Kept the numbers high for who?
The bears?
For the elite.
This is the same state where “biologists” planted lynx and grizzly fur in the Northern Cascades and were well under way to roping off 1.3 million acres, so that the people couldn’t disturb these newly returning species. Yes, a few biologists lied and enacted a scam to try to keep the OWNERS of that land off of that land. You know they would have had access to it.
Someone outed their scam. They were reassigned, but not fired.
Another story:
There was a creek nearby the office where I worked. I’d take a walk at noonhour and stand on a bridge looking down on the creek to watch the salmon run. The creek is surrounded by signs telling people to stay away from the water and the sides of the creek, since it is a salmon run.
One day I was on the bridge and I notice two women walking down the sides of the creek. Now, they didn’t know the first thing about walking in a creek. They were kicking and sloshing and turning stones over like a couple of heifers.
When they got close enough to the bridge, I yelled down to one of them, “I thought people weren’t supposed to go near the water because it’s a salmon run.” She shouted back up, “It’s OK. We’re biologists doing a count of the salmon.” To which I shouted back, “So it’s all right if YOU destroy their habitat. Just not anyone else, right?”