Defending the Grizzly Whisperer (GW) has become a hobby of mine. Doing so on FR is like tilting at windmills, but hey, we've all got to have a hobby.
I've always been very impressed with GW because he actually figured out how to communicate with grizzlies in the wild. Okay, okay, in the end they ate him. But that's just a detail. For many years, and hundreds of separate times, he proved that it was possible to communicate with them and get accepted to the point where they'd let him hang out with them. From a scientific standpoint, that is an astounding discovery.
Magellan never made it around the whole world. Drake vanished. But they were on to something big, and so was GW. He was not a Darwin Award - he gave back big time to our knowledge of the natural world.
Heck of a detail! You make it sound like a minor inconvenience.
I can be impressed with his dedication and his discoveries, I am less than impressed with his failure to take precautions that might have prevented him from becoming lunch.
“From a scientific standpoint, that is an astounding discovery. “
Shouldn’t a scientific discovery be repeatable by peers? Who’s first to try?
>>I’ve always been very impressed with GW because he actually figured out how to communicate with grizzlies in the wild. Okay, okay, in the end they ate him. But that’s just a detail.<<
Those pesky details! Hangnails, i before e, death... :)
>>For many years, and hundreds of separate times, he proved that it was possible to communicate with them and get accepted to the point where they’d let him hang out with them.<<
Interestingly, my friend has a neighbor that has chickens. Man, them chickens come a’runnin at feeding time. They hang around together, ya know? The rotisserie spit is just decoration :)
(OMG I spelled “rotisserie” correctly the first time without spell check!!!)
What he proved is that some days it is easier to fatally annoy a grizzly, than it is on others.
We had a guy about 10 miles from here build a “tiger-proof” cage, and all the trappings for the tiger he kept on his property. While his tiger never got out, the entire municipality he lived in, and the surrounding townships were all-in-a-dither about the presence of this critter. Even though the guy had all the permits (in Canada, you cannot keep any type of wild animal, period, unless you’ve gone to get legal permission to do so. Keeping a raccoon can get you thrown in jail.) etc. for keeping the tiger, he was eventually forced to move it away from here.
While I personally had no issue with his keeping the beast, I understood his neighbour’s concern, especially since there had been several zoo escapes in the news before and during the tiger fiasco. Had he lived way out in the boonies, the tiger would have been less of an issue, but on Vancouver Island, there really isn’t that far to go before you run out of boonies. Now, if the guy had owned an entire island, with at least two or three miles of water between his domicile and the rest of the world, there would likely been far less hassle, and he’d be tiger food by now...
About the grizzly whisperer:
I must disagree with your premise that the GW managed to learn to communicate with these great beasts. It’s more likely that the grizzlies knew there was something wacko about the dude, and they tolerated him until it was time to lay in that final store of fat for the winter. IOW, the grizzlies “kept him fresh” for a final feeding before hibernation. GW was dessert. His damned foolish GF was the icing.