Please Don't Feed Me to the Bears

Donna Munson set out to help the friendly bears around her remote home in Colorado. Feeding them and taking care of them she probably felt they would appreciate her kindness. Unfortunately, bears are wild animals and her generosity proved fatal when a 400 pound Black Bear killed and started to consume her.

Unlike humans, animals lacking our cerebral cortex have simpler means of thinking about things. Mostly there is little thinking at all. Feed an animal, it associates you with food. This is true for your Beta Fish in your aquarium or for a powerful predator like these bears.

Mrs Munson's actions, certainly proved dangerous to herself, they also pose a menace for anyone that might come across one of her hungry bears. Last week, I was hiking in Norther NJ, by myself and I was told to be on the lookout for another 400 pound bear that was seen nearby. Armed only with my telephoto lens off I went, hoping for a shot at long distance. Normally, black bears are shy and will retreat when humans are around. Their sharp noses and our noisy habits usually give away our presence long before we get to spot them. However, if someone like Mrs Munson was around making them used to humans giving them food, this bear may have sought me out, attacked me and ripped out my liver and ate it.

Mrs Munson's actions have also been a disaster for her bears. Two of them have now been shot dead.

It seems wherever humans go they have this innate need to feed wild animals whatever the repercussions. Many of these people seem to believe these animals are like the ones seen in Disney pictures and need our help. In Monterey California I have seen them feeding prairie dogs whole twizzlers. Can an animal that small survive after eating a twizzler? In NJ we have dozens of people trekking up to the local parks to feed deer, geese and wild turkeys. Since NJ has a large bear problem, hopefully there no Mrs Munson's around feeding them.

Here is an example of the activity around a 200 acre park in NJ where every day dozens of people trek up to feed the wildlife. This wildlife has exploded with unexpected repercussions for the park and the other animals that inhabit it.



Every day or so a bread truck dumps hundred of pounds of bread to feed the deer. This has helped the population in this small park to balloon to over 200 deer. This number is unsustainable and is sustained by people feeding them and by the deer foraging in people's backyards destroying their shrubs and plants.



As you can see above, the park itself is rather strange, no vegetation exists below four feet of the ground. In fact deer have eliminated the habitat for birds, toads, frogs, salamanders and many other creatures. The wild flowers and orchids that formerly existed on the forest floor have all been eaten. Where are the wild blueberries?

All this concentrated feeding has invited another menace - disease. Normally, deer don't feed at communal feeding troughs, swapping spit and assorted viruses and bacteria. Out west hunters bait stations have helped the deer version of Mad Cow disease to propagate. With no predators, these deer are only limited by the cars that hit them on the road, which is almost a daily occurrence.

Idiots that feed wild animals need to stopped, whether by being lectured or fined. No, these are not Bambi and Yogi bear - they are wild animals and should be treated as such. And, most importantly, lacking any predators to control the population a well devised hunt is necessary to cull the herds to sustainable levels.

And, please don't feed me to the bears.