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]

That’s a beautiful black bear, you oughta get a rhinestone collar for him. :-)

[jazusamo]

Here's a pic of a womans back yard in Oregon, she feeds bears. Fish and Game tried to tell her not to do it and she blew them off. She was just found guilty of harrassing wildlife and will be sentenced next week. She doesn't live out in the sticks as it seems in the pic, she has many neighbors.

[Malsua]

There's a woman in my town who feeds the bears. She's been cited numerous times and they just delay, delay, delay. At one point last year, F&G filmed something like 15 bears on the property. I can't find the article. It was quite a number.

The bear pictured above and below farted around for 30 minutes in the yard sniffing gasoline. He wrecked the half full can and bathed in it. I was told he entered a house(knocked down back door) a few weeks back but don't have any verification.

[jazusamo]

People like these two women are absolutely nuts. They get away with it for a while and get to treating them like pets and then get hurt by one of them, they’re wild animals.

The gal in Oregon is facing a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $6,250 fine but doubt she’ll get hit with the max. I hope she gets hit with enough to discourage her from continuing to do it though.

[george76]

Plus the introduced at great tax payer expense...Canadian wolf packs.

Promises of just Yellowstone Park were soon ignored...

[Eska]

Bait station was a couple miles behind our place, but since theres nothing for 400 miles, I just say behind our place. We have a creek the bears travel in spring, nx to house; could shoot them from bedroom window if so desired. Neighbor about 1/4 mile away has little screaming kids, dinner bell to bear. People keep a few loose dogs around their places, tends to keep bear away. It seems as though a bear will come after 1 or 2 dogs, but when there’s 3, they sseem to go the other way, odds I guess.

I once taught in an Indian Village, grizz strolled thru village every couple days like they owned the place; walked right between cabins. We kept a 338 in school in case bear tried grabbing a kid on playground. Believe it or not, the indians never fed their dogs, claimed it made them great bear chasers. Course the dogs routinely killed and ate each other too. I’d hear the loose village dogs goin nuts, look out school window and here come a bear with 10 little scroungey dogs bitin at his heals, pestering him outta the village. Funny cause they had these miniture dobes and they were the bravest of the bunch.

[jazusamo]

Promises of just Yellowstone Park were soon ignored...

Yep, the enviro nazis won out on reintroducing them in the western states. They're all nuts, the eco system got along just fine without them for 50 to 100 years.

[Frantzie]

I hear what you are saying. I am not advocating trying to return to the days the Indians roamed the lands. I do want to avoid getting our population to 600 million and turning the uSA into India. I think we are already on that path and huge populations uually end up with totalitarian states. Hussein has appeared to have blown through our Constitutional protections because the population just listens to TV news propaganda.

[george76]

The animal rights nuts can not do basic math.

The growth in predator populations due to hunting restrictions is massive.

[Carry_Okie]

huge populations uually end up with totalitarian states.

No. It is high population density that empowers totalitarian states.

[cva66snipe]

A couple of weeks ago in Knoxville, Tennessee a bear wandered through a subdivision. A Vet spotted it and alerted authorities. Some dogs saw it and chased it in a house. The game officers had to put it down. The out cry that followed including that from the Vet who should have understood the danger the bear had then become was ridiculous. Once they munch garbage cans and go into homes that's it. Bears can travel several hundred miles so relocating usually fails. But as far as being a danger I will say the same about other smaller wild animals like coons once they loose fear of humans.

[Frantzie]

This is where we are headed.

[Carry_Okie]

This is where we are headed.

Thanks for telling me.
I've been fighting the Agenda 21 since 1994.

[sionnsar]

Not just due to urban sprawl. Mountain lions are regularly spotted further into Redmond than Microsoft’s campuses. Generally young ones spreading out due to their own population density.

[Frantzie]

Release em into Seattle where they might thin out the libtard herd and those wearing burkahs.

[driftless2]

"good point"

I do scorn the people who go into the wild or just the country and complain that there's farms with odiferous animals or wild critters. However the idea that we should never venture into these areas because they're reserved for wild critters is ridiculous. At one time the spot where I am (and probably you are) was plenty wild. Now more wild critters (bears, pumas, wild pigs, etc.) are reinvading. It's unfortunate, but sometimes wild animals have to be taken down because they've become a menace to people. Saying people should never go into wild areas is just as illogical as saying people should leave areas where wild critters are coming back.

[djf]

That's what I was thinking.


There are dogs...


and then there are DOGS!!!

!!!!!!!!

[PeteB570]

No :-)

There are dogs

And then there are dawgs with a long drawn out “au”.

I got me a Carolina Curb Setter that loves to snag opossums off the fence and play with them.

[djf]

My mutt was half Lab half BC.

Furriest critter I ever met, put one of his hairs to a tape measure once and it was ten inches...

If you were human or feline he was the gentlest creature on Earth, but one night he did in two possums which I found mowing the lawn. Another time he got hold of a garden snake and I had to subdue him and take it away (even though it was long dead) because he practically was giving himself whiplash shaking that snake back and forth!

He died 2 years ago at 16. Best dog I ever had. Still wish that flea bitten jerk was sleeping in the corner...

:-(