Bears and Other Predators Invade U.S. Neighborhoods

Popular Mechanics ^ | July 2009 | Erin McCarthy

[jazusamo]

As once-threatened animal populations including black bears, mountain lions and alligators rebound and people move into former wildlands, predators are showing up precisely where they don't belong: in backyards. And the wildlife isn't as afraid of us as we might think. Welcome to the food chain.

It was the perfect ending to a perfect afternoon. Gary Mann and his girlfriend Helen were watching the sun go down after a satisfying day clearing brush in the backyard of Mann’s home in Sutter Creek, Calif. A pile of branches and twigs was burning merrily, throwing shadows into the growing darkness as the couple’s three dogs—a 50-pound Shar-Pei named Tigger and a pair of Rottweiler mixes, Takota and Tenaya—played at their feet.

Mann’s home is the kind of place nature lovers dream of. The house is set back from the road on a densely wooded, 10-acre parcel bordered by government land and private property; wild turkeys and deer—up to a dozen at a time—wander through daily. Beyond the backyard lawn, 80 feet from the house, ponderosa and oak grow thickly on the steep slopes of a hill.

That February night, Helen heard crackling and snapping of underbrush and saw something large moving along the edge of the trees. When Tigger went to investigate, with Takota close behind, Mann didn’t stop them, even though he knew mountain lions roamed the area. One had peered through his neighbor’s window, scaring the woman inside, and another neighbor had recently seen a big male lion in Mann’s driveway. “The lions come in pretty far,” Mann says. “Common sense would have said, don’t let the dogs go. But I’ve been living up here for eight years, and it’s rare that they attack dogs.”

Suddenly, the couple heard Tigger “screaming for her life,” Mann says. When he ran down to the edge of the woods, he could only see shadows and fleeting movement in the thick underbrush. Whatever was attacking the Shar-Pei growled at him. Takota rushed in, and then it was over—the animal released Tigger and took off. “We think Takota scared it,” Mann says. “It all happened in about 10 seconds.”

Tigger’s injuries were serious. The skin over her head had been split open to the bone, her left eye almost torn out. Deep claw marks ran down her back. Mann held the wounds closed as he and Helen rushed Tigger to the vet, who confirmed that the injuries had been caused by a mountain lion.

Tigger survived, but since the incident Mann has kept the dogs out of the woods. “I’m still here and the lion is still here,” he says. “My neighbors said it was up at their property two nights ago. To attack a dog near a house when two adults are out in the yard with a fire going—that’s when you have to start worrying. There are lots of kids just a couple of blocks from here.”

When Europeans settled the New World, they dealt with predators by showing them the business end of a gun. Wherever pioneers settled, populations of large predators—mountain lions, bears, wolves, alligators—plummeted or disappeared entirely. That search-and-destroy mission continued virtually unabated until the rise of the environmental movement in the 1960s and ’70s, when the national attitude began to evolve. People came to believe that what was left of wilderness and its inhabitants should be preserved for future generations.

This ideology has clearly worked: Since the passage of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, 14 species of animals that were on the brink of extinction have recovered. Alligators were removed from the list in 1987; gray wolves in 2009. The grizzly bear, confined mostly to Yellowstone National Park in the lower 48 states, was delisted in 2007. As for once heavily hunted mountain lions, some 50,000 of the big cats now inhabit North America, with populations in the United States as far east as North Dakota. Experts predict that lions eventually will reinhabit the Adirondacks in New York, the Maine woods and the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

Few people anticipated that rebounding populations would create a new problem: an increase in animal attacks as predators returned to former ranges now occupied by humans. In August 2002, a black bear killed a 5-month-old girl in the Catskills, a hundred miles northwest of New York City; the baby had been sleeping in a carriage on the porch. In January 2004, a mountain lion killed a male bicyclist in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park in Orange County, Calif., then attacked a 31-year-old woman a few hours later. Other bicyclists managed to save the victim, but not before she sustained serious injuries. In October 2007, an alligator snatched and killed an 83-year-old woman outside her daughter’s home in Savannah, Ga. The next day, her body was found in a pond, hands and a foot missing. And, in May 2008, a coyote bit a 2-year-old girl playing in a Chino Hills, Calif., park and attempted to drag her off.

Though the trend is worrisome, the absolute number of attacks remains small. Fatal black bear attacks on humans have doubled since the late 1970s, increasing from one to just two incidents per year. (About six people are injured each year.) Between 1890 and 2008, there were 110 mountain lion attacks in North America; half of the 20 fatalities resulting from these attacks occurred in the past two decades. Despite an alligator population too large to count, the U.S. had just 391 attacks and 18 fatalities between 1948 and 2005. Coyotes have caused only one known fatality in the U.S.

