Urban Bears?

[urbpan]

Black bear sighted in Concord, Mass.

The link above takes you to a Boston Globe story (very short) about the bear sighting. "Since this Spring, there have been four bear sightings in Concord." Possibly the same bear, or family of bears, I suppose. Concord is about twenty miles out of Boston, but the article describes it as "Greater Boston."

I have posted before on my feelings about urban bears. Long story short: I hope we can learn to live with them, cause they ain't goin' anywhere (their population is increasing, from low post-colonial numbers) and we're spreading into their neighborhoods.

Comments

[rumorofrain.livejournal.com]

Heh - I heard on the radio this morning that there was a bear in downtown Northampton yesterday. This is noteworthy because it's sidewalk sale madness, so there are a squillion people downtown. I was still 75% asleep when I heard it, so I don't know any details.

[krchicken.livejournal.com]

the problem that i see is that they are smarter than some humans. i wish that the last article that you linked to said more about how people were actually coexisting with bears, and i can't seem to find out where hemlock farms, pa is...

when i lived in a state park(north central Pa), those of us who lived there learned to keep our trash cans inside, raise the suet another foot and a half (the buddy bear prints on the back of the house were pretty cool) and when the bear came to our picnic, we let her have what we couldn't run off with quickly..

the problem is that the bear happily fed herself and her 4 cubs off of all the trash/open food left out by the campers despite many warnings about the bears. In parks like yosemite the bears have learned that cars are good places for more of this yummy human trash, and i've seen an entire passenger seat ripped from a car.

i'm not sure how we can coexist with a creature smart and strong enough to damage property in order to get what they want(food). i suppose that they are lazy enough to be happy with trash cans, but that makes a huge mess as they drag stuff around.. i love the bears, it was nice seeing them around, but i don't see how they can exist in an urban setting without causing a lot of mess.

it makes me sad that the bears were shot, hitting them with tranquilizers and moving them sometimes works (admittedly not into an area already over populated with bears) sometimes they have developed such a strong desire for human foon they will walk ridiculous distances to get back- our momma bear and all 4 cubs made the trek 3 times that summer..

i'm posting this without spell checking, hope its legible, but i gotta get to work..

[dragonwrites.livejournal.com]

bears and coyotes both. if we can't figure out a way to share the planet with the few remaining big(gish) mammals left, we're certainly not going to be able to keep our own species healthy.

it's the nimby, shoot-em-if-they-come-around-here folks who scare me. act like we're the only ones on the planet and soon enough we'll be the only ones on the planet. (i just read the scariest article in last month's smithsonian about nitrogen-fixing chemistry and rampant corn production/monoculture--maybe it's too late already.)

[corivax.livejournal.com]

Police had to taser a bear wandering around near the University of Washington campus here a couple weeks ago. That's well within city limits of Seattle.

[bloolark.livejournal.com]

There are SO many bears here. We saw one in a large urban forest/park thing about 3 miles from my house -- Charlotte thought it was really something. :) She sniffed the area for what seemed like a week.

There's also a lot of discussion on how we can make people best learn to live with bears. The answer so far seems to be 'not so good'. A lot of the laws they're attempting to come up with are kind of ridiculous (such as, you can only set your trash out on the curb between 5 am and 7 am on trash day or you'll receive a giant fine -- no discussion of bear proof trashcans, which would be an intelligent move).

We'll have to figure it out though.

[drocera.livejournal.com]

I found a bear on my backporch a couple summers ago, going through my recycling!

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Trying to get enough cans together to buy a forty ounce, no doubt.

bear in northampton

[(Anonymous)]

I was sitting in my backyard tonight and a large black bear walked between my house and my neighbors. fortunately we got inside first. but we live on a very residential street. the bear looked right at us about 10 feet away and continued to walk forward. fortunately it had scared a cat which ran by and alerted us something was up... are the bears here to stay?

Re: bear in northampton

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I certainly hope so!