People feeding bears-Bad for bears

[blake]

NEWS!

People-Fed Bears Euthanized in Kentucky

6/8/2009

A 480-pound black bear was euthanized last week by Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources biologists after it began to show habituation behavior toward people.

The bear allowed a woman and a small child to approach within four feet at Kingdom Come State Park in Harlan County, indicating it had been fed by people in the past. Officials determined the bear needed to be euthanized after the incident.

"Situations like these are unfortunate, but entirely preventable," said Steven Dobey, black bear biologist for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife. "People must learn that the intentional, or unintentional, feeding of bears creates behaviors that are not acceptable for such powerful animals. "

The animal marks the third bear to be euthanized within two months from people-related interactions and feeding.

"People are signing the bear's death warrant," said Dobey. "When a bear's diet consists of easy pickings left out by people who simply want to watch it or take its picture, it begins to associate people with food instead of listening to a natural instinct to avoid them. While it can be a tough decision to euthanize a bear for another person's irresponsible actions, it is human safety that is our ultimate concern in these situations."

 

[bowmaker]

Several years ago we were in Wyoming near Yellowstone and a lady who ran a motel told us about a Grizzly sow with cubs that had broken into her house. It seemed that other people in the area had been putting food out for the bears on their porches and decks, because they thought the bears were so cute and they could get great pictures of them. This lady said she was going to take a bath and had filled the tub and had apple scented bubble bath in it. There was a screened window next to the tub that opened onto their deck. All of a sudden a bear started coming through the screen. The lady went next door and called the DNR . They came and sedated all three bears and took them to the Wolf and Bear Institute at West Yellow Stone. When we got to West Yellow Stone the next day, the bears were in fact there, and the biologist giving a talk confirmed the story. They hid food around the compound, which had boulders and big log piles and even a good sized pond in it. When they released the bears they were all over the place looking for oranges, water melons, cabbages and lots of other things. The cubs started wrestling and playing in the pond, but mom just kept running up and down the fence bawling and digging. They had only been there a few weeks and she had not adjusted very well yet. In front of the bleachers where we were sitting there was a big fence and then a concrete pit and on the other side of that were steel cables and another fence that was electric, all as protection from a bear escaping. The biologist warned everyone to speak softly and not to make any sudden movements and even with all that the sow, at one point, still charged the fence and stood up and growling and bellowing, challenged the crowd. At that point they rang a bell to recall the bears to their underground kennels and they all ran to get away. The biologist then explained that these bears were here because people had been feeding them so they lost their natural fear of humans. As a result these bears could NEVER be released back into the wild. A couple of years ago I did a little research on this bear family and found that the sow was still there, but the cubs had been sent to two different zoos around the country far from the mountains of Wyoming. All this because a few people wanted to get pictures of grizzly cubs up close!

 

[Sligh1]

So why couldn't they capture the bear like they always do and drop it 100 miles into the wilderness? That's what they do with other nuisance bears.