BEARING WITNESS
Archives
Director’s Note: Bearing Witnesses are usually individuals who are living at the time of writing. Indeed, it is our hope that bringing their stories to light will aid their plight. Sadly we come too late for this months’ witness. However, we have chosen to present her story as a tribute to her memory, cubs, and other bears threatened with violence.
Morning Star, grizzly bear
Animals are often subjected to humanity’s ambivalence. Grizzly bears are one stellar example. In some areas, grizzlies are listed as threatened or endangered. Elsewhere, the same species is hunted. The tragedy of Morning Star (also known as the “Old Man Lake” grizzly, both from Blackfoot Indian place names) embodies human contradictions in yet another way. Parks may be envisioned as strongholds of last remaining wilderness, but they are almost always subject to tight control including human “management” of wildlife. Morning Star was a seventeen-year old female grizzly who was shot and killed because she was deemed a potential threat to park visitors.
The grizzly mother had two yearling cubs and lived in Glacier National Park, Montana. She had been radio-collared for the past five years to track her movements. Newspapers described how the “family group repeatedly entered human-occupied backcountry campgrounds. . . sniffing at tents during the night and walking into cooking areas while campers waved their arms and shouted.” Such behavior is generally ill tolerated by park managers. When bears come toward humans they are regarded as “overly familiar" and habituated, and therefore pose an ”unacceptable threat to human health and safety.” [2]
Not everyone agrees with this opinion. In fact, statistics, history, and experienced bear experts speak to the contrary. An interview with a former federal Fish & Wildlife biologist maintains that bears “could easily kill a lot more people, but don't.” [3] Data collected from 1900 to 2002, shows that the three bear species together killed 56 people in Alaska. Given that two million people visit Alaska every year, there are approximately 640,000 human residents, and bears are now limited to a “postage stamp” size territory both increasing bear-human encounters and reducing food availability for bears, incidents are startlingly few. [4] The death of any single being always gives pause but bear-caused human fatalities are in absolute terms few and, relative to other causes of human death, in–home and car accidents, murder, disease, war, vanishingly small. In fact, it is the rule rather than the exception that bears will run when they encounter humans. Individuals who have taken the time to learn about bear cultures and values provide ample testimony that bears are not intrinsically aggressive, nor are they unpredictable or dangerous.
Scientist Lynn Rogers who has studied bears for decades notes that the “business of demonizing bears continues today with fearsome covers on outdoor magazines, unnatural snarls on museum mounts, and warnings written by attorneys worried about liability problems. Black bears have killed only a handful of people across North America in all of history, but those accounts are told and retold until they mischaracterize this animal in many people's minds. . . most beliefs about bears and people. . .are untested assumptions“ [5].
Natural historians, former hunters, and scientists such as Charlie Russell have cultivated intimate relationships with bears. For nearly a decade, Russell lived among the grizzly bears of Kamchatka, Russia. Long before journeying to the wilds of Siberia, he spent most of his life among bears and other wildlife in the mountains of Canada. [6] Stricken by the violence vented by humans on these species, Russell became committed to the idea that people and bears could live together without fear and he decided to prove it. He travelled to Kamchatka to a wildlife preserve where bears were not likely to have learned to fear gun-wielding humans. Russell was so trusted that mother bears left their bear cubs with him and surmises that while grizzly mothers may think some humans frivolous and incapable, they trusted him because he had proven himself capable of responsible grizzly parenting after they observed him successfully raising orphaned cubs rescued from a roadside zoo. His skills in bear culture and communication were fluent enough to rear the cubs so that, despite having a human parent, they were equipped with social and ecological knowledge necessary to integrate into wild society and survive in the less-than-benign environment of the harsh north. Intricate details and nuances of bear etiquette and natural history were communicated to the cubs in ways that were meaningful to them; they learned and taught each other.
Russell’s bear skills also had to be sufficiently proficient to communicate with bears other than his charges. Walking through the bush showing the cubs how to eat pine nuts and wading through ice-cold streams teaching the guiles of salmon fishing, Russell came across many grizzlies. Each time, there had to be a “discussion”: Russell communicating who he was and, particularly in the case of adult male grizzlies, conveying in no uncertain terms that he was the caregiver of the bear cubs and that the male bear should go on his way. (Male grizzlies not infrequently kill and eat cubs). He did not use guns or the scare tactics employed by hunters and game officials. He spoke to the bears using multiple sensibilities that both human and bear could comprehend. Russell is not alone. American Indians and First Nations peoples lived peacefully with their ursine neighbors, even literally shoulder to shoulder picking blueberries in the beauty of northern summers. Despite what data and experience conclude, wildlife policy and common belief maintain that bears who become “habituated” with humans such as those with whom Charlie Russell have lived, are to be feared.
