Wednesday 20 May 2009

Bear Ranching

This is one of the things that are so stupid, I didn't believe the story was true until I got verification.

A man has been feeding bears for 20 years, to train them to... I don't know. Frankly, it doesn't matter. He could be training them to belch oh-come-all-ye-faithful for all I care. This is... words fail me. It's stupid. It's amazingly stupid. This is fantastically and confoundingly ill-advised, moronic, hairbrained, misguided, and plain old WACKO.

The stupid is so flaming hot. It burns us.
In case I'm not clear, don't feed the $#**##$#@ing bears!

Of course, the ADN brings out the best commenters by a long stretch. Take this gem:
graves wrote on 05/19/2009 11:59:29 AM:
Typical Fish and Game. Gotta be the boss, can't let it be.
Ah, yes. Damn those ADF&G people for enforcing the law! Damn them to heck! Next, well be angry when troopers start responding to robberies. They're not the ones getting robbed, so they should just let it be.
LonePony wrote on 05/19/2009 12:02:56 PM:
The thing that bothers me about this is that the State promotes hunters, sitting in a tree, luring bears in with stale doughnuts. That's just fine but they want to prosecute this guy. Both are habituating bears to human food.
There's a huge difference between feeding bears and bear baiting. Bear baiting can't be people's homes. This guy had neighbours. Bear baiting is done for short periods per year. This was a 20 year, year round activity. Bear Baiting involves... you know, shooting the bear. feeding bears involves not shooting bears, but allowing them to wander wherever they will, looking for more human handouts. Bear Baiting allows us to control predator numbers in sensitive areas where human game harvest is a big concern (esp. predator pits). Feeding bears... well. It just contributes to the problem.
kodiaks wrote on 05/19/2009 02:12:42 PM:
Habitat back? No just let them have waht they have now. Is it always humans first? Our we not the stwards of the earth or does that go to the way side when it is our own self interests
Call me crazy. But... what the heck is even remotely natural about feeding bears thousands of pounds of dogfood?! This guy isn't letting nature be, he's decided to subvert it for his own human pleasures!
akgem wrote on 05/19/2009 03:16:26 PM:
Kmetzger....you say people should not domesticate wild animals? How many dogs or cats do you have? Friends or family members have? Do you turly think that dogs and cats have always been domestic? Where do you think they originally came from? What would they world be if we did not have our furry family members? Dog, cat, skink, raccoon, ferret, mouse, cow, pig, horse, bear, tiger, whatever! Any decent human can tame an animal. It is the bad owners who have pets that you should worry about. the 'cool' people who intentionally make a 'pit' or 'rottie' mean thinking it makes them cool. It is not just about the animal, but the people also. Treadwell was a moron who 'assumed' he was accepted to tresspass in the bears area. Vandergaw accepted the bears into his, and the bears accepted him, and his area. My point...thank god people have domesticated wild animals...I love my pets. It is people to worry about..not animals.
Did this person just compare bears to their pet dog? Seriously? Dog, which are the product of far over 10,000 years of domestication, and still occasionally mauls people? And this guy has been `domesticating ` them for less than 0.1% of that time... so they're just as safe?
Siegfried and Roy had the same thing, and even had the advantage of people who knew jack$*#! about tigers, and a tiger still attacked Roy.
Yes, tigers and bears, exactly like normal household pets.

My lord! How do people this dim survive? There is no justice in the world.

3 comments:

gpc said...

Most of the people who are that stupid move to cities like Detroit is and New York used to be, where it's common to attack the police or firemen when they arrive to save your life or your home. I object to feeding them almost as much as I object to feeding the bears.

flying fish said...

People who believe it's ok to feed bears were raised on Bart the Bear. They've never had that bowel-loosening 'oh god' thing happen in the woods.

TwoYaks said...

GPC: Knowing something about detroit, I can understand why. If you think some of the cops in the bush are corrupt, they don't even hold a candle to some of the Detroit folks... But I'll concede that there's an equal measure of stupidity involved there, too.


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