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Killer Bears

by Garth Pritchard, Canada Free Press.
Saturday, June 25, 2005

alberta--There are 13 bears where I live - a ranch southwest of Calgary. There are also one hundred newborn calves, baby foals, and 37 horses. In living memory, none of us can remember when we have had any major problems with grizzlies and black bears that live here.

The city media — by quoting naturalists, mountain women (whatever they are), and of course, the educated elite: the biologist — have turned these natural predators into demons, marauding killers of human beings.

Canmore, alberta. The newspaper headlines read Grizzly Bear Kills Mountain Woman. Three women out for their morning constitutional were jogging on a closed path (they'd been warned not to use this particular path) near the town of Canmore. according to the two surviving women, a grizzly started to track them. Two ran for it, one climbed a tree. a fish and wildlife officer killed the bear with one shot, as it stood over the dead mountain woman, having mauled her to death.

Great fear-mongering. What is the truth here? Let's look at the last few weeks of this bear's life:

He had been a problem bear in the Canmore area. He was just over two years old and obviously the mother had kicked him off. It was time for him, under Mother Nature's rules, to go it alone. He was seen near people, probably looking for food (people's garbage) and a decision had been taken to tranquillize the bear and move him away from the town and people.

They shot the bear with a tranquillizer gun, muscle relaxants. He's down. His mind is functioning perfectly: he can see, he can hear, and he is being handled by a natural enemy: human beings. They look in his mouth, they draw blood, they sex him. They hang him upside down by his feet to weigh him. all these indignities are followed by a journey, either under a helicopter in a net or in the back of a truck. all of this is etched in his mind. Understand the fear… Does anybody believe that this bear will forget all this?

I'm sure a cute voice explained the bear, "It's okay Mr. Bear, we're all professionals here. We're doing all this for your benefit. You'll be fine in an hour. Collectively the humans here have 20 years of education to do this to you"

In the bear's mind, there's total fear and rage. If he could just get at these animals doing this to him.

Take an airplane ride. Go to 30,000 feet on a sunny alberta day and look down. The fine line winding its way through the mountains is the Trans-Canada Highway. The two blotches on the landscape are the town of Canmore and the town of Banff. The rest is wild mountain country, the bear's home. a huge part of the country that you would be seeing includes federal and provincial parks, there for all of us to enjoy. But I would argue that the so-called naturalists/biologists are using these very rare incidents between wild animals and human beings as their case to turn our parks into their personal kingdoms.

The media is used skillfully — too many people infringing in the animals' domain. We have to preserve a space for them. People are destroying their natural habitat.

Banff Park is the icon of the federal parks system. It was originally for people to see Mother Nature in her natural splendor. a few years ago the park rangers started a slogan: "We're here to protect the animals from people". The erosion started here.

Banff has lost it so badly that they built an 11 million dollar, ten foot high page-wire fence down each side of the Trans-Canada Highway to protect the animals from being killed by vehicle traffic. Think about this. Migrating elk herds are now stopped dead in their tracks. Bears, cougars, coyotes are all fenced on one side of the Trans-Canada or the other. These so-called naturalist boneheads actually built wildlife overpasses!

My question to them is, who gave the maps to the wildlife so they could find them?

The costs are astronomical. The overpasses are there for people's comfort and to explain away the obvious. With the fences they cut a natural wildlife corridor in half.

But it's okay — according to the naturalists and environmentalists, the bridges will accommodate the migratory paths.

Do we actually believe that an elk herd is going to cross a bridge as eighteen-wheelers thunder by beneath them? It has gotten so stupid that we, the taxpayers, actually pay to have two men rake a strip of sand every two days so that the environmentalists can track how many animals may have crossed in 48 hours. Officially, for the benefit of the bureaucrats, a few coyotes may have crossed. Unofficially, for the men who do the job, the total is none. It's all nonsense, of course.

Personally, I would gladly volunteer to do a job for the federal government. I'd fill out the proper form each time: I, Garth Pritchard, (date), (year), did drop a map of the wildlife overpasses, within a hundred feet of a deer - obviously lost — ten miles from the Trans-Canada highway and the wildlife overpass. at a hundred dollars a pop, I'd be rich in no time! and some dunderhead in Ottawa would believe I'm doing a hell of a job. The poor lost wildlife in Banff, alberta surrounded by a ten-foot fence and not knowing where to cross!

The situation in Banff isn't an isolated incident.

Two billion dollars spent, years of study, to answer a simple question: would the caribou go under the pipelines in the Northwest Territories? Of course they would. They did and they have. The cost was astronomical.

Often we see very proud animals, grizzly bears and coyotes, with collars around their necks so the experts can follow them day and night. Imagine the science here: signals transmitted from a collar around the neck of a wild animal up to a satellite and back to a computer somewhere on earth, all in the name of studying these animals.

What we see is a wild animal, not quite as proud, certainly not having the quality of life it once had. Every one of them forced to endