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Humans and bears - Wild encounters
Humans and bears - Wild encounters
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Humans and bears - Wild encounters
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http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/parks-canad...sc=Ee4VPGK
Parks Canada, Canadian Pacific move to cut grizzly bear train deaths 
Dedicated people at work over there, Brotherbear. I hope the project will succeed.
Big predators and humans, most unfortunately, don't mix. Anywhere. When they go for a swim, Australians know they enter the realm of hunters known to attack humans at times. Although accidents are few and far between, people are killed every year. In some years, more than a few die before their time. This is when the situation, protection or no protection, can get tense. Those out for revenge, however, often are unable to contact the killer. The sea is large and deep, but continents are not. Big predators living in a region where a human has been killed can be located and shot. There are many Irenes. What I'm saying is there will always be a battle for territory, as that is what it really comes down to. It would take centuries of strict separation, education, legislation and protection to create conditions in which humans and big predators, perhaps, can co-exist. I don't see it happening anywhere soon, but you never know. In some countries, people seem to take pride in their wildlife. To a degree, they also seem to be willing to accept the results of frequent interaction. We also know that predators are able to adapt. Mumbai leopards show how it's done, but there is a difference between them and big predators. Big predators need big room and big game animals. For many of us, entering their realm would compare to entering a kind of Jurassic Park. What we need is a thorough study, firm decisions and immediate action. Most of all, we need hundreds of thousands of square miles of pristine forests. That and a completely different outlook. A few weeks ago, I saw two maps: one with pristine (intact) forests in 2000 and one with pristine forests in 2016. The losses were significant everywhere, but Canada, Russia and Brazil top the list. If we continue in this way, all intact forests will be gone in 20-40 years (closer to 20). The only region where it would take a bit longer is western Africa. I'm very interested in the natural world. Same for Sanjay. This is why we started the forum. The last thing we need is pessimism, but that is a very tough call. People need to get together to talk about the future and they need to do it real fast. We need a policy that will enable us to survive, but what we see is uninterrupted destruction everywhere. That and more people every year. In 2-3 generations from now, the natural world will be a thing of the past. Young people would need to read books in order to get an idea. But why would they be interested in something they never knew? Besides, books could be gone as well. They already are on their way out and so is reading. How to destroy a civilisation, lesson one. I don't know if you heard about 'Into the heart of darkness' (Joseph Conrad). My advice is to find it. There are more great books about the essence of the natural world. Hemingway is right there. The best one I read is 'Jungle Pimpernel' (A. van kampen), but I don't think it was translated. 
@peter,
Into the Heart of Darkness was an awesome book to read. It definitely hints at many of the reasons why society is the way it is (colonization/deadly trade), not to mention the colorful description of the native habitat and animals.
Grizzlies of the lower 48.
 *This image is copyright of its original author
http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/07_00/snare_bear_hair.shtml
Scientists snare bear hair for DNA analysis It's a culinary teaser meant for bears only: one-cup fetid fish oil and four liters spoiled cattle blood. Biologists slosh, slather and hang this and other concoctions—catnip, castor oil and molasses—to lure bears under and over barbed wire fencing. "It's a putrid job," says Garth Mowat, a Canadian biologist and general manager at Wildlife Genetics International. But an effective one. The smells draw the bears to designated sights; the barbed wire snags their hair, and scientists collect and send it to the lab. In the root of each collected hair is enough DNA for geneticists to identify species, individuals and sex. Using techniques from human forensic science, "bears are essentially tagged without ever being touched," Mowat says. Biologists are using this data to estimate population size, distribution and genetic variation, all indications of a population's health. Scientists analyze bear hair follicles using six markers to determine species, sex, and individuals. (Scientists compare regions of DNA to identify species: Black bears, for example, have 9 to 15 more units than grizzly bears.) The larger challenge is getting the hair, which isn't as easy as it might sound. Grizzly bears weigh 300 to 800 pounds depending on their sex and the time of year. They are solitary, elusive creatures that, in the western United States and Canada, reside in dense forests. Biologists have sedated and collared them, drawn blood samples, flown overhead to count them and even positioned cameras with trip lines to capture them on film, without much success. "A lot of cameras were lost," laughs Curtis