I was staggered by Lynn Rogers' relationship with "his" bears - this is research at the very sharpest bit of the cutting edge.
A delightful and informative programme. I was also affected by the hunting bits - it does seem awful that a habituated bear can be hunted, but it seems more awful that the laws are so readily flouted, frankly.
I note that the bears hunted are often (always?) eaten as well as being trophies and what I don't doubt are very comfortable rugs. I don't know how controlled hunting is - whether there are quotas set and enforced and so on, or if its just open season mayhem.
Without all the facts I am reluctant to judge too harshly.
John
Lovely programme and obviously we all felt the hunting parts were a little uncomfortable.
However as Llyn Rogers mentioned several times hunting is part of the culture in those parts and I don't think its coincidental that hunting exists and large areas are reserved for wildlife. The hunting culture and support for large areas of parks and undisturbed nature go hand in hand. I don't know the situation in Minnesota but I suspect as its a liberal state full of ex Swedes its pretty well regulated.
The link below goes into quite a lot of detail on bear hunting in California
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/wildlife/hunting/bear/mgmtandharvest.html
and I'd be surprised if its dramatically different in Minnesota. To buy a bear tag allowing you to hunt one bear per year will cost $40 and the season stops when 1700 are taken.
I wonder if its also a coincidence that of the three yearling bears that he habituated to human prescence 2 out of three ended up dead, if he hadn't would that large a percentage have been hunted.
I'm also not quite so sure that bears in all circumstances are quite so forgiving as the footage on the programme suggests, I'm sure thats true of the vast vast majority but its also fact that attacks do happen and people do die even if very rarely
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America
and many of those are cases where people put themselves in the way. But I wonder how someone would feel if as happened in Utah in 2007 a 11 yr boy was dragged from the family tent and killed. It seems that unlike Brown bears the attacks by Black bears whilst vanishingly rare are often predatory in nature rather than as a by product of protecting the cubs or kill, in other words they think your supper. It may be some enterprising male bear finds that hunting elk/moose calves is not so hard and very occasionally on seeing a two legged elk calf (human) has a go with disastrous consequences for all concerned.
I wonder if in this country we had such animals still wandering about whether we would be so forgiving, given the uproar about having a token wolf re-introduction in the Highlands or even beavers for that matter.
Lovely programme and hope there are many more gems as this in the new natural world series.
