Bears in the Backyard

The last time I tuned in on Lily, the black bear with a webcam outside her den, a bunch of balsam boughs were blocking the view of her. The time before that, she appeared as a sort of dark blob. But you know what? That’s not stopping me from looking in on her, and plenty of other people feel the same way.

Lily is an Internet sensation, as thousands of people around the world are hoping to witness her giving birth to cubs.

You can check out Lily at Wildearth.tv, or you can read any of the scores of articles being written about her, including a recent one from the Telegraph. Dr. Lynn Rogers, the well-known bear researcher who is working on the den-cam project, is apparently hoping the cameras will change people’s views of bears.

“The public has a very negative feel about bears, but a bear like Lily can help turn that around,” he told the Telegraph. ”They are feared, but the perception of them being fearful creatures is built by media and myth.”

A 700-pound black bear is reportedly breaking into Lake Tahoe homes, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

A gigantic, bullet-scarred black bear with a hankering for human food and a knack for breaking and entering has been terrorizing homeowners on the north shore of Lake Tahoe and deftly outmaneuvering gun-toting rangers, bear dogs and traps.

I’ve read about bears breaking into homes, but this one, well, must be setting records:

Wildlife officials have tried everything, but the food junkie apparently knows a bear trap when he sees one, shakes off bullets like they were mosquito bites, and keeps coming back for more. ”He’s busted into probably 40 or 50 homes,” said Carl Lackey, a bear biologist for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

A Q&A in Backpacker magazine answers a reader’s question about what to do in the case of aggressive behavior from a mother bear.

The question came from Joe Whittle, whose bear encounter was recounted at his blog.

Here’s the gist of the advice:

Mother black bears rarely respond like mother grizzlies, which have a strong maternal protection instinct and likely would’ve attacked you in response to aggressive tactics in such a close encounter. Instead, black bears typically snort, stamp their feet, and bluff charge in an effort to scare you away—all of which you witnessed—but rarely attack. A return aggressive display on your part, followed by a calm exit, both reinforces a negative association with humans and allows both parties to escape without contact.

Fred J. Aun, writing in The Star-Ledger, states the obvious: The election of Republican Chris Christie as governor makes a bear hunt a lot more likely. Gov. Jon Corzine opposed the hunt, and Christie seems a lot more conciliatory toward hunters. Aun says a restored bear hunt “would be a big deal mainly because the bear hunt, more than any other issue, brought to the fore the divide in New Jersey between pro-hunting-and-fishing wildlife conservationists and the anti-hunting (and, sometimes, anti-fishing) animal-rights contingent.”

But hold on a minute here… Is this really an accurate portrayal of things? That the hunters are “wildlife conservationists” and those against bear hunting are simply an “animal-rights contingent”? The return of bears to New Jersey is an amazing story, and it didn’t happen because of hunting; it happened, in part, because of a lack of hunting. Sure, the story is far more complex than that, but plenty of people, myself included, remain wary of the idea of a bear hunt in New Jersey. And being wary of a bear hunt doesn’t mean we’re part of any anti-hunting contingent.