[Bernardo]

Rumi, more observations make sense when the conditions remain constant but in this case they are changing in non-random ways that make recent data much more valuable. For example the population of bears has increased significantly as have human bear interactions. Data from 30 years ago is probably worthless. But my back of the envelope calculations were a response to the assertion that humans are a magnitude more dangerous than grizzly bears. Even if we go with the grizzly kill rate 2/3s lower as suggested by the 30 year average, humans are not a magnitude more dangerous than bears. Asserting this just undermines credibility. Those are my only real points. The examples were meant to be thought provoking, not accurate predictions. I am all for not comparing bears to people. I am not for understating the objective danger posed by grizzlies.

[gb]

I am sure the current smoke presents a vastly greater danger - one that cannot be successfully managed.

[RumiDude]

[KekistaniProphet]

Grizzly reintroduction: Why in the hell would you kidnap bears from one place and drop them in another? Absolutely retarded, let them re-populate naturally like the wolves are doing.

[KekistaniProphet]

This guy could have had his face eaten

This guy has some massive balls

Here is what grizzly re-location will bring

[treeswarper]

[Chief Joseph]

Correction: lol again....back in Idaho and I was informed that the black bear attack on a jogger near Priest Lake was a hoax. The first one actually did happen.

[Schenk]

I got pretty close to a black bear while mountain biking up in N Idaho this weekend. I stopped as soon as I saw it and it stopped in the trail and turned around looked at me with one paw up, like a dog would do. We looked at each other for a couple minutes. At one point I thought it was going to amble up to me to say "HI". It was not a large bear so I raised my bike over my head and gave it my best guttural loud growl. The bear turned tail and ran. The bear was probably under 150 lbs but I still would not want it taking swipes and bites at me. It was real pretty and shiny black. very groovy to see it. There were huckleberries all around and plenty of bear "berry poops" on the trail.

[HitTheTrail]

I had lunch with my son-in-law at Milepost 111 in Cashmere today. He told me he and our daughter just did a quick one night trip up Buck Creek to summit Fortress. They got a late start after work and it started to rain and get dark about five miles up Buck Creek so they camped beside the trail(with their dog in the tent with them). The next morning the rain had obliterated all the tracks on the dusty trail except a bunch of real fresh cougar tracks around their tent.

[DIYSteve]

[Schenk]

There is one more problem with that comparison: The number of interactions and frequency of interactions. There are thousands of Human-Human interactions per second, if not more, in Chicago. Not so much in Grizzly territory

[DIYSteve]

Also, comparing 1-in-3600 (victims) vs. 1500 bears (potential assailants) is comparing apples v. belly buttons. As with all of the way-too-many bear fear threads on this board, it behooves one to revisit the issue of perceived fear vs. actual fear.

[RumiDude]

[Bernardo]

Welcome back DIYSteve. My back of the envelope calculation about the relative kill rate of grizzlies and people serves its purpose in demonstrating that people are not more dangerous than grizzly bears. Quite the opposite is true and to assert otherwise as some have done undermines the credibility of the argument in favor of grizzlies. Grizzlies are far, far more dangerous than people on a per encounter basis. My statistic works for me. It's actually quite elegant and cool, and I'll let it stand on its own without further explanation. The overall issue is not that there are too many bear attack fear threads. The issue is that people make all sorts of false statements about how little danger there is with grizzly bears. I'm all for a frank and fair statement of the facts, not a romanticized view or a fake view that glosses over risks that are acceptable to some, but not to others. Grizzlies are extraordinarily dangerous to the extent you have contact with them. The main reason there are not more attacks and deaths is because there aren't that many people - grizzly interactions. I don't know what the odds of an attack per encounter are, but they are higher than for any other animal in the wilderness with the possible exception of mosquitoes. If you encounter a grizzly, you stand a significant chance of attack and the attacks are not trivial. It is likely that your chances of an encounter are slight and therefore the joint probability of an encounter and an attack is very low. My point is to focus attention on the reality of the relatively high probability of the attack part per encounter. It would seem that a responsible reintroduction plan would break the joint probability down into its component parts so that each could develop a clearer picture of their own risk. Noticing the high probability of an attack per encounter, some might put a high value on lowering their encounter chance but still prefer more bears. Others might determine that their preferred activity leads to a relatively high probability of encounters and they might want few or no bears for that reason. We can't do much about the probability of an attack per encounter, but we can take measures to reduce encounters. The reintroduction plan doesn't provide estimates for any of these probabilities and just declares that the risks are low. If someone has numbers, let's seem 'em. Otherwise, we don't really know what the risks are and all we've got are back of the envelope calculations. Just for fun, I'll make up another statistic. If the grizzly bears in the lower 48 on average encounter 20 people per year, that would be 30,000 encounters per year and one fatal attack per 30,000 encounters. That's seems reasonable to me and not even that scary. We are not talking about a fatal attack every 2nd encounter unless of course your are near a cadaver and then the attack rate goes up to 100%. Now we can ask ourselves if there were 200 bears roaming around the Cascades how many grizzly-people encounters would there be per year? Divide that into 30,000 and we can say something about the frequency of fatal attacks assuming a constant attack rate per encounter. The first question to refine this would be would there be more or less encounters per bear in the Cascades? If we start with the base assumption that the rate would be the same then we get 30,000 / (200 * 20) = 7.5 years per grizzly caused fatality. Maybe that's a high number, maybe it's low. It's not zero. 1 in 30,000 seems like decent odds. Maybe we should reintroduce grizzlies? I'm not scared to go to Chicago either by the way. Anybody have better numbers? Maybe the average grizzly only encounters one person per year? That would change things!

[DIYSteve]

How do you define "encounter?"