Here's a short list of recent "fun times" with bears and at the end a very interesting article. As a NJ resident I would just like to thank our Governor now for banning the bear hunt.
http://www.njherald.com/307207592292689.php Tuesday, August 2, 2005
By LYNN OLANOFF
Herald Staff Writer
MONTAGUE — A bear bit a sleeping camper and tried to drag him away from a shelter along the Appalachian Trail at High Point State Park last month, state officials said Monday. The bear was killed Friday after becoming ensnared in a trap at the same campsite, officials said.
The male camper, whose name has not been released, was sleeping with a group around 6:30 a.m. on July 13 at the Mashipacong Shelter when the bear bit him on the leg and attempted to drag both him and his sleeping bag, said Karen Hershey, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The bear left "marks" on the camper, Hershey said, but would not release details of his injuries Monday.
State officials learned of the incident from a High Point State Park ranger on July 21, Hershey said. The spokeswoman said the late notification combined with a weeklong investigation into the incident was the reason for delayed public notification.
The State Division of Fish and Wildlife set a trap for the bear Wednesday at the shelter, the campsite on the Appalachian Trail in Montague where the July 13 incident occurred, Hershey said. The shelter is near Deckertown Turnpike in the southeast corner of the park close to the Wantage border.
The 152-pound, 5-year-old female bear caught in the trap Friday was later identified as the same bear who bit the camper, Hershey said. She did not say how the bear was identified.
"The Division (of Fish and Wildlife) was confident it caught the offending bear," she said.
DEP Press Director Elaine Makatura said the department does not release the names of people involved in bear incidents to "protect (their) anonymity."
The Mashipacong Shelter and nearby sections of the Appalachian Trail were closed for a few days during the investigation. They have since been reopened.
High Point State Park Superintendent John Keator referred a call Monday inquiring about the incident to the DEP press office.
http://www.pennlive.com/expresstimes/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-13/1190174940296530.xml&coll=2 Local Boy Scout bitten by a hungry black bear
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
By DOUGLAS B. BRILL
The Express-Times
William Fahr, still a little sore, stood Tuesday before his fellow Boy Scouts and told them they shouldn't be afraid of camping. It's unlikely, he told them, that a bear would bite them, too.
Fahr, a Scout with Minsi Trails Council Boy Scout Troop 33 of Pen Argyl, was bitten Saturday by an American black bear on a Boy Scout camping trip at Hickory Run State Park in Carbon County.
On Tuesday, he walked with a slight limp and dreaded a rabies shot. But he said he was fine, just worried that the biting will make his fellow Scouts afraid of camping.
"It's a one-in-a-million chance" to be bitten by a bear, the 12-year-old Bangor boy said Tuesday, three days after he suffered puncture wounds on his upper left leg from the teeth of a bear that was likely after some chocolate.
"You should keep going camping," Fahr said. "I am."
Fahr, who was treated at a Lehighton hospital and released early Sunday, was sharing a tent with two other Scouts, one of whom, against advice -- "Don't bring food in the tent. That's rule No. 1," Scout master Kevin Penrose said -- brought candy bars inside.
Fahr was sleeping about 9:30 p.m. when he awoke to find he was suddenly sharing the tent with something else.
The bear had bitten through the tent, leaving a 2-foot gash, and then through the boy's sleeping bag. It dug its teeth into the fleshy part of Fahr's leg.
When Fahr yelled out, Scout leader Chris Witmer, who on Tuesday thanked the boys for their bravery, scared the bear off. Scout leader Karen M. Giroux tended to Fahr and the 11 other Scouts who came on the weekend trip.
Hickory Run, a 15,500-acre park, Pennsylvania's fifth largest state park, "is a good bear habitat," said Terry Brady, a spokesman for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which oversees 117 Pennsylvania state parks.
It has been the site of three run-ins between bears and people in as many years, he said, although no one was seriously hurt in any of the run-ins. Since 2005, he said, one Hickory Run bear brushed against a person and another put its paw in a tent.
"When we have nuisance bears, bears that like to hang around people a lot, we try to trap the bear and get it of the state park," Brady said, indicating Hickory Run, whose manager was unavailable for comment Tuesday, has two traps on the park grounds.
"The problem is sometimes bears come into the area because they associate people with food," Brady said. He said the bear was likely after the chocolate and not the boy.
Fahr's mother, Yvonne Moss, said her seventh-grader would be back at Bangor Area Middle School on Thursday. Troop 33 takes monthly camping trips, and Fahr said he wants to go on the October excursion.
Don Sachs, a spokesman for the Minsi Trails Council, said the Boy Scouts took a 25-mile bike ride through Lehigh Gorge on Saturday before they went to the park for an overnight stay. Scout leaders called paramedics after Fahr was bitten, he said.
"The kid (Fahr) is a real trooper. I have to really admire him," Sachs said. "When somebody asked him if he's going to go camping again, and this is at the hospital, he said, 'Well, not tonight. But, yes, I am.'"
Reporter Douglas B. Brill can be reached at 610-759-0508 or by e-mail at
[email protected].
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071015/ap_on_fe_st/odd_bear_attack Mon Oct 15, 8:16 AM ET
WHITE HAVEN, Pa. - A Boy Scout played dead when attacked by a bear during a camping trip, avoiding serious injury.
Chris Malasics, 14, curled up in the fetal position in his sleeping bag after the bear ripped down his tent at Hickory Run State Park around 11:30 p.m. Friday.
"I was just trying to figure out what to do to not get hurt," he told the Daily Local News of West Chester.
As the bear started tossing Malasics around, a Scout leader tried to create a disturbance by banging pots and pans and flashing car headlights. The bear eventually wandered off.
