Apparently the
bears like fish too. And, it appears that at Brooks
River some bears, like some lazy people, don't like
to work too hard for their dinner. As a result, some
Brooks bears have developed the unnerving habit of
taking fish from the human fishermen". Indeed,
the NPS reduced the bag limit at Brooks River," within
the last year or two, to discourage free-loading bears
from robbing human fishermen. The NPS claims to be
concerned that the bears may decide not to stop at
a creel full of fish, but may decide that a fisherman
would taste better. Some of us, however, wonder if
there isn't some other, more hidden motivation behind
the NPS's proposals.
What is the NPS
considering doing about those thieving bears?
Simple. The NPS
is considering moving Brooks Camp!
Apparently the
NPS believes that money grows on trees! The people
at the Park Service don't seem to realize that their
funding comes from taxes paid by you and me.
Interestingly
enough, Ray Petersen, who built Brooks Camp forty
or fifty years ago, says that bears have never been
a problem at Brooks Camp. Mr. Petersen says that no
one has ever even been scratched by a bear at the
Camp. If there is a problem at Brooks Camp, therefore,
either the NPS invented it, or they created it
Now the NPS wants to spend hundreds of thousands
of dollars of our money to "solve" this "problem".
If there ever
is any problem between people and bears at Brooks
Camp, it's cause will be the NPS's policy of mollycoddling
the bears. The NPS has failed to make the bears realize
that, like them, man is a predator. And unlike bears,
men have firearms that can hurt bears if bears decide
to try to taste men. Instead, the NPS has created
an unnatural environment at Brooks Camp, and other
places, where bears do not fear men but instead look
upon mankind like you or I might view a plum danish.
When the NPS mentioned
the alleged bear problem at Brooks Camp several years
ago, I was on the Alaska Land Use Council Advisors
Committee. At one of our meetings, representatives
of the NPS mentioned the possibility that they might
have to move Brooks Camp to prevent some Brooks Camp
visitor from getting hurt. At that time, NPS personnel
gave an estimate of what such a move would cost. The
figure of a million dollars comes to mind now, although
I am not sure if that was their estimate. I do remember
that I thought, at the time, that it was a lot of
money, an awful lot of money. And, of course, it is
taxpayers' money.
When I heard of
the NPS's proposed "solution" to their alleged people-bear
problem at Brooks, I told them that I thought I had
a better solution. I told them that my solution would
cost the taxpayer's less than ten dollars. "What is
it?" they asked.
"It's quite simple"
I responded. "All you have to do is shoot a few of
the bears! The cost of the ammo should be less than
ten dollars. You can then tack those bear hides up
on the wall of your headquarters, which would look
real nice, and the rest of the bears would get the
message to leave people alone!"
"Shoot our bears!?!?"
they wailed in disbelief. "Shoot our bears!?!?"
The NPS hasn't
liked me since.
I don't feel,
however, that it is a wise use of taxpayers funds
to move an established facility merely to accommodate
some bandit bears, which may not even exist, except
in the NPS's imagination.
Bears and men
have hunted each other for thousands of years. Thanks
to wise conservation, men have come to realize that
bears have their place in this world, and, indeed,
a wild place without bears is not really a wild place
at all. A forest without bears is a forest that I,
for one, would have no interest in. Without bears,
something, for me, would be missing. Bears stir my
blood, and are a necessary ingredient for a real wilderness
experience. Somehow, it makes life more exciting to
sit around a campfire, knowing that somewhere out
there, in the dark, perhaps just beyond the firelight,
is a great big animal that could eat you, if he wanted
to.
But when, through
its unnatural policies, the NPS causes the bears to
feel that human beings cannot or will not fight back,
I draw the line. Bears need to continue to realize
that human beings are dangerous, just like we realize
that bears are dangerous. To cause a bear to lose
its fear of man, a fear evolved over hundreds of thousands
of years, is to deprive that bear of a very real attribute
that makes it a bear. By depriving a bear of the fear
of man, somehow you are domesticating that bear, you
are emasculating it. Likewise, were we humans to ever
lose, completely, our fear of bears, we would be losing
one of life's great experiences.
A bear that does
not fear humans is a circus bear, or a zoo bear, not
a real bear". And a person who does not fear bears
is a person to be pitied. Fear can, and should cause
mutual respect. And it is through mutual respect that
we, people and bears, can appreciate each other" for
what we are.