Strobeck, professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta. In 1995, undergraduate student Michael Proctor tromped through the mountains of British Columbia, Canada following black bears until he developed a procedure for collecting their hair. It turns out bears have no aversion to walking over, under and through barbed wire, as cattle ranchers will attest, when there's rotting blood on the other side. "And nothing separates the hair like barbed wire," he says. Using Proctor's technique, bear biologists worldwide are snagging bear hair for its telling DNA: for sun bears in Malaysia, Asiatic black bears in Japan, panda bears in China, spectacled bears in South America, sloth bears in Asia, and brown bears in Europe. The United States adopted this method in at least eight states for black bears and in some western states for grizzly bears. Canadian researchers completed 17 studies in the last four years estimating grizzly bear populations in British Colombia and Alberta and have three more studies in the works. This methodology could ultimately work for all fur-bearing animals, and is already being tested on lynx, bobcats, martens, and fishers, to name a few. Interested in DNA analysis for its wildlife management applications, researchers are learning how many bears there are, where they are, how they are related, paternity, maternity, and if there are ecologically significant populations that need stronger conservation efforts. They have not mapped markers to a location on the bears' 74 chromosomes—42 for giant pandas and 52 for spectacled bears—or even a particular chromosome. And there is little interest in undertaking a bear genome project. The reason, says Proctor, who is now working on his Ph.D. at the University of Calgary, is that the emphasis and funding in bear biology is ecological in nature. "The immediate threats to bears are human conflict, habitat fragmentation and cars on the highway, rather than disease or even genetic isolation," he says. Proctor is studying the DNA of 900 grizzly bears in British Columbia. Using 16 markers for paternity, pedigree and inter-population analysis, he can look at individual bears, their parents and their offspring to get a picture of grizzly bear dispersal and movement. British Columbia has an estimated 10,000 to 13,000 grizzly bears that move along the mountain ranges. Highways running east to west cut through their habitat. With data gleaned from these DNA samples, Proctor hopes to learn how much the highways impact grizzly bears: How do grizzly bears move between geographic areas? Do they cross highways? Mountain ranges? "We're using DNA to ask questions about the present and the future," he says.
http://wildpro.twycrosszoo.org/000ADOBES/Bears/Bears_IUCN_ActionPlan/bearsAP_chapter3.pdf
When addressing the question of the hierarchial relationships of all members within the bear family, molecular analyses agree that the giant panda is the oldest bear species followed by the spectacled bear (Nash and O’Brien 1987; Wayne et al. 1989; Goldman et al. 1989; Zhang and Ryder 1993, 1994; Talbot and Shields in press b; Waits 1996). Thus far, the use of cytological (Nash and O’Brien 1987), immunological, DNA hybridization, and isozyme data (O’Brien et al. 1985; Goldman et al. 1987; Wayne et al. 1989) to reconstruct the hierarchical phylogenetic relationships of the six remaining bears (ursine bears) has produced inconclusive results with the exception of support for a close grouping of the brown bear and the polar bear. MtDNA sequence analyses (Zhang and Ryder 1993, 1994; Shields and Talbot in press; Waits 1996) have improved the resolution of the branching order of the ursine bears, but ambiguities still remain. The mtDNA gene trees have suggested that the sloth bear lineage was the first ursine bear lineage to emerge (Zhang and Ryder 1994; Waits 1996; Shields and Talbot in press). The branching order of the remaining species is unclear. The first mtDNA study suggested that the American black bear and the sun bear lineages diverged as sister taxa after the sloth bear lineage and before the Asiatic black bear lineage (Zhang and Ryder 1994). In a second study (Waits 1996), the branching order of the American black bear, sun bear, and Asiatic black bear lineages could not be statistically resolved (95% confidence interval) suggesting that these three species underwent a rapid radiation event. The third study (Talbot and Shields in press) suggested that the American black bear and Asiatic black bear diverged as sister taxa after the sloth bear lineage and before the sun bear lineage. At approximately the same time as the divergence of the American black bear, Asiatic black bear, and sun bear lineages, an ancestral lineage diverged that led to brown bear and polar bear lineages. The polar bear lineage emerged from within a cluster of brown bear lineages (Cronin et al. 1991b; Zhang and Ryder 1994; Waits 1996; Talbot and Shields in press a, b) as a sister group to brown bears from the Alaska islands of Admiralty, Baranof, and Chicagof (ABC islands). In contrast, results from a separate mtDNA sequence analysis (Zhang and Ryder 1993) suggested that the polar bear lineage was an ancient lineage that grouped with the spectacled bear lineage. In a more extensive analysis, Zhang and Ryder (1994) revealed that three polar bear lineages grouped with the brown bear and one polar bear lineage grouped with the spectacled bear. The authors suggest that the polar bear/brown bear grouping more accurately represents the true phylogeny of the polar bear. However, they also propose a recent hybridization event to account for the polar bear/spectacled bear relationship and suggest that future studies include additional polar bear samples.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674047822
