Bigley was mauled. Frankly, some of the gun handling I've seen scares me more than the bears. But the reality is that people who don't know how to use guns safely usually end up shooting themselves or their friends. The stray bullet that hits someone else is rare. The safety council puts the odds at about 1 in 1.2 million a year. Clearly the perception of danger here is greater than the reality.
• Can't we live with bears? Bears are doomed in North America if the message of wildlife managers is that bears and people can't live together. Efforts to reintroduce grizzlies to Lower 48 areas where they're extinct inevitably run into opposition out of fear that a) the bears will kill someone; or b) no one will be able to hike, camp, climb, hunt, fish, etc. in the area once the bears are reintroduced. What is the message from Alaska? That they will almost kill you, and then your recreational opportunities will be taken away too?
I think bears and people can live together. Bears live in my back yard on the Hillside. I like bears. I also recognize their danger. Grizzly bears are pit bulls on steroids. They can look tame and peaceful one second and try to tear you apart the next. They are particularly dangerous when unafraid or untrained, or -- worst of all -- trained improperly.
If there is really a problem at the Russian, that might be it. The three bears causing concern at the moment have been able to get fish from people either by grabbing stringers or dipping into coolers. Others have been drawn to the river by the fish-cleaning stations the U.S. Forest Service built some years back. These are little more than bear-feeding stations. Most of the people who use them do so to filet their salmon. Often, they toss the remainder of the carcass -- complete with brains and eggs -- back into the river. Brains and eggs are the bears' favorite food.
If someone were giving away your favorite food free, wouldn't you show up?
If the authorities want to do something productive at the Russian, they can start by solving the carcass disposal problem. Then they can work on an educational program to teach anglers it's a bad idea to let bears get human-caught salmon. Better that the animals get a snout full of pepper spray to tell them humans are to be avoided.
Instead of spending money to enforce a nighttime fishing ban on the Russian, government officials could spend the money to buy a few cases of bear spray. Hand it out to anglers with instructions. Let's get people to become part of the solution instead of simply treating them like they're part of the problem.
Because if someone doesn't come up with a way to teach the bears the rules, it seems inevitable we are faced with one of two outcomes: Angling is shut down in favor of giving the river to the bears; or a lot of bears get shot to make people feel perfectly safe.
There are better options.