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And where is the proof of this? I live in Florida, and there are thousands of sanctuaries. A guy down the street from me has a sanctuary for old circus lions and tigers, and I'm sure he would have found a place for the bear. Sorry, not buying this excuse. Sounds like the park management in Oregon is just heartless and likes to kill first and ask questions later.
They should have trapped it, kept it in a zoo and spread the word that the bear was available for a sanctuary for at least a month. If no one comes forward, then put it to sleep. But, I can't buy that they had no options. It's all BS.
There are regulations concerning who and where these animals can be released, and some guy in Florida down the street from you may not be eligible. Replicating black bear habitat isn't easy, and I seriously doubt the there are "thousands of sanctuaries" in Florida that are licensed to take black bears. Animals sanctuaries are not "one size fits all" organizations.
You're welcome to do your own research on sanctuaries in the U.S. that can take bears. There's plenty of "proof" out there. Most zoos won't take them either. When this does happen, it's almost always with cubs. This is happening more and more, and resources aren't that plentiful.
You sound pretty angry, but you're angry at the wrong people. This is on the people who persist in feeding these animals for the purpose of vanity selfies and not the authorities who have to deal with the damage they cause. If these people had either hearts or brains, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
Last edited by Metlakatla; 06-17-2019 at 08:20 PM..
I put the agency that killed the poor bear at blame rather than the guy that took the selfie with it. Most of the people in the comments below the article feel the same way as I do. So now we kill a bear for being friendly, rather than being aggressive. Kill, kill, kill, that is all they know. RIP friendly bear. This was not necessary!!
SMH. Typical Disney movie mentality. It's quite sad that most of the people in the comments feel the same way you do about it, because that's just going to result in more of these types of situations. Bears aren't cute little kitties and puppies, sorry. They're wild animals. Seems like a no-brainer to leave them alone for their own good, but I guess some people consider their selfies more important than anything else.
Go listen to the last audio of Timmy Treadwell's existence and get back to me on that friendly bear thing.
Warning — highly disturbing audio of an idiot being killed by a friendly bear.
Well, what do you expect from people who are raised on Disney movies? That bizarre thread of a few months ago when certain posters were insisting that a female bear protected a lost human kid during the middle of winter (one of them actually used a video of a ducky and a kitty bonding as "proof" for her assertions) just shows how ignorant most people are about wildlife.
Once bears make the association between human habitat and easy meals, that association doesn't suddenly go away once they're relocated. I know some people will say that the answer is to get them deep into the wilderness, but that kind of deep wilderness doesn't exist anymore.
I hope that any armchair wildlife biologists will actually read this before commenting that Oregon should have relocated the bear.
It seems possible that it could have been relocated to a zoological park. Not in Eugene, though. The PC crowd closed down our two small zoos many years ago and the bears and birds were sent away to a less sensitive community.
SMH. Typical Disney movie mentality. It's quite sad that most of the people in the comments feel the same way you do about it, because that's just going to result in more of these types of situations. Bears aren't cute little kitties and puppies, sorry. They're wild animals. Seems like a no-brainer to leave them alone for their own good, but I guess some people consider their selfies more important than anything else.
Go listen to the last audio of Timmy Treadwell's existence and get back to me on that friendly bear thing.
Warning — highly disturbing audio of an idiot being killed by a friendly bear.
Mr. Treadwell got up and close to brown grizzly bears for many years before he was attacked. He was attacked by an aggressive grizzly bear, not a friendly black bear. An aggressive bear that killed someone has to be killed which is understandable. This was not justified. We are not god and have no right to kill an animal because it is too friendly to humans. Read the comments below the article. Lots of good points are made.
Katie, there is no such thing as a "friendly bear," whether it's a grizzly or a black bear, and although the two do have some differences, they're more similar than different. The same thing would have happened to Treadwell had he been living with black bears. Maybe sooner.
I know that you think I'm somehow advocating for the death of the bear; but that's not it. I'm saying that this is what happens when these animals become acclimated to humans and learn to associate them with food sources; that's just the reality whether you or anyone else likes it.
I have homes in both Alaska in Oregon, and just a few days ago, a "friendly black bear" was on my porch in Oregon. Instead of running out to get a selfie with her, I scared her away with a broom — because that was the best thing for her. Several cubs were recently killed in my neighborhood because people were feeding them. I see them every day at my home in Alaska. I learned how to live in harmony with bears and other wild things at a young age, and the first thing anyone learns is that these are not pets.
It really doesn't seem too much to ask that other people practice a little common sense in order to help keep these animals from being killed. I can't imagine a selfie being this important, and the sense of entitlement is absolutely unreal. These types of situations happen way more than you think, and the great majority of them could be easily avoided. As far as the comments you mention, the one that made the most sense was this one:
Quote:
TOO bad that the bear had to be put down. What should
be done in the future is to give very stiff penalties to the
bleeding heart twits that feed the wild animals.
Many of the other comments were just rambling ignorant nonsense from people who've probably never even lived around wildlife.
Last edited by Metlakatla; 06-18-2019 at 02:17 AM..
So now we kill a bear for being friendly, rather than being aggressive.
Black bears who are fed by humans may start out friendly, but the vast majority of them don’t stay that way. “Please won’t you share your food with me?” eventually turns into “Hand ALL your food over RIGHT NOW, puny human, or else!” And woe unto the human who either has no food to share, or who refuses to part with all of it.
Before Yosemite began requiring the use of bear-proof canisters, the black bears there would just brazenly walk into a camp and tear the tents open in search of food. They tore the doors and trunk lids off of cars to get inside them in search of food. And worst of all, they deliberately charged hikers in order to scare the hikers into dropping their backpacks (in order to run faster), and then tear the packs open to get the food inside. (They also knew how to defeat bear hangs, so hanging the food didn’t work.). Now that everyone is required to use bear cans, that nonsense has stopped, and the bears are back to leaving people alone.