The oldest discovered statue, fashioned some fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, is of a bear. The lion was not always king. From antiquity to the Middle Ages, the bear’s centrality in cults and mythologies left traces in European languages, literatures, and legends from the Slavic East to Celtic Britain. Historian Michel Pastoureau considers how this once venerated creature was deposed by the advent of Christianity and continued to sink lower in the symbolic bestiary before rising again in Pyrrhic triumph as a popular toy. The early Church was threatened by pagan legends of the bear’s power, among them a widespread belief that male bears were sexually attracted to women and would violate them, producing half-bear, half-human beings—invincible warriors who founded royal lines. Marked for death by the clergy, bears were massacred. During the Renaissance, the demonic prestige bears had been assigned in biblical allegory was lost to the goat, ass, bat, and owl, who were the devil’s new familiars, while the lion was crowned as the symbol of nobility. Once the undefeated champions of the Roman arena, prized in princely menageries, bears became entertainers in the marketplace, trained to perform humiliating tricks or muzzled and devoured by packs of dogs for the amusement of humans. By the early twentieth century, however, the bear would return from exile, making its way into the hearts of children everywhere as the teddy bear. This compelling history reminds us that men and bears have always been inseparable, united by a kinship that gradually moved from nature to culture—a bond that continues to this day.
http://www.rmoutlook.com/article/Grizzly...f-20170419
Grizzly bear warning in place after woman, dogs chased in Banff
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/edmon...-1.4478458
'Maintaining a large roadless area was critical to maintaining a large population of grizzly bears'
www.thevintagenews.com/2017/08/03/the-sankebetsu-brown-bear-incident-of-1915-was-the-worst-bear-attack-in-japanese-history/
The Sankebetsu brown bear incident of 1915 was the worst bear attack in Japanese history. Aug 3, 2017 Boban Docevski It was a cold winter in Sankebetsu Rokusen Sawa, which is some 18 miles inland from the west coast of Hokkaido Island. The year was 1915, and the world was at war. But in Japan, besides fighting Imperial Germany, the inhabitants of Sankebetsu Rokusen Sawa had a different kind of enemy: a huge Ussuri brown bear. The bear had woken early from its hibernation. Hungry and looking for food, it began a killing spree that would devastate many lives. Due to the meticulous Japanese records kept since that time, almost all the details of the events are known today. It all began on a mid-November morning when the brown bear appeared on the doorstep of the Ikeda family. This first encounter with the bear was scary but essentially harmless, as the bear took some corn and left shortly afterward. Although it was too early for a bear to wake up, meetings with wild animals weren’t uncommon in the area since it was a freshly settled community. Unfortunately, the bear appeared again on November 20. The head of the Ikeda family became concerned and called his son and some friends from the neighboring village for help. On November 30, they managed to shoot the bear but wounded it only and the animal managed to escape, leaving a trail of blood. They followed the trail to Mount Onishika, but they didn’t manage to catch up to it. Believing that it would not return again since it must have been deterred by the gunshot wound, the people put a stop to the search. Tragically, they were very wrong. The bear reappeared on the morning of December 9, this time at the home of the Ota family. Inside the house, Abe Mayu, the wife of the head of the Ota household, was babysitting a baby (which was not related to her) called Hasumi Mikio. The bear entered the house, attacked the baby, and killed it. A few seconds later, the bear took Mayu and dragged her out of the house. The scene was terrible; Mayu was later found by a search party and her remains were buried under a tree in the snow. The search party finally located the bear 150 meters into the forest. Five of the men shot at it, but only one bullet hit and the wounded bear managed to escape again. The village was in a panic as people feared that the enraged and hungry bear would return for more human flesh. Many armed villagers came to the house of the Ota family to keep guard and an additional 50 guards were deployed at the house of their neighbors, the Miyouke family. During the night, the bear appeared in the yard of the Ota family. One of the men took a shot at it, but missed. The guards from the neighboring homestead arrived to assist but by that time, the bear was gone. Nobody could have ever expected what was about to ensue. As well as the 50 guards that were posted in the yard of the Miyouke family household, there were also several women with their children inside, including Miyouke’s wife, Yayo. Now, with the guards dispatched to the other house, the women and children were left