One of the most controversial issues has to do with bears and food, namely, their feeding by humans, and their attraction to food—all of which brings them into closer contact with people. Ready access to bear habitat and diminishing food and habitat leave bears with little choice but to venture near humans. Bears have a very limited time after they emerge from hibernation to achieve the up-to-40,000 daily calories necessary to survive the winter. These hard-won calories come from what they have garnered in summer and are stored in fat. Diminished habitat means fewer sources of food. Food availability is drastically reduced further when human occupation is included. If, as wildlife policy requires, bears must run away each time a recreating tourist shows, they not only lose access to food but use up precious calories.
Humans are everywhere either on the form of a direct threat by hunters or indirect threat by tourists eager for a glimpse of the might bear but armed with the penalty of mandated “removal” if the bear does not budge form their tracks. Bears are pressed to survive in landscapes where fish, berries, and other staples are on the wane because of human overconsumption and climate change. Bears who come too close to humans or their food are summarily “removed”, killed as in Morning Star’s case, or translocated away to a different area.
Humans are also penalized [7]. However, the premise for these actions does not have scientific backing. A recent scientific study has established “that hunger, not habituation or food-conditioning, is the primary factor creating bear-human conflict in urbanized areas. Habituated, food-conditioned bears did not become nuisances, did not jeopardize public safety, and did not behave in accordance with the stereotypes assigned to them.” As a consequence, there “is a need to reevaluate policies toward these bears in this light.” [8] There is another factor responsible for promulgating bear myths.
Critics of current policy that reifies the image of bears as dangerous and unpredictable cite that it serves business interests. States that permit bear hunting bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for licenses alone [9]. Legal and illegal hunting pressures have increased dramatically because of the growth in Asian bear parts trade. The Humane Society states that: “The current patchwork of [U.S.] state laws addressing the bear parts trade creates an enforcement nightmare. Thirty-four states prohibit trade in bear gallbladders and bile; five states (Maine, Vt., Idaho, Wyo., and N.Y.) allow it freely; and the others have a complex mesh of either no regulations or laws that prohibit the trade in parts from bears taken in-state but allow the sale of parts if the bear was killed elsewhere. There is incentive to kill bears illegally in one state because the parts can legally be sold in another state—completely circumventing those state laws that do prohibit the sale of bear parts.” [10]
Expertise from science and experience show that Morning Star’s tragedy could have been averted with human education. But the tragedy does not end there. Both cubs were darted so that, park officials told reporters, they could be sent to the Bronx Zoo. One of her cubs died form internal bleeding as a result of the darting. [11] The other is said to be on his/her way to New York. The trauma the cub has endured and current policy nearly guarantee her/him a life in captivity and suffering. Their story compels a change in how people see and treat bears and to urgently learn how to live with bears peacefully. We have the teachers and the ethical imperative to do so.
References Cited
[1] Although there is discussion and debate concerning brown and grizzly “specieshood,” there is, as Charlie Russell points out, only one species Ursus arctos, as is the case for humans. Here we conform to this convention regarding brown and grizzly as one.
[2] The Missoulian, August 12, 2009 Glacier National Park will remove 17-year-old grizzly and two cubs from backcountry
[3] ANWR Grizzly Attacks: They Did Everything Right. Jonathan Waterman
[4] Jans, N. 2006. The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears. Plume.
[5] Lynn Rogers, The Wildlife Research Institute
[6] Russell, Charlie. 2002. Grizzly Heart: Living Without Fear Among the Brown Bears of Kamchatka. Random house; www.cloudline.org; Russell, C. and M. Enns. 2003. Grizzly Seasons: Life with the Brown Bears of Kamchatka. Firefly Books.
[7] Charlie Vandergaw, Save Bear Haven, http://www.savebearhaven.org/;
[8] Roger, L. 2009. Does Diversionary Feeding Create Nuisance Bears and Jeopardize Public Safety? 1oth Western Black Bear Workshop. Reno, Nevada.
[9] Gore, Meredith. 2003. Black bears: a situational analysis on baiting and hounding in the United States with relevance for Maine. Department of Natural Resources, Cornell University, Maine Environmental Policy Institute.
[10] The Bear Trade. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).
