With suburban sprawl reaching into the foothills of the Cascade mountains, the previously natural habitat for black bears has been taken over by roads, houses, and people.
In 2008, state wildlife officials fielded 881 calls about bear sightings in King County alone, and sent officers out on 260 calls. That's up from the year before, when officers received 679 sightings and responded to 202 bear calls.This article in the Times talks about how a service dog is being used to chase these black bears away in their quest for food so that they learn to stay away from populated areas.
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There was an announcement over the town PA of a bear in one of the traffic tunnels through the hills around Kesennuma while I was in Japan. They say that happens every so often. It's kind of remarkable that bears still exist as a species in so many parts of the world. You'd almost assume that humans would have killed them off some centuries ago, like we killed off so many other large now-prehistoric predators. But I'm glad they're still around and I hope we can avoid causing them too much confusion and damage with our unfortunate sprawl.
it's safe to say Stephen Colbert won't be visiting Seattle any time soon...
I gave this post three stars, btw, because I thought it was rather lacking in context. For such a rare and exciting topic as huge omnivorous wildlife interacting with your fair city, it just could have been more informative or had some personal commentary.
But I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong.
I've never seen a bear here, alls I know is what the article I linked to told me. And of course I blame sprawl for exacerbating this problem but don't want to stay on that soapbox forever.
Sure, but this would have been a great time for Lesley to comment on her interest in protecting endangered species, for example. Or about the two of you commenting on whether you worry about encountering bears on your further-afield nature walks, for example.
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