The blame for that bear’s death lies 100% on the people who were feeding it (and unwittingly creating a monster in the process).
There are plenty of reasons to avoid encouraging raccoons to hang around. I'm not "scared" of them, but I will NOT willingly have them on my property. That kitten you were feeding could have, and perhaps did, die a horrible death because of the cute, friendly raccoons. A lot of people realize this, and that's the reason they'd call animal control. I'm with them.
Its the animal world, it is dog eat dog or racoon eat kitten in this case. That is why we developed civilization because its hard to survive out there in the wild.
But these people feeding bears like they are at the petting zoo are unbelievable. I used to do a lot of hiking and encountered bears a couple of times in the distance. I grew up understanding the last thing you want to do is encourage them to get closer, for both your and their benefit.
Uh, roundworm is very common in cats — and dogs. So no, it isn't rare, and most cats probably get them via secondary transmissions such as exposure to another infected animal in the home (cats may have an instinctual avoidance of feces; dogs don't). Common houseflies often bring them inside, and indoor cats are known to "hunt" houseflies. Outdoor cats may eat birds and rodents infected with them. Florida notwithstanding, it's a valid concern.
I don't know if your being obtuse, not reading my post in its entirety or if your just stuck in the "I just want to be right mentality." No matter the reason, your completely incorrect. This entire time we have been talking about a SPECIFIC type of roundworm transmission scenario starting in raccoons. When I pointed out how rare that SPECIFIC transmission method is with an actual comprehensive study by the NCBI you simply just responded with "roundworms are common in cats." I fail to understand what that statement has to do with what we are talking about.
Of course roundworms are common in cats. I never said they weren't. But there are different types of roundworm's a cat can get. Some can migrate much easier into a cat based on specific factors. For example, the fly you used as an example above carries the ascarsis roundworm. That type is easily transmitted to cats. The specific roundworm we have been discussing this entire time is not that easily transmitted. By the way, none of the links you posted thus far have comprehensive information on raccoon roundworm nor do they give any scientific data to disprove anything I have mentioned regarding the the transmission probabilities in cats. I suspect that you did not read the link to the NCBI study I included.
Either way I'm done with this discussion. Whether or not you objectively look at this disease and understand what I was talking about won't change my life or your life in any shape or form. Besides, the whole reason we began discussing this subject is because you stated that the kitten in my story probably died a horrible death from raccoon roundworm. I think I have established that was clearly not the case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Surfer Guy
Leave wild animals alone, period, regardless of whether or not they appear to be in distress. In fact, if an animal is in distress, get the heck out of the area as soon as possible.
A wounded animal can be very dangerous.
Your correct that a distressed/injured animal can be very dangerous. And that's good advice if your trying to minimize any danger to yourself. However, if some people are willing to help despite the danger because its something they believe in. I wouldn't approach a full grown distressed bear to help it. But if I see a bird with a broken wing, a deer with its antlers stuck in a fence or a dog that's been chained up/abandoned I'm going to help. I'm willing to take the risk of injury. If we all only took actions that minimized personal injury to ourselves, our species would not have progressed as far as we have.
Last edited by griffon652; 06-18-2019 at 07:34 AM..
To be fair it could have also been a case of very uneducated people. They probably didn't realize the repercussions of their action. The public really should be taught one golden rule regarding wild animals: Unless a wild animal is in some sort of obvious distress LEAVE THEM ALONE.
A few years ago we saw this kitten hanging out near our front door. He wouldn't let us get close to him so we couldn't catch him to get him a home. So we started leaving out cat food near our front door everyday. About 2 weeks in, we noticed a mama racoon and babies eating the food! We stopped leaving food out immediately. Not because we were afraid of the racoon. In fact, we would have loved to have kept feeding the racoon. But I'm not stupid. Just like the bear, those raccoons would start associating humans with food. Then all it would take is one scared neighbor of mine calling animal services and next thing you know the poor friendly racoon and babies would be brutally put down.
This is one thing that I can't give ignorance a pass as an excuse. I was exposed to how dangerous wild animals can be at an early age and putting out food for them, especially predators being a VERY bad idea is just common sense. Oh I watched Disney stuff as a kid. Charlie the Lonesome Cougar and such. They were funny and entertaining but never did I take them to heart.
Here where I live now there is a recently built housing development that is mostly populated by city transplants from CA. This town buts right up to wildlife habitat and seeing deer, coyotes, badgers, skunks porcupines and such in town is not uncommon. In this new development people there thought this is just to cool (which it is to a point) and they started putting out food for the coyotes. Thinking they are "helping."
Animal control and the Dept of Wildlife put serious warnings out in the area when a savvy local reported this going on but people didn't listen at first until citations started getting issued but by then it was to late.When the food stopped coming the yotes took to raiding garbage and picking off small domestic pets.Then the same people who caused the current problem were all upset and filing complaints.
Other animals like skunks and raccoons had also gotten used to the food and create their own issues. Mostly destroying garbage cans and making messes but the yotes just adapted to the next easiest food source. The people try to run them off but they have lost fear of people. They may trot off but they WILL be back. Wile E is not what you would call a good neighbor.
We also have a decent population of bears but so far no issue there. Reno has been having some bear issues though. NDOW now has some plans in the works for the yote problem and yes they involve shooting the critters. Reestablishing the fear of people. Its bout the only way to get the critters attention and its not like they are exactly an endangered species. Fact is that there are more yotes now than there were a hundred years ago because they thrive around people.
Feeding wild predators like bears, yotes whatever is just begging for serious problems. The level of ignorance and plain stupidity out there about wildlife is truly appalling.
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RIP friendly bear. This was not necessary!!