Still, the relationship between animals and humans is proving to be more complex than simply kill ’em all or love ’em all—even though some of the old, romantic ideas about living at one with nature linger. “If you ask people why they moved where they did, you discover that they moved to be immersed in nature and wildlife,” says Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado–Boulder. “The fastest way to decrease the experience is to start killing the animals.”

Whether homeowners welcome large animals into their neighborhoods or see them as life-threatening intruders, most people recognize that we’ve entered a new era: Predators and humans today often share the same terrain, and their daily routines intersect in ways that challenge conventional ideas about man and nature.

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[jazusamo]

Agreed...We lived in a very rural part of OR for 15 years and though it wouldn’t compare to your surroundings the predators in the area had a fear of man because they realized they could get shot at, that makes a huge difference.

Though it’s possible that a predator could confront you they have a tendency to avoid man.

[domenad]

Funny you mention that, that’s the model I’m going to buy. Why? Because I can afford it, while the $1900 Bennelli is a little out of my reach right now.

[Beagle8U]

Who knows, I might like your wife?

[jazusamo]

My problem is that that definition is so broad it includes my wife!

LOL! Hope your wife is not a FReeper. :)

[weps4ret]

Yeah in Montana they have the 3S Rule.

Shoot, Shovel and Shut up.

Although you gotta find radio tags on the Grizzly and put it on a squirrel real fast.

Gunner

[Carry_Okie]

They want animals to enjoy the habitat they had 200 years ago.

Then we need to hunt and kill an awful lot of wildlife because the Indians had hunted the continent until it was nearly bereft of game. They had extirpated two thirds of megafauna species to the point that Lewis and Clark went 18 days without seeing a single animal.

Indians were NOT conservationists.

[Beagle8U]

“In retrospect he should have cut the collar off, nailed it to a 2x4 and thrown it in the river then SSS.”

No, he should have gunshot it with any fast varmint bullet. It will run for miles and die far from where it was shot.

Rather hard to to determine what rifle an exploding bullet came from in any case.

[Let's Roll]

Common sense would seem to indicate that predators need to be hunted enough to recreate fear of man.

[driftless2]

The illogic of the idea that we are inviting attacks by going into areas where the wild animals are is that humans from earliest times have gone into areas where the wild animals were and still are. Tell me a place on the globe where humans exist where there weren’t or aren’t any wild animals. The premise of these people is that we are inviting attacks from the creatures by inhabiting or venturing into previously totally wild areas. Actually these people want humans all balled up into huge megalopolises where venturing into the “wild” will be strictly controlled.

[driftless2]

"agree"

Disagree. Strongly.

[Beagle8U]

Agree...lol.

[jazusamo]

Very good point and I couldn’t agree more.

For the most part people that move into wilderness type areas know exactly what they’re getting into, they’re not the ones complaining.

The people that move into housing tracts that are being built further and further into unpopulated areas and abut a wild area have every right to complain of predators roaming their neighborhoods, killing their pets and being a threat to their children.

The enviros don’t want those homes being built so they come up with the premise these people have to live with the predators. Ridiculous!

[Ditto]

Perhaps it should be re-written as; ...backyards are showing up precisely where they don’t belong: in wildlands.

Not true. We have had bear in my area in the last several years and this boro has been settled for over 200 years and probably hadn't seen a bear in 150 years or more.

There are just a hell of a lot more bears and they realy like garbage cans.

[stuartcr]

There are always exceptions, what I said is not written in stone. Of course there are some places like where you live. All the more reason to open up the hunting regs.

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

Indians were NOT conservationists.

Arguably the greatest single act of environmental destruction by humans in North America was the intentional burning by the Indians of the great Cumberland Valley that stretches from eastern Pennsylvania across Maryland and down the length of Virginia.

The primeval forest was destroyed and what remained became a barren grassland. Who knows how many species of flora and fauna were eliminated from this vast ecosystem. But for the Indian, the only important thing was to convert the area to grassland in order to more easily kill grazing herds of buffalo and deer with his primitive stone-age implements.

Indeed, early European visitors referred to the Cumberland Valley as "the barrens." By the time colonists began to settle in the valley, large stands of timber had returned in many places, but the original ecosystem was lost forever.

[Carry_Okie]

I take it you've read Bonnicksen's book? If not, it's a good summary.

[stuartcr]

He didn’t notice a radio collar?

[Polynikes]

“He didn’t notice a radio collar?”

Don't know if he didn't notice it but probably had a somewhat naive attitude when dealing with bureaucrats. In other words didn't feel he did anything wrong in defending his livestock but got an expensive lesson in who had more “rights”

[Malsua]

Gee ya think?

My backyard May 27 09.

[Polynikes]

I would be real reluctant to engage a grizzly with a varmint rifle and without the intention to drop it on the spot, especially when a food source is close by.