Not to further fluster anyone in today’s climate of fear, but folks
should be warned that over the course of an average year, one or two
people are killed by bears in North America (including Canada and Alaska).
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Time for the Homeland Security
Department to raise the threat level to red and mobilize the combat
troops? Not so fast. To be fair, shouldn’t we at least check in with the
other side and see how many casualties they’ve suffered?
Sure enough, a cursory glance at the records reveals a kill ratio of
over 100,000 to one. It appears the “troops” have long since surged into
bear country. A volunteer army consisting of big game hunters, uniformly
dressed in camouflage pants and orange vests, have taken up arms (the
highest-powered rifles legally obtainable by civilians, no less) to do
mortal combat with the terrifying Ursine enemy. Like the scarecrow in the
Wizard of Oz who was given a diploma to suffice for his missing brain,
these cranially barren, self-appointed saviors of the sporting way of life
have been issued diplomas from hunter safety courses to take the place of
their missing gray matter.
But, are their weapons protection enough to keep them safe from Ursus
Arctos “Horribilis” or Ursus Americanas, who come equipped with teeth,
claws and bulk? Never mind that bear’s teeth are most often employed for
chewing the huge amounts of grass and other vegetation that make up over
80% of their diet, or that their claws are primarily tools evolved for
digging roots and tubers (in the case of grizzly bears) or climbing trees
(a strong suit of the black bears), while their imposing bulk is not meant
to intimidate, but merely to help them through the long winters. An old
German proverb goes, “Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.” Assuming the
same hypothesis is true for the bear as well, it’s no wonder hunters see
so many “enormous” black bears and “monster” grizzlies.
Though not at all enormous compared to the grazers they stalk,
hunters--outfitted with bows, rifles and shotguns, riding triumphantly
astride four wheelers--are the real monsters, unrivaled in terms of their
destructive force. Technologically untouchable consummate killing
machines, humans are light years ahead of the beastly bruins who must rely
on their natural faculties when forced to defend their territory, their
lives or the lives of their babies--virtually the only times bears resort
to violence. But humans lack the patience and restraint which, as anyone
who knows bears personally can attest, symbolize the true nature of the
ursine line.
Nature writer, Robert Franklin Leslie, points out, "It is not important
that a hawk takes a robin, that a bear robs a grouse nest. That is
nature's own salient way even if we don't understand it...Wilderness life
has gone on that way since the beginning, and the prey has withstood the
predation. But when man steps in...the very soul of nature cringes for
having endowed one of her creatures with intelligence disproportionate to
responsibility."
Indeed, an attack on a bear by a weapon-wielding human is about as
honorable as a paranoid superpower leveling the mythically gentle,
stone-aged Tasaday tribe with an H-bomb, while branding them the
aggressive, scary ones. No doubt bears are proud, powerful animals who
deserve respect and warrant a dose of caution, but their reputation as a
menace is far out of proportion with reality. While 1-2 North Americans
are killed by bears annually, 50 are killed by wasps, 70 are struck by
lightning and over 300 die in hunting accidents.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of bears are killed by humans each year
and no one is keeping track of how many are wounded, only to crawl off and
die slowly without the luxury of hospital care to pamper them back to
health. Thirty thousand black bears are murdered during legal hunting
seasons in the U.S. alone. Possibly another 30,000 fall prey each year to
ethically impotent poachers seeking bear gall bladders to sell on the
Chinese black market. Victims of that vile trade are eviscerated and left
to rot, since bear flesh has never been considered a taste treat or even a
popular staple food source for the human carnivore. Traditionally, to make
bear palatable, backyard chefs heavily douse the flesh and offal with
spices and grind the whole mess into sausage.
Why then, is it legal to hunt bears (especially considering that one
can add spices to high protein plant foods, such as soy, to create a
perfectly scrumptious sausage--sans intestines)? Clearly, the hunting of
bears is just some sort of warped game, typically motivated by a lecherous
desire to make trophies of their heads and hides. But, dangerous and
terrifying as bears must seem for big game hunters out to prove their
manhood from behind the security blanket of a loaded weapon, they aren’t
the “most dangerous game,” as the serial killer, Zodiak,--an avid hunter
who grew bored with lesser prey and advanced to hunting humans--would
attest.
Like fables handed down through the generations, bear tales have been
told, embellished upon, amplified and retold by people wanting to justify
hounding, baiting and just plain killing. As Charlie Russell, the author
of Grizzly Heart: Living Without Fear Among the Brown Bears of Kamchatka,
observes, “Hunting guides describe bears as ferocious, unpredictable and
savage predators. They tell one horrifying story after another about
people being torn apart. The victims are always those who approached the
encounter poorly armed. Then the guides move on to recount countless acts
of sportsman bravery: tales of real men stopping huge angry bears just
short of the barrel of their guns. They keep it up until their clients are
shaking in their boots, barely able to muster the courage to face the
dreadful foe.”
An irrational fear of bears dates back to the earliest days of American
history and is often accompanied by obtuse thinking and quirky spelling.
The most famous inscription--carved in a tree, naturally--attributed to
Daniel Boone (that guy who went around with a dead raccoon on his head)
boasted about how he “...cilled a bar...in the year 1760.” The bears Boone
killed (and there were many) in North Carolina and Tennessee were American
black bears, a uniquely North American species which evolved on the
Western Hemisphere.
Meanwhile, Lewis and Clark, greatly fearing the grizzly bears they
would discover on their voyage up the Missouri River, were among the first
pioneers responsible for sending that species down the path to
near-extinction. Of the grizzly, Meriwether Lewis wrote, “It was a most
tremendous looking anamal and extreemly hard to kill.”
Fifty thousand to 100,000 grizzly bears once thrived across the western
Continental U.S. before incoming settlers shot and trapped them out,
quickly snatching up prime valley bottoms--the preferred habitat of
grizzlies--for themselves and their “livestock.” Driven into desolate high
country by government hunters, the few grizzlies who survive in the lower
48 are left with only 2% of their former range. The current population of
500 is essentially marooned on islands of deficient wilderness, cut off
from one another by freeways, sprawl and a network of barbed wire fences
that spell “keep out” to any grizzly bear who knows what’s good for ‘em.
In the past few decades, many have spoken in support of the wrongfully
maligned grizzly. Yet today’s government has deemed that the token few
bears who remain are plenty enough to warrant their removal from the list
of threatened--and therefore, federally protected--species, reducing them
back to the status of “big game.” Now hunters in Idaho, Montana and
Wyoming are gearing up for the day when grizzlies will once again grace
the walls of their trophy rooms.
And why shouldn’t they be allowed to have their fun? After all, hunters
in Alaska and Canada have been legally killing grizzly bears without a
hitch, right up to the present. In Alaska, grizzlies--along with
wolves--are even shot from planes, under the ill-advised notion that
eliminating those animals will leave more moose for hunters to slay. What
the confused state policymakers can’t seem to figure out is, as the
population of hunters goes up, the number of moose goes down--regardless
of the number of natural predators. Will we have to see an Alaska devoid
of bears and wolves before their game department finally figures out who
is to blame?
Black bears, though more numerous (in part because their chosen habitat
is not as open and sought after as that of the grizzly) haven’t fared much
better in terms of persecution. They too, have lost much of their former
range to the encroaching modern world, but even more significant is the
amount of cruelty they’ve been subjected to, at the hands of humans. Year
after year, a new crop of “sportsmen” decide to play Daniel Boone and
blast some poor little black bear with a musket ball (which, though
extremely painful and traumatic, often isn’t enough to kill a bear
outright). Others like the challenge of archery, impaling innocent bears
who are just tying to find enough berries to get them through the winter.
And like the fisherman who casts out a baited hook and waits on shore in a
lawn chair to catch an unsuspecting fish, some hunters set out piles of
“bait,” using whatever they have on hand (such as Twinkies or carrion) to
lure in an unsuspecting bear, while waiting in lawn chairs safely perched
on a platform high in a tree. With the scary bear’s attention focused on
the goodies, the plucky “sportsman” makes his kill. Still another devious
approach (popular in backwards states that haven’t banned it yet) is the
“sport” of “hounding.” After releasing his hounds--equipped with high tech
radio tracking devices--a hunter simply follows them to the tree where a
helpless bear has taken refuge and guns her down.
The late marine biologist, Rachel Carson, whose1962 book, Silent
Spring, launched the environmental movement, saw the brutality of hunting
as a detriment to civilized society: "Until we have the courage to
recognize cruelty for what it is--whether its victim is human or
animal--we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot
have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature.
By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in
killing we set back the progress of humanity.”
On the rare instances when bears do resort to violence, at least they
don’t take delight in it.
_________
Printed in the September/October issue of the Animals Voice Magazine
