I was planning on posting something tech related tonight, but I saw something on TV that irritated me enough to want to write about. I was watching a show on Discovery about rogue bears. I'm a big fan of the discovery channel, and enjoy many of their shows, but this show was pretty bad. The show was about bears. The host interviewed some "experts" who have studied bears as well as victims of attacks.
What really bugged me was the bad info that the experts provided about bears, as well as the message the show gives the general public. My main issue was that one of the experts that was interviewed was trying to dispute common ideas on how black bears interact with people, but he got the idea wrong in the first place, so his dispute doesn't even make sense. The common idea with black bears is, that when they find and consume human food, they will get used to it, they will continue to seek it out, and this behavior will cause the bears to closer interactions with humans, and increase the odds of a violent interaction with a human.
Bears need to store up calories for winter, human food has more calories than the bears normal diet, and so the bear will go after the human food because it's easier. Now the expert, is apparently doing research on if feeding bears directly will reduce violent interactions with bears. Yes, feeding them. The expert goes into detail how the common idea that I just laid out was false, then the show cuts to close up shots of the experts house where he is feeding the bears like a bunch of outdoor cats, and bears eating food out of the hosts hand and cuddling his feet.
What big fact did the expert and host leave out? That feeding bears is not natural. They are not supposed to be hand fed, they are wild animals. No matter if they are conditioned to eat food out of a trough somewhere, they are not predictable and very dangerous. All it will do is strengthen the bears association of food to humans, which will lead to violent encounters. To lower the amount of encounters, humans need to keep their distance from bears, and do whatever they can to keep bears out of their food. Once bears realize there isn't an opportunity for food, they will stop trying to get it and go back to what they do naturally. This is why just about every wildlife area and campground have strict bear management policies to prevent the association from happening. It's safer for people, and it's more natural for bears. Organizations like the Discovery channel should be helping people understand this idea, not giving sketchy ideas publicity.
The show moved into talking of Grizzly bears, and the main point was the host learning about how to handle them, and go to Alaska to get "up close" to wild grizzlies. Haven't we heard this story before? There's even a great clip of the host meeting a stage bear, a grizzly trained to be around people for movies and TV shows, and the host says something along the lines of "Spending time with this bear, will help me learn how to deal with wild grizzlies". Sure buddy.
What irritates me about these kind of shows is they don't stress enough the danger of getting close to these animals, sometimes is unavoidable, especially with humans moving into bear habitats, but the media should be teaching people how to conduct themselves, not giving publicity to every cameraman or host trying to get as close as they can to the big bad animal for the great shot. People aren't going to take the management policies seriously when their head is filled with bad info from the media.
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