Although I'm a German Shepherd man myself (I prefer confidence, manners and intelligence to brute force) I do take umbrage with those who would ban pit-bulls. They do have their place.
Posted on 12/04/2003 6:44:22 AM PST by AAABEST
Tony, have you ever seen a cougar in your area? I bumped into a conservation officer and he said it wasn't that unlikely.
A friend of mine who lives in the Colorado mountains is plagued by deer, cougars, bears and raccoons. They have noticed about four deer kills within half a mile of their home in the last year.
Just a thought.. but isn't that the reason you move to the Mts?? I mean moving to the Mts and then complaining about the wildlife seems kinda odd to me.
The Return of the Wild
Suburbanites must learn to kill again.
BY GEOFFREY NORMAN
WSJ Friday, December 5, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
After decades of assuming that civilization is bad for wild animals and nature--as seen on PBS--humans are learning that things can go the other way. It's not a pretty sight.
Consider New Jersey, where, if things go according to plan, some 7,000 hunters will take to the woods next week and kill up to 500 bears. The rationale for the state's first bear hunt in more than 30 years is simple enough--too many bears. In 1995, there were 285 complaints about bears plundering birdfeeders, getting into the garbage, menacing pets and generally behaving like bears in territory claimed by humans. Last year, there were some 1,175 such complaints.
Fifty-seven bears entered homes. Two attacked people, including a two-year-old. In some parts of Jersey, kids are told not to put school lunches in their backpacks but to carry them in their hands instead. That way, if they encounter a bear, they can throw a sandwich on the ground to distract the animal and make a getaway.
That New Jersey has any bears at all probably comes as a surprise to many people who don't live there and think of the place as one large suburb where the most dangerous animal around is Tony Soprano. There are, in fact, rural sections of New Jersey, but the bears don't need deep wilderness to survive. They are happy to share space with people who are looking for a little weekend place in the country or a suburban home with a pretty setting. They have adapted and become, in the minds of many, at least a nuisance and perhaps a menace.
Predictably, there is opposition to the hunt. Lawsuits have been filed. Letters--along with stuffed teddy bears--have been mailed to the governor. At least one man has gone on a fast as a way of protesting the hunt. Some opponents argue that there simply is no bear problem and that humans need to learn to take bear encounters in stride. Others want to try contraception to keep bear populations down. The arguments can become intricate and confusing, but one thing is clear--killing animals bothers some people.
The animals, however, are increasingly making a case against themselves, and not just in New Jersey. Call it the return of the wild. People who once thrilled at the mere sighting of a white-tail deer now put up fences against them and think of them as "rats with hooves." Deer are involved in almost two million collisions with automobiles annually, with damages averaging about $2,000 and about 100 of them killing the driver. Deer also help spread Lyme disease.
There are thriving moose populations in Maine and Vermont where the animals are hunted but not vigorously enough to keep them off the roads. Cougars are making a robust comeback, which is understandable, since their primary prey is deer. Cougar attacks on humans--some fatal--are on the rise. There are suburbs in Colorado where it is considered risky to jog. Alligators, once endangered, are now a nuisance in Florida, where they routinely attack and kill pets. They also go after the occasional human. Coyotes survived a sustained campaign by the federal government to wipe them out and are now everywhere, and they have a distinct fondness for house cats. And, then, there are the bears. More grizzlies in Yellowstone and spreading out of the park. More black bears all over the place, it seems. One killed a five-month-old child, a little over a year ago, less than 70 miles from New York.
The animals have made a remarkable comeback, and they are not likely to quit breeding. There is no way to negotiate with them, and they cannot be regulated. Deer will devour the expensive landscaping and bears will get into birdfeeders, kill pets, and pull off the occasional breaking and entering. It's their nature. There may be technological fixes out there in the future, but for now the solution to the problem of too many animals seems simply to be--killing them.
