Humans and bears - Wild encounters

[brotherbear]

Grizzly Years by Doug Peacock.

In the end, there are limits to what may be quantified. The bear is tied by delicate threads to other animals, from the raven with whom he hunts food, to the coyote and wolverine with whom he shares meals, and to the elk and mountain goat who become objects of that hunt. Individual grizzlies are twisted by irritation and jerked around by weather patterns. Whole populations or segments of populations may evolve socially over time; bears adapt, habituate, and change their behavior and habits when exposed to other bears and human beings for periods of time - as the parent species, Ursus arctos, adapted to the proximity of people in places like Japan, Italy, and Spain.

In North America, the initial behavioral response to open country and the presence of other predators was probably increased aggressiveness in grizzly bears. How much, if at all, have they changed some 15,000 to 50,000 years later? And what role has man, especially in the last 120 years following the invention of the repeating rifle, played in this change?

At the time of European contact, the grizzly - who is extremely adaptable at exploiting new habitats - was probably in the process of expanding his range southward into tropical regions of Mexico and Central America, perhaps poised for a crossing into the Andes. Given time, the brown bear also may have moved east across the Mississippi. Could the grizzly, so adaptive, even flexible, in other ways, learn to get along with us if we elected to give him a chance? So far the bear hasn't had this option, so we don't know. Nor do we know how quickly these kinds of changes take place - or how much of this would ever be conveyed by a radio collar. Reply