unprotected. The fleeing bear had managed to get past the guards unseen and got into the house of Miyouke. Inside, Yayo was preparing a meal while carrying one of her children on her back. When she heard noises outside she went to investigate, but it was too late, the bear was already in the house. Yayo tried to escape but her second son tripped her in the dark and she fell, and while she was on the ground, the bear attacked her and bit the child on her back. During this attack, there was only one guard left outside the house. When he heard the noise inside, he opened the door and the beast left Yayo and attacked him instead. While he attempted to defend himself, the bear struck him in the back. The bear continued with its killing spree and killed Yayo’s third son. Two more children and a pregnant woman were killed at the house that night. Yayo somehow managed to escape and alert the guardsmen who were returning from the unsuccessful hunt. She told them about the attack. There were still noises in the house, which was a sign that the bear was inside. The guardsmen recommended burning the house down, but this was rejected by Yayo, who was hoping that somebody might still be alive inside. The guards then divided themselves up into two parties: one at the back of the house and one at the front. When the bear appeared at the front door, the confused guards feared that somebody would die in the crossfire, and the bear managed to disappear into the night; this beast that had killed six people in only two days had escaped once again. Inside the house, the scene was horrible. Only two children survived the attack. When the head of the Miyouke household (who was traveling the night of the attack) found out about the tragedy, he decided to contact Yamamoto Heikichi, a professional bear hunter. When he explained the attack to him, Heikichi was convinced that the culprit was a bear called “Kesagake” (vaguely translated as “the diagonal slash from the shoulder”). According to him, this bear had previously killed three women. Heikichi, who had traded his gun for alcohol, refused Miyouke’s request for help, telling him that he wasn’t in the business anymore. Two days later, a government team of snipers was formed, which eventually, after some persuasion, included Yamamoto Heikichi. They were intent on hunting down and killing this bear that was terrorizing the region. On December 13, the bear Kesagake invaded the house of the Ota family yet again, taking all of their food reserves, then continuing on to ransacking a further eight houses before returning to the mountain. The search party now consisted of 60 men, together with Heikichi. That same night they managed to spot Kesagake and shot at it but once again, they failed to kill it. A small team lead by Yamamoto was assembled to follow the blood trail and foot prints of the wounded bear. Yamamoto, who knew Kesagake’s habits very well, managed to track it down under a Japanese oak tree. He decided to move with only one man accompanying him, and they got to a distance of within 20 meters of the bear when they fired. Yamamoto shot Kesagake directly in the heart, and with the next shot hit it in the head. The beast was finally dead. Kesagake was huge and when they measured it, it was 749 pounds and nearly 9 feet tall. Soon after these tragic events, Rokusen Sawa became a ghost town, as many of the villagers left in fear of more bear attacks. So what was the cause of this killing spree? Many people believe that the bear woke up early due to hunger, probably making it more aggressive. Another problem that was identified was the deforestation in the region, a process which brought bears and humans into close quarters. Deforestation also chases out the bears’ natural food source, leading them to search for food in human settlements. It is important to note that bears do not naturally hunt and kill humans. Although it is always tragic, they usually only attack if the humans are in the way of their food or a threat to their cubs.
From the archives of the magazine, "Outdoor Life" ( 119 year history ) "Bears By The Numbers"... containing the phrase:
Bear Attack... 1,811. Problem Bear... 3,135. Bear Gun... 6,013. Bear Spray... 773. Old Mose... 52. Also from Outdoor Life: In 2012, the Journal of Wildlife Management published a groundbreaking paper, "Efficacy of Firearms for Bear Deterrence in Alaska." Co-authors Tom Smith and Stephen Herrero analyzed public records, media accounts, and anecdotal information reaching back to 1883. The study examined 269 encounters between 357 bears ( brown, black, and polar ) and 444 humans, and concluded that people who used firearms for self-defense against bears "suffered the same injury rates in close encounters with bears whether they used their firearms or not." Now widely cited by back-country-area risk managers, wildlife biologists, and bear experts, the study further concluded that bear spray has a better success rate than firearms at neutralizing a bear encounter, and that spray is also less likely than firearms to cause collateral damage to humans or other animals.
I bought a hunting magazine from the grocery store yesterday; read the grizzly article today. When it is illegal to hunt grizzlies in some locations, there is always some place where hunters can go and kill a grizzly. As of now, it is the Yukon grizzlies and the barren ground grizzlies that will be targeted.
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