Troubled by two “bear stories” recently published within days of each other by the Anchorage Daily News — one a commentary, the other a news article — I’ve decided I must speak a few words on behalf of Alaska’s brown bears and their often complicated relationships with us humans.
I’ll begin with the op-ed piece penned by Jim Lieb, “Bears, humans and the meaning of coexistence,” with whom I’ve sparred on several previous occasions, given our differing perspectives on Alaska’s wildlife and wildlife management.
A retired Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist, Lieb has long shown a tendency to share what I and other wildlife advocates consider bad information, especially about bear-human relations and, yes, the state’s management of bears and wolves.
In his most recent commentary, Lieb repeats a familiar argument, namely that, in his words, “no-hunting laws have allowed large predators to lose their fear of man, resulting in increased attacks.”
He provides two examples; one involves mountain lions, the other concerns Anchorage-area brown bears.
I can’t speak to mountain lions. But his brown bear example is ridiculous for a couple of reasons. First, brown bears can be and are hunted in parts of Chugach State Park, Anchorage’s “backyard wilderness,” which contradicts his initial premise. Second, at least two of the local bear attacks he references occurred because of surprise encounters. All the evidence I’ve seen suggests the bears acted defensively. Circumstances surrounding the third instance remain sketchy.
There is absolutely no evidence that the local bears attacked people because they’d lost their fear of humans. To suggest otherwise is unacceptably misleading.
Furthermore, there is abundant evidence that brown bears that have lost their innate fear of people are actually safer, not more dangerous, to be around than those wary of people. There’s no greater proof of this than Alaska’s world-famous McNeil River brown bear sanctuary, where people have walked among dozens of wild but human-habituated brown bears for decades, with no harm to either the bears or human visitors.
As former McNeil manager Larry Aumiller and many other bear biologists have pointed out, it’s only when human food and garbage enter the equation that the danger from bears increases substantially.
Lieb also claims that “over the past thirty-plus years, records suggest” that the number of bear attacks in the Anchorage Bowl is greater than “just about any other area in the state.”
I suppose it depends on how you define “Anchorage Bowl.” But it doesn’t surprise me that statistically more bear attacks occur in the Anchorage municipality, given the large number of people who live here and the fact that many residents and visitors regularly recreate in “bear country,” often far beyond what we’d consider the city limits.
Contrary to Lieb, I maintain that the relatively few bear attacks in the Anchorage area speak well for bears and their remarkable tolerance of people and our often reckless behaviors.
Besides that, the great majority of attacks occur in Chugach State Park, not the city of Anchorage. And again, all or nearly all of the documented brown bear attacks have occurred during surprise encounters in which the bear acts defensively and then retreats.
Though couched in something of a philosophical and historical context, ultimately Lieb is arguing, as he’s done for many years, to increase the hunting and killing of bears. But he once again fails to make his case, while ignoring the fact that locally humans and bears largely do peacefully coexist. Not to mention that our species presents a much greater danger to bears than vice versa. I have long wished that we humans could be as tolerant of bears as they are of us.
As vexing as Lieb’s commentary is, the latest reporting on the Department of Fish and Game’s Mulchatna bear kill program, “Photos of killed bears contradict Alaska officials’ past claims about Mulchatna predator program,” is far more disturbing. But not really surprising.
The extraordinary effort by Alaska Wildlife Alliance Executive Director Nicole Schmitt and her colleagues to lift the dark veil of secrecy that has hidden the bloody and shameful details of the state’s bear slaughter, along with the reporting by Zachariah Hughes, are to be highly commended.
This latest story they bring us adds to the substantial and ever-growing evidence that the Department of Fish and Game’s lead officials have been, and continue to be, dishonest and dishonorable in their efforts to kill hundreds of bears, the great majority brown bears, purportedly to help the Mulchatna caribou herd recover.
Yet really, the state has been killing those bears for no good reason at all. Instead, officials have consistently invented evidence to support their disgraceful and unwarranted actions while ignoring the findings of the department’s own researchers. They have also consistently lied to the public and even lied in court.
Over the past year or so, the lies have begun to catch up with the Department of Fish and Game’s leadership and more dark revelations are likely in the weeks and months ahead.
I have written at length about the Department of Fish and Game’s, and the Alaska Board of Game’s, scandalous actions and so will end here, for now. But I encourage Alaskans who have accepted the state’s predator-kill rationale at face value to start paying closer attention and asking hard questions of a department, and an administration, that itself is out of control and willing to do almost anything to achieve its obscene ends.
Many of us wildlife advocates have been writing commentaries for years, examining and revealing the dark underbelly of Alaska’s wildlife mismanagement. It remains a disgrace, and the depth of that disgrace will be revealed as more is learned. And yet the Alaska public has largely turned away and shrugged.
Maybe now that will begin to change.
Anchorage nature writer and wildlife and wildlands advocate Bill Sherwonit is a widely published essayist and the author of more than a dozen books, including “Alaska’s Bears,” a collaboration with photographer Tom Walker, and “Animal Stories: Encounters with Alaska’s Wildlife.”
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