scooter
06-02-2008, 09:13 AM
PUBLICATION: The Guelph Mercury
DATE: 2008.05.31
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Here
PAGE: E2
COLUMN: FREE FORM
BYLINE: ROB O'FLANAGAN
WORD COUNT: 674
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hunters the least of bears' problems
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am not a bear expert, but I know a little something about them.
In more than 10 years as a reporter in Sudbury I probably wrote 40 or more stories about black bears -- their eating and breeding habits, about them making a "nuisance" of themselves, or showing up where they were not wanted.
I conducted long, involved interviews with bear biologists and did a fair bit of research myself on the animals. I grew fascinated by and fond of them. I observed bears in the wilderness, and made trips to a couple of area dumps where bears were known to congregate. I would photograph them and observe their individual personalities.
I learned that bears are voracious eaters, but mostly vegetarians. Their diet consists primarily of roots, berries and buds. Bear droppings in July and August are usually stained blue from blueberries.
Except in very rare cases and circumstances, bears are scared of people and pose very little threat to us, so long as we exercise certain practical precautions.
In bear country, if you didn't want a big, furry beast rooting through your garbage or lounging on your patio, you didn't leave your garbage or greasy barbecue out at night.
Over the past 85 or so years, black bears have killed about 30 people in North America, including a 30-year-old woman near Cochrane, Ont., in 2005. In America, about 15 people are killed each year by dogs, and more than 200 each year by horses.
In 1999, when former Conservative premier Mike Harris cancelled Ontario's spring bear hunt that action was one of the biggest stories in the north for months on end.
While covering an armed standoff with a small bear in Salem last week it was interesting to hear a television reporter ask a Ministry of Natural Resources official if it was, indeed, true that the spring bear hunt had been cancelled. Had the same questioned been asked north of Parry Sound, the answer would have been: "You're not from here, are you?"
That spring bear hunt story had teeth, claws and big burly legs. It just kept on going. For a while I was writing a story a day on the issue. At least three years after the cancellation, outfitters, guides and lodge owners that were nearly bankrupted by the decision, along with lobbyists with the Ontario Association of Anglers and Hunters, bombarded the media with press releases and fresh statistics in an effort to get the hunt reinstated.
Some of their information was misinformation -- dire warnings about an influx of "nuisance" bears into human communities, tales (most unsubstantiated) of close encounters with vicious bears, reports of a growing number of young bears being hit on highways because the woods were growing overcrowded with their kind.
These hunting advocates probably did much damage to the reputation of bears and generated much hysteria toward them. Every bear sighted in a wooded area, along a roadside, in a campsite or digging its nose into a nice, smelly garbage bin was considered a nuisance.
You can just bet someone will soon be using the killing of the Salem yearling to renew calls for the return of the hunt, which was cancelled for a host of reasons.
While Harris and the Conservatives were eager to gain political favour with environmentalists in the south, it was also generally accepted among people who care about animals that luring bears to kill-zones with reeking hunks of meat and then shooting them from tree stands was neither very sporting nor very humane.
I often get emotionally involved in the stories I cover. Reporters don't have hearts of stone. I try my best not to let my emotional responses seep into the stories I write.
Observing what was supposed to be a bear relocation operation last week end in the killing of a young bear . . . well, it was an infuriating and saddening experience.
A small, and essentially harmless black bear lost its life because officials decided it was too risky to have it roaming free in southern Ontario.
When shotgun blasts rang out, I said to a colleague, "There's no way they would kill it." I was wrong.
I hope the Ministry of Natural Resources has not implemented a shoot-to-kill policy whenever a black bear shows up south of the French River.
That would be as cruel as luring them into kill zones with rotting meat.
Rob O'Flanagan's column appears here Saturdays. Contact him by e-mail at roflanagan@guelphmercury.com.
--------------------------------------------------
DATE: 2008.05.31
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Here
PAGE: E2
COLUMN: FREE FORM
BYLINE: ROB O'FLANAGAN
WORD COUNT: 674
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hunters the least of bears' problems
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am not a bear expert, but I know a little something about them.
In more than 10 years as a reporter in Sudbury I probably wrote 40 or more stories about black bears -- their eating and breeding habits, about them making a "nuisance" of themselves, or showing up where they were not wanted.
I conducted long, involved interviews with bear biologists and did a fair bit of research myself on the animals. I grew fascinated by and fond of them. I observed bears in the wilderness, and made trips to a couple of area dumps where bears were known to congregate. I would photograph them and observe their individual personalities.
I learned that bears are voracious eaters, but mostly vegetarians. Their diet consists primarily of roots, berries and buds. Bear droppings in July and August are usually stained blue from blueberries.
Except in very rare cases and circumstances, bears are scared of people and pose very little threat to us, so long as we exercise certain practical precautions.
In bear country, if you didn't want a big, furry beast rooting through your garbage or lounging on your patio, you didn't leave your garbage or greasy barbecue out at night.
Over the past 85 or so years, black bears have killed about 30 people in North America, including a 30-year-old woman near Cochrane, Ont., in 2005. In America, about 15 people are killed each year by dogs, and more than 200 each year by horses.
In 1999, when former Conservative premier Mike Harris cancelled Ontario's spring bear hunt that action was one of the biggest stories in the north for months on end.
While covering an armed standoff with a small bear in Salem last week it was interesting to hear a television reporter ask a Ministry of Natural Resources official if it was, indeed, true that the spring bear hunt had been cancelled. Had the same questioned been asked north of Parry Sound, the answer would have been: "You're not from here, are you?"
That spring bear hunt story had teeth, claws and big burly legs. It just kept on going. For a while I was writing a story a day on the issue. At least three years after the cancellation, outfitters, guides and lodge owners that were nearly bankrupted by the decision, along with lobbyists with the Ontario Association of Anglers and Hunters, bombarded the media with press releases and fresh statistics in an effort to get the hunt reinstated.
Some of their information was misinformation -- dire warnings about an influx of "nuisance" bears into human communities, tales (most unsubstantiated) of close encounters with vicious bears, reports of a growing number of young bears being hit on highways because the woods were growing overcrowded with their kind.
These hunting advocates probably did much damage to the reputation of bears and generated much hysteria toward them. Every bear sighted in a wooded area, along a roadside, in a campsite or digging its nose into a nice, smelly garbage bin was considered a nuisance.
You can just bet someone will soon be using the killing of the Salem yearling to renew calls for the return of the hunt, which was cancelled for a host of reasons.
While Harris and the Conservatives were eager to gain political favour with environmentalists in the south, it was also generally accepted among people who care about animals that luring bears to kill-zones with reeking hunks of meat and then shooting them from tree stands was neither very sporting nor very humane.
I often get emotionally involved in the stories I cover. Reporters don't have hearts of stone. I try my best not to let my emotional responses seep into the stories I write.
Observing what was supposed to be a bear relocation operation last week end in the killing of a young bear . . . well, it was an infuriating and saddening experience.
A small, and essentially harmless black bear lost its life because officials decided it was too risky to have it roaming free in southern Ontario.
When shotgun blasts rang out, I said to a colleague, "There's no way they would kill it." I was wrong.
I hope the Ministry of Natural Resources has not implemented a shoot-to-kill policy whenever a black bear shows up south of the French River.
That would be as cruel as luring them into kill zones with rotting meat.
Rob O'Flanagan's column appears here Saturdays. Contact him by e-mail at roflanagan@guelphmercury.com.
--------------------------------------------------