Bears in Crosshairs

Seems to me like this is just another way for big tough macho guys to get to play with their guns. And do some killing too. Next they'll want to use automatic weapons ...

I'm a strong believer that guns should be kept out the hands of idiots: there ought t be an IQ test required to get a gun permit.

What Patrick Foy fails to understand is that there is no evidence that an increased bear hunt will reduce human bear conflicts. Such conflicts are reduced by human education. Removing attractants is the key to resolving bear conflicts. Shooting bears simply leaves a vacancy for another bear to fill.

What Doug Updike fails to understand is what makes a good ethical argument. Just because something has been done for a long time does not make it ethical. Too many examples to list here. Plus using the 80''s as a benchmark for population is deceptive since the bear population was at a all time low.

More bears means more people have a chance of seeing them - a majority of Californians would love to see a wild bear. Very few derive joy from terrorizing and killing them.

These new regulations are like throwing a welcome mat out to poachers looking for gallbladders to sell. Illegal trade and legal take/trade thrive together.

Maybe there needs to be an IQ test for posting opinions. Hunters contribute more money to the environment through hunting fees then you ever will by buying granola and birkenstocks.

Hunting is one thing and part of human nature and history for millennia and I support it and the true sportsmen and sportswomen who practice it in a sustainable manner. Shooting wolves from a plane or helicopter is a pathetic excuse for hunting, and putting a GPS on dogs, letting them do all the work and then sauntering up and shooting a bear in a tree is a pretty sorry example of "hunting". Hell I bet half of those fat assed "hunters" track down their GPS'd dogs on some kind of ORV. Almost as bad as golfers on golf carts calling their game a sport.

Someone at the CA DFG has a dark sense of humor - the draft environmental document named "2010_DED_BEAR" is here:

http://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ash...

Based on a quick scan of the document, it seems the DFG is saying the bear population is increasing and will be stable, even with the new proposal in place, so they're relaxing regulations to allow larger "takes". The doc also refers to previous debates about the ethics of using dog collars and rather brusquely states those issues will not be reviewed in the current doc.

In other words, based on the DED, it seems the CA DFG is mostly concerned with population numbers and not the means by which bears are hunted.

Personally, I think bear hunters who use dogs, GPS collars, and treeing switches (the collar's radio transmitter indicates when a dog has chased a bear up into a tree) might as well hunt in their dresses and panty hose.

Ok, let's think about this logically.

There is a high demand for the bears due to the healing properties of various bear parts. It sounds like people will always kill bears no matter what laws we make. If they ban it tomorrow, I guarantee there will be at least 2,000 bears killed this year again.

The solution is very simple. Allow people to own/farm bears. They can fence off several acres in the woods and build a fence around their property. Then the farmer can ensure that the bears have enough to eat in their environment. Some of their food may need to be brought in because they aren't allowing them to roam as far within their natural environment. The property owner will want the bear population on his land to flourish, because then they will have more bears to sell to the open market. This means the farmer won't kill them all, only the excess bears. Next thing you know, there will be thousands of bears around the state whose primary purpose is to feed the market's appetite, and then it will be less desirable to hunt bears out in the wild... At that point, the state owned land could have a "ban" on hunting bears, and they could "enforce" it, but the problems they will face will be minimal. Hunting bears on private property will be up to the owner of the property.

If anybody thinks that this method will lead to bears becoming extinct because the free market is "greedy" or some other similar ridiculous notion, just ask yourself, why aren't cows extinct?

Really good solution, loonpt, and on a par with many of your other insightful comments on modern life (http://www.independent.com/users/loonpt/)

Really, bear farming -- what could possibly go wrong?

Just in case mr. loonpt's idea gains traction, this could help:
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-f...

I'm once again disappointed at the DFG position. Maybe we should find another way of working this issue. Totally agree that GPS collared dog will make his no sport and will likely see an increase in poaching.

DFG is notoriously inaccurate and inappropriate in its recommendations -- which sound like shills for for the hunting industry.

For one, I like to see my bears ambling across the countryside, not its hide nailed to a wall.

Perhaps we have too many humans - not too many bears.

Using dogs to hunt is a practice that probably goes back to the stone age. But letting GPS-equipped dogs loose to find and corner an animal, and following them at your leisure is just plain lazy.

Allow the GPS, but require the bear to be killed by a single hunter with a spear no longer than 6 feet in length. No firearms for backup. Mano-a-Oso.

The plight of bears is similar to other animals driven to near extiction by ancient Chinese medicine. The distinction is this case is that the bear bile actually has medicinal properties, whereas millions of tigers and rhinos have been needlessly killed to make useless potions.

binky, all zoos farms bears in an un-natural habitat and many zoos are run by the state.

Why can't a private citizen farm bears, especially if that helps ensure survival of the species? Especially when they can give them room to roam and live as they would in the wild?

We've had bears on endangered species lists for decades, and look where all that has gotten us. You don't see cows on the endangered species list, that's for sure.