Forum Index > Trail Talk > Fatal Black Bear Attack in Alaska (corrected)
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Randito
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Randito
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PostThu Sep 14, 2017 8:50 pm 
KekistaniProphet wrote:
Either way bluff or not, I'm going to shoot the bear in the face
Words of someone with no actual experience with bears in the wild or much in the way of practical firearm experience. Probably thinks a .45 caliber sidearm is an adequate weapon again a bear and they could actually draw their weapon aim and fire accurately with a bear charging them at 35mph. Shooting beer cans off a fence is in no way sufficient preparation and neither is deer hunting experience. Someone who has served foot patrol duty in Afghanistan or Iraq would have the skills / training.
NPS Denali report wrote:
The man, who was in the lead, drew a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol when they heard a noise coming from the brush. When the bear emerged from the thicket and ran toward the other hiker, he fired approximately nine rounds in its general direction. The bear stopped, turned, and walked back into the brush, where it quickly disappeared from view"

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Bernardo
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PostThu Sep 14, 2017 9:08 pm 
An encounter is a meeting of a bear and a person or group on foot, bike, or horse in a wilderness setting where the bear sees or smells the person or persons.

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DIYSteve
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PostThu Sep 14, 2017 9:18 pm 
Okay, so under your definition, an encounter occurs each time a grizzly bear sees or smells a human. I think your 30,000 number is way too low. And why the standard "more dangerous per encounter?" That's an incomplete risk analysis. A valid complete risk analysis necessarily considers the frequency of exposure to the subject risk as well as the gravity of the subject risk. Anyway, if one is so afraid of grizzlies, one can completely eliminate the risk by avoiding grizzly country, which is very easy to do. It's not so easy to avoid other humans.

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Randito
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Randito
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PostThu Sep 14, 2017 11:14 pm 
Bernardo wrote:
An encounter is a meeting of a bear and a person or group on foot, bike, or horse in a wilderness setting where the bear sees or smells the person or persons.
I think there is a flaw in your definition. I think it is when humans become aware of a bear (or bears) presence. The definition you describe would be a bear's "human encounter. There are plenty of times humans are aware of a bear's presence, but the bear is unaware of the humans and vice versa. Then there are the interactions where both the bear and humans are aware of each other -- those are the ones where trouble can occur.

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Chief Joseph
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PostThu Sep 14, 2017 11:28 pm 
Not worried about da Bears...Da Bears haven't done squat since 1985 when Mike Ditka was Head Coach. They are pushovers.

Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
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Bernardo
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PostFri Sep 15, 2017 4:43 am 
RandyHiker, yes we are interested in the number of times a bear encounters a human. That's a subset of all encounters which we could call a potential attack encounter (PAE). I guessed it's 20 per year per grizzly, and DIYSteve thinks it's much more. How often when a grizzly encounters a human does it attack and kill the human? Seems like an question that anyone suggesting reintroduction should look into.

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Randito
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Randito
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PostFri Sep 15, 2017 6:50 am 
Bernardo wrote:
RandyHiker, yes we are interested in the number of times a bear encounters a human. That's a subset of all encounters which we could call a potential attack encounter (PAE). I guessed it's 20 per year per grizzly, and DIYSteve thinks it's much more. How often when a grizzly encounters a human does it attack and kill the human? Seems like an question that anyone suggesting reintroduction should look into.
Sure, the tricky part about that definition is how can it be measured?

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RumiDude
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PostFri Sep 15, 2017 1:28 pm 
All this hand wringing over definition of encounters and such is simply the wrong approach. It also sidetracks from the assessment of risk. Grizzly bears are powerful creatures which can easily kill or severely injure a human being. The question for us is , what is the risk (or likelihood) of being killed or severely injured by a grizzly bear. The answer is quite low. THAT is the simple undeniable truth. Whether or not the risk is increasing, decreasing, or remaining relatively stable is another debate. Regardless, the risk remains low, especially compared to other risks. I understand why opponents of grizzly reintroduction in the NC cloud the picture with all their suppositions and back of the envelope calculations. Assessing risk for each individual is admittedly relative depending on that individual's activity. Regardless, the risk of being killed by a grizzly bear remains low. Rumi