Ah, there is the rub, if not the rub-out. People seem to love nature and want to get close to it. But they don't want to share it, and when it comes to control, they don't want to get their hands dirty. They are unwilling to look nature in its brutal and uncompromising face. Some communities have hired "sharpshooters" to thin deer herds. The idea seems to be that it isn't the killing that is the problem. It is that it is being done by amateurs. One recalls Dr. Johnson's crack about the people who opposed bear baiting not because it gave pain to the animal but because it gave pleasure to the people. A deer that is assassinated by a "sharpshooter" is just as dead as one shot by a hunter. Who, by the way, paid a license fee and tax on his gun and ammunition.
The thrill of the hunt is, of course, not for everyone. And attitudes about hunting can be complex. I wondered for a long time if I could kill a bear. This was back when I had never seen one and didn't expect to. I have seen many in recent years. The first was no more than 30 steps away, looking at me with curious and intelligent eyes. Its pelt was deep and rich, and its movements were graceful and fluid. I could have raised my bow and easily put an arrow through its heart. But I merely watched while the animal took a few steps and then seemed to vanish, like smoke, in the woods.
I couldn't kill that bear, but I don't have a problem with the New Jersey hunt. The many people who do may well possess an ethical refinement that simply escapes me, but I fear that some may possess instead a de-natured sense of nature. They build into nature, they live nearby it, they thrill at its beauty and diversity and consider themselves sensitive environmentalists who want to shield nature from the harm that humans do. But they do not know it. They have only a distanced, sentimentalized sense of nature, very much the product of city-centered, suburban modern life, so far from rural realities that earlier generations knew so well. There was a time that you'd be considered a complete fool not to kill the bears that are invading your backyard. Maybe you still are.
The arguments over hunting begin to seem tiresome in an age when it is literally impossible to kill enough deer to keep some roads safe. There was, undeniably, a time when Americans hunted and killed animals too feverishly. They learned, through hard experience, to preserve animal populations. The comeback of the alligator, deer, moose, bear, cougar and other species is a result of human learning, effort and discipline. Now humans are going to have to learn how to kill again. New Jersey, evidently, is the place to start.
Mr. Norman is a contributing editor of National Geographic Adventure.
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I sent the above article to a friend who lives in NJ... Here's her (edited) reply:
The part of NJ they're talking about is where my friend's house is
There's a huge part of the story being left out, here.
Yes, there are many houses on this mountain where there once were none. However, still plenty of forest left for the animals, until about three years ago when a quarry began its work there. The forest is being destroyed, and the bears and deer are becoming problematic for the homeowners only because their home is being devastated.
This quarry is also damaging the water supply - wells are running dry because the underground water that feeds them is being cut off by the quarry's work. There's been a many-year battle to close the quarry - sometimes successful, sometimes not. The same people who began the quarry are the ones who began the bear hunt proposal, and four of their major supporters just got bumped off the town council at the last local election.
It's quite a quagmire.
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Just a thought.. but isn't that the reason you move to the Mts?? I mean moving to the Mts and then complaining about the wildlife seems kinda odd to me.
I think a lot of people move to the mountains to get away from other people (it doesn't work though). When she moved there thirty years ago, wild animals were kept under control. Now, of course, we are becoming like India where animals are free to roam wherever they please.
Keeping a garden or compost heap is out of the question. Her daughter believes they should "coexist" with the cougars and bears. She just had her first baby. I'll bet she starts having second thoughts about living with predators. They are becoming bolder every day.
Why? Are the bears Irish?
The momma bears have been sleeping for a month now, and daddy bears have been dozing off for the last couple of weeks.
In an aside: a teen in the next town over was attacked by a bruin this summer and managed to get away with only a few scratches by punching it in the head repeatedly until it gave up on him. Hoss Jr. lives.
That was the way it used to be. It is not necessarily the case now. In the days when humans were habitually armed, an animal that got close to a human was likely to be killed and added to the pantry.
To an animal predator, an armed human is a dangerous predator. An unarmed human is prey. Predator beasts will slowly come to that realization
Although I'm a German Shepherd man myself (I prefer confidence, manners and intelligence to brute force) I do take umbrage with those who would ban pit-bulls. They do have their place.
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