[11] Bear cub bled to death in Montana. Jamie Komarnicki, Calgary Herald. August 26, 2009.
photo credits
"Brandy, a mother grizzly in Kamchatka, Russia, with her two cubs," courtesy Charlie Russell
"Charlie Russell wlaking with grizzly bears in Russia," courtesy Charlie Russell
back to top
Archives
Director’s Note: Bearing Witnesses are usually individuals who are living at the time of writing. Indeed, it is our hope that bringing their stories to light will aid their plight. Sadly we come too late for this months’ witness. However, we have chosen to present her story as a tribute to her memory, cubs, and other bears threatened with violence.
Morning Star, grizzly bear
Animals are often subjected to humanity’s ambivalence. Grizzly bears are one stellar example. In some areas, grizzlies are listed as threatened or endangered. Elsewhere, the same species is hunted. The tragedy of Morning Star (also known as the “Old Man Lake” grizzly, both from Blackfoot Indian place names) embodies human contradictions in yet another way. Parks may be envisioned as strongholds of last remaining wilderness, but they are almost always subject to tight control including human “management” of wildlife. Morning Star was a seventeen-year old female grizzly who was shot and killed because she was deemed a potential threat to park visitors.
Not everyone agrees with this opinion. In fact, statistics, history, and experienced bear experts speak to the contrary. An interview with a former federal Fish & Wildlife biologist maintains that bears “could easily kill a lot more people, but don't.” [3] Data collected from 1900 to 2002, shows that the three bear species together killed 56 people in Alaska. Given that two million people visit Alaska every year, there are approximately 640,000 human residents, and bears are now limited to a “postage stamp” size territory both increasing bear-human encounters and reducing food availability for bears, incidents are startlingly few. [4] The death of any single being always gives pause but bear-caused human fatalities are in absolute terms few and, relative to other causes of human death, in–home and car accidents, murder, disease, war, vanishingly small. In fact, it is the rule rather than the exception that bears will run when they encounter humans. Individuals who have taken the time to learn about bear cultures and values provide ample testimony that bears are not intrinsically aggressive, nor are they unpredictable or dangerous.
Scientist Lynn Rogers who has studied bears for decades notes that the “business of demonizing bears continues today with fearsome covers on outdoor magazines, unnatural snarls on museum mounts, and warnings written by attorneys worried about liability problems. Black bears have killed only a handful of people across North America in all of history, but those accounts are told and retold until they mischaracterize this animal in many people's minds. . . most beliefs about bears and people. . .are untested assumptions“ [5].
Russell’s bear skills also had to be sufficiently proficient to communicate with bears other than his charges. Walking through the bush showing the cubs how to eat pine nuts and wading through ice-cold streams teaching the guiles of salmon fishing, Russell came across many grizzlies. Each time, there had to be a “discussion”: Russell communicating who he was and, particularly in the case of adult male grizzlies, conveying in no uncertain terms that he was the caregiver of the bear cubs and that the male bear should go on his way. (Male grizzlies not infrequently kill and eat cubs). He did not use guns or the scare tactics employed by hunters and game officials. He spoke to the bears using multiple sensibilities that both human and bear could comprehend. Russell is not alone. American Indians and First Nations peoples lived peacefully with their ursine neighbors, even literally shoulder to shoulder picking blueberries in the beauty of northern summers. Despite what data and experience conclude, wildlife policy and common belief maintain that bears who become “habituated” with humans such as those with whom Charlie Russell have lived, are to be feared.
One of the most controversial issues has to do with bears and food, namely, their feeding by humans, and their attraction to food—all of which brings them into closer contact with people. Ready access to bear habitat and diminishing food and habitat leave bears with little choice but to venture near humans. Bears have a very limited time after they emerge from hibernation to achieve the up-to-40,000 daily calories necessary to survive the winter. These hard-won calories come from what they have garnered in summer and are stored in fat. Diminished habitat means fewer sources of food. Food availability is drastically reduced further when human occupation is included. If, as wildlife policy requires, bears must run away each time a recreating tourist shows, they not only lose access to food but use up precious calories.
Humans are everywhere either on the form of a direct threat by hunters or indirect threat by tourists eager for a glimpse of the might bear but armed with the penalty of mandated “removal” if the bear does not budge form their tracks. Bears are pressed to survive in landscapes where fish, berries, and other staples are on the wane because of human overconsumption and climate change. Bears who come too close to humans or their food are summarily “removed”, killed as in Morning Star’s case, or translocated away to a different area.
