On Sep 17, 8:12 am, Mike Vandeman wrote:
On Sun, 16 Sep 2007 10:00:22 wrote:
On Sep 14, 6:33 pm, Mike Vandeman wrote:
On Fri, 14 Sep 2007 13:20:24 -0800, (Floyd L.
The fact is that an *intelligent* human *can* reason out
the fact that the bear is now very likely to be a
significant danger to humans. The only safe action for
humans is to kill that particular bear.

BS. If you are so smart, you should be able to figure out that ALL
bears are dangerous, and so you should stay out of their habitat. DUH!

Sure. Why didn't we already think of that? I guess we should all
start by vacating all of Yosemite, Yellowstone. Move people out of
their rural homes in Idaho, the Sierras, the Cascades, etc. I'll
probably should never go to Lake Tahoe again, since "bears are
dangerous". I guess the American Indians had it all wrong not getting
the heck out of areas where bears lived, which includes the Berkeley
Hills (where I live) and even as far as San Francisco in the early
1900's.

Heck - several black bears came into Reno, Nevada on occasion and
started raiding trash cans. I guess that's their habitat now. Better
move people out.

Seriously though (for people who can reason better than Vandeman) -
bears aren't statistically dangerous.

Then the people who were killed by bears aren't statistically dead!
But they still aren't coming back....

The people killed by black bears are aberrations. Besides that,
there's never been a recorded case of a black bear ever killing a
person in California. If I were someone going backcountry camping or
mountain biking in the Cascades, Sierras, or Rockies, I'd be more
concerned with the possibility of a fatal traffic accident or
carjacking than a bear attack. Dying from a heart attack is more
likely.

It's the rare case where bears

have the potential to cause harm to people. Black bears have
coexisted alongside people in North America for thousands of years,

That's nowhere long enough for the bears to evolve defenses against
humans and their weapons.

Wha? I rolling my on my ass laughing so hard.

and there's not going to be some massive die-off because an animal is
alongside a human presence. It's respect that should minimize
potential harm to humans and bears, and not a separation of the
habitats of humans and bears. Fact is - people are living and
visiting in areas where bears live, and nothing is going to change
that. Most of the time, it's not an issue. In the rare case where a
bear does show the propensity to injure a person, I have no problem if
it is put down. I respect bears,

No, you don't. Yours is the same attitude that drove the California
grizzly extinct: "Humans ALWAYS come first"!

No. The attitude that people had to hunt everything because there was
supposedly an inexhaustible supply is what drove the California
grizzly extinct. The American black bear is nowhere near going
extinct. I'm not a big proponent of hunting for the sake of hunting.
However - I have no problem if a bear with a recognized potential to
harm humans is put down.

I do think it's tragic when a bear is killed. If I recall correctly,
the American Indian were known to "apologize" to their amimal
bretheren for hunting them.