"This is my Indian summer ... I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all."
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pcg
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PostFri Sep 15, 2017 2:27 pm 
Well "low" is a relative term, of course. What is undeniable is that the risk of a grizzly bear attack in the NC will rise considerably if 200 grizzly bears are trapped somewhere else and transported and released in the NC. How can anyone deny that? This is not a natural reintroduction and it seems obvious to me that some level of "shock" to the ecosystem (to the bear itself and to whatever it interacts with) will occur. Why is this even considered necessary? To attempt to "restore" the NC back to a previous time? I think it best to let nature "restore" herself by leaving her alone.

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RumiDude
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PostFri Sep 15, 2017 2:53 pm 
pcg wrote:
Well "low" is a relative term, of course. What is undeniable is that the risk of a grizzly bear attack in the NC will rise considerably if 200 grizzly bears are trapped somewhere else and transported and released in the NC.
Well "considerably" is a relative term as well. So the risk will rise is undeniable. Exactly how much it will rise is unclear. I maintain that the risk is still low, relatively speaking compared to other risks of backcountry/wilderness recreation.
pcg wrote:
This is not a natural reintroduction
It wasn't a natural extirpation either. There are some species which adapt easily to environmental changes. Raccoons, coyotes, deer, and others adapt well. Others like grizzly don't. The largest factor on the extirpation of grizzly bears has been human activities, mainly hunting and habitat loss. Rumi

"This is my Indian summer ... I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all."
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Randito
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PostFri Sep 15, 2017 11:22 pm 
There are roughly 75 motorcycle fatalities each year in Washington , maybe we should ban those and let the bears come back. Seriously even if Grizz are reintroduced and end up killing some people it's bound to be less than the number people that die in hunting accidents in the state.

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pcg
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PostFri Sep 15, 2017 11:37 pm 
RandyHiker wrote:
There are roughly 75 motorcycle fatalities each year in Washington , maybe we should ban those and let the bears come back.
If motorcycles attacked and killed people we would probably ban them. As it is, I'm not too concerned about being attacked by a motorcycle while walking or driving in their presence.
RandyHiker wrote:
if Grizz are reintroduced and end up killing some people it's bound to be less than the number people that die in hunting accidents in the state.
Oh, so that makes it OK? I'm not opposed to the presence of grizzly bears in the North Cascades. They evidently are already there in very small numbers. And I'm not opposed to 200 more of them showing up, as long as they are allowed to do it on their terms, on their own, as they see fit. Nature is pretty good at managing and repairing herself. Let's not interfere again.

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Randito
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PostSat Sep 16, 2017 7:03 am 
I'm just saying that getting all worked up about the tiny risk of a grizz attack as an reason to oppose reintroduction is not rational, given the far more deadly risks we accept as routine. Motorcycles is one and there are other very preventable deaths that as a society we allow very routinely, but that topic would get the thread locked.

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pcg
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PostSat Sep 16, 2017 8:01 am 
I don't accept the deadly risk of riding motorcycles. I stopped doing that when I became a father. If others want to do that, that's their business. You've employed a not so good analogy, but I get your point. My point is that the risk of a grizzly bear attack in the North Cascades now is, for all practical purposes, zero. If you introduce 200 bears over a period of time, you raise the risk to something that now will give everyone pause before venturing into remote parts of the region. You've changed the character of the region to something that is NOT like it used to be before they were hunted out, is not natural, and is not like what it would become if those bears were allowed to come back on their own terms over time. I believe that this will result in more people being killed or injured, over time, than would happen if this were to occur naturally. Why is this necessary? Why shock the system?

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PostSat Sep 16, 2017 8:36 am 
pcg wrote:
Why is this necessary? Why shock the system?
Are those rhetorical questions? If not, the answers should be obvious: because of nutballs who insist that the "reintroduction of apex predators" (wolves and grizzly bears) is a panacea for all that is "wrong" with ecosystems, and they will argue that point at the exclusion of all that is reasonable and logical, the fact that no actual benefit has so far been gained by these efforts notwithstanding.

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