Malasics, of Chester Springs, was taken to a hospital for treatment for his cuts and bruises. He was also given a precautionary rabies shot.
Malasics said the experience will not deter him from going camping. In the future, though, he intends to make sure he has a pepper spray for bears, and perhaps a gun.
"I know how to shoot," he said.
http://www.njherald.com/secure_story/290029159358521.php The 'Disney effect' on bears
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
By BRUCE A. SCRUTON
[email protected] In film, he can appear as a dancing, friendly and bumbling friend — voice supplied by Phil Harris — or a bad comedian whose best friend is a frog. There was also the time he was somewhat closer to character, a dim-witted individual, carrying a club with a hankering for rabbit stew.
Most people's views, and concepts, of bears is what they see in "Baloo," from "Jungle Book," "Fozzie," from the "Muppets" or "Br'er Bear," from "Song of the South." There is the real, live animal seen in Gentle Ben, or Grizzly Adams and, of course, more true-to-life short features, like "Bear Country" of the 1950s, that introduced many to the natural world.
But real bears don't stand on stage and get a custard pie thrown in their face. They won't cuddle up at night under the covers. And, except those trained for zoo or circus acts, bears don't dance a jig or wrestle with the human television star.
"We have them in zoos and images of them around us," said Margaret J. King, director of Cultural Studies & Analysis in Philadelphia. "We make art objects out of nature. It's a very primitive and cultural thing."
King is among those who have written about what is being called the "Disney effect" — how Disney films, whether animated, live action or "nature documentaries" have influenced not just filmmaking, but public attitudes toward animals and the environment.
Anthromorphism is the clinical term to describe how humans ascribe human-like qualities to other species. "Bears are large game and competitors," she said of the long cultural fascination humans have had with bears. "They also stand on their rear legs, bipedalism, and look like us."
Put in the middle of a New Jersey political fight, bears are being made into an image by both sides. Is the elevation of bear to near-human status, based on true feelings or political leanings?
People grew up cuddling "Teddy" or hugging Winnie the Pooh, whose only bad habit was trying to steal honey, so "cute" and "timid" are words easily ascribed to black bears by those against hunting. They take pictures of bears eating from a human's hand or "playing" in a hammock.
In the wild, young animals practice skills they will need as adults. They chase their mother's tail; roughhouse with each other, mocking a "kill" or fight for a chance to mate. Is it really play and do they even know what "play" is?
Janet Pizar, director of the Bear Education And Resource Group, said recently that, having won a court battle over the bear hunt, the next move would be "to outlaw the killing of our bears." Then, she said, all hunting would be next. On the other side, some have described bears "waiting in ambush" as if the individual animals could read a timetable or calendar and know that the garbageman only comes Tuesday mornings. "It's only a matter of time until someone gets killed," goes the mantra. They point to self-proclaimed bear "expert" Timothy Tredwell who studied Alaskan grizzlies for more than a dozen years. He was killed and eaten by the bears.
In reality, naturalists say bears are creatures whose nature is to find something to eat. They have a place in the natural world and it's not on our cultural pedestal.
King, whose business "decodes how consumers determine value in products, concepts and ideas," said the bear's place in our world "is very evolutionary" and based on our cultural background. The ancient Greeks named two constellations after bears, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Eskimos revere the polar bear, but it doesn't stop them from taking one in a hunt if they can.
Other Native Americans also worshiped the bear and lived beside them.
Today, King said, more than 90 percent of our day is spend inside, in optimum conditions that we have created for ourselves. "We don't like exposure to nature," she said. "We have evolved in nature to have as little to do with Nature as possible. We have taken nature and stylized it."
"There are a million misconceptions about bears," said Gary Alt, a noted wildlife biologist who ran Pennsylvania's bear management and deer management plans until his resignation three years ago. "People generally fall into two categories — they want to cuddle them or kill them."
Alt said the black bear population across the country is growing tremendously. In California where he now lives, the bear population has doubled to an estimated 32,000 since 1982.
In New York the bear population is still expanding and this year the state is reverting to a previous policy of opening the bear hunt in the Catskills on the same day the deer hunting season begins, effectively expanding the season by a week over the past few years.
In the 1990 hunt, 77 bear were taken in the Catskill area. During the 2005 hunt, there were nearly 500 bear killed in the Catskills and last year, the state said 365 bears were killed.
While some point to those numbers and note that even with hunting, bear numbers are increasing — an argument not to have a hunt — Alt said a well-managed hunt is not meant to decrease any population, but to provide a balance.
"If you really want to drop the population, you just say, 'Go get 'em!' Bears are more easy to overhunt than deer," he said.
In a healthy deer herd, does can begin to breed at about six months and have offspring each year. Bears don't start to breed until three years of age and have cubs every two years.
Jamie O'Boyle, senior analyst at Cultural Studies & Analysis said that while "both bears ("teddy") and deer ("Bambi") are big stars in our cultural Pantheon of anthropomorphized nature, bears trump deer because they are more like us. We can see a clumsy, more clownish, and therefore harmless, version of ourselves."
And there is an additional element — perceived rarity. "There is a simple equation in marketing, perception of rarity = higher value," he said. "End result; we instinctively lean towards encouraging bears but controlling the deer."
Alt said being the most densely human populated state, "New Jersey is at the frontier at human-wildlife confrontation and what to do about it."
This great experiment, he said, is tipped in the bears favor for now, but the balance will swing quickly towards bear population control.
"When it starts will just be getting the right bears doing the wrong things," he said. "It will require some sort of injuries. That will be the spark to set off the gas, then it'll blow.
"New jersey is ripe and ready for it," Alt said. "New Jersey will test the waters as to how far you can push this."
Topic: Bears are cute and friendly (Read 1255 times)