Humans are also penalized [7]. However, the premise for these actions does not have scientific backing. A recent scientific study has established “that hunger, not habituation or food-conditioning, is the primary factor creating bear-human conflict in urbanized areas. Habituated, food-conditioned bears did not become nuisances, did not jeopardize public safety, and did not behave in accordance with the stereotypes assigned to them.” As a consequence, there “is a need to reevaluate policies toward these bears in this light.” [8] There is another factor responsible for promulgating bear myths.
Critics of current policy that reifies the image of bears as dangerous and unpredictable cite that it serves business interests. States that permit bear hunting bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for licenses alone [9]. Legal and illegal hunting pressures have increased dramatically because of the growth in Asian bear parts trade. The Humane Society states that: “The current patchwork of [U.S.] state laws addressing the bear parts trade creates an enforcement nightmare. Thirty-four states prohibit trade in bear gallbladders and bile; five states (Maine, Vt., Idaho, Wyo., and N.Y.) allow it freely; and the others have a complex mesh of either no regulations or laws that prohibit the trade in parts from bears taken in-state but allow the sale of parts if the bear was killed elsewhere. There is incentive to kill bears illegally in one state because the parts can legally be sold in another state—completely circumventing those state laws that do prohibit the sale of bear parts.” [10]
Expertise from science and experience show that Morning Star’s tragedy could have been averted with human education. But the tragedy does not end there. Both cubs were darted so that, park officials told reporters, they could be sent to the Bronx Zoo. One of her cubs died form internal bleeding as a result of the darting. [11] The other is said to be on his/her way to New York. The trauma the cub has endured and current policy nearly guarantee her/him a life in captivity and suffering. Their story compels a change in how people see and treat bears and to urgently learn how to live with bears peacefully. We have the teachers and the ethical imperative to do so.
References Cited
[1] Although there is discussion and debate concerning brown and grizzly “specieshood,” there is, as Charlie Russell points out, only one species Ursus arctos, as is the case for humans. Here we conform to this convention regarding brown and grizzly as one.
[2] The Missoulian, August 12, 2009 Glacier National Park will remove 17-year-old grizzly and two cubs from backcountry
[3] ANWR Grizzly Attacks: They Did Everything Right. Jonathan Waterman
[4] Jans, N. 2006. The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears. Plume.
[5] Lynn Rogers, The Wildlife Research Institute
[6] Russell, Charlie. 2002. Grizzly Heart: Living Without Fear Among the Brown Bears of Kamchatka. Random house; www.cloudline.org; Russell, C. and M. Enns. 2003. Grizzly Seasons: Life with the Brown Bears of Kamchatka. Firefly Books.
[7] Charlie Vandergaw, Save Bear Haven, http://www.savebearhaven.org/;
[8] Roger, L. 2009. Does Diversionary Feeding Create Nuisance Bears and Jeopardize Public Safety? 1oth Western Black Bear Workshop. Reno, Nevada.
[9] Gore, Meredith. 2003. Black bears: a situational analysis on baiting and hounding in the United States with relevance for Maine. Department of Natural Resources, Cornell University, Maine Environmental Policy Institute.
[10] The Bear Trade. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).
[11] Bear cub bled to death in Montana. Jamie Komarnicki, Calgary Herald. August 26, 2009.
photo credits
"Brandy, a mother grizzly in Kamchatka, Russia, with her two cubs," courtesy Charlie Russell
"Charlie Russell wlaking with grizzly bears in Russia," courtesy Charlie Russell
back to top
© 2012 Kerulos Center All rights reserved
"Science in service to animals"
Grizzly Bear Facts
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ursidae
Genus:Ursinae
Species: Ursus arctos horriblis
At one point, brown and grizzly bears were considered to be taxonomically separate but actually have been found to be the same species only occupying two distinct geographical zones. [1] Brown bears are found on coastal areas whereas grizzlies occupy terrain further inland. Pre-colonial habitat of grizzlies extended from Canada to Russia, as far south Mexico, and east in North America as the Great Plains. Today, their numbers and range is largely restricted to parks and protected areas.
Grizzlies are famous for their size and power. They may weigh up to 1,000 pounds (450 kg) with females tending to be much smaller, averaging 250–350 pounds (114–160 kg). When standing they may reach over two meters (8 ft). Their size varies with geography. Their Latin name Ursus arctos horribilis gives a hint as to how Europeans regarded them and set the stage for the myths that abound concerning grizzly reputations. (Although, the taxonomist who gave the species the moniker “horribilis” supposedly misunderstood grizzly—referring to hair colour and texture-- to be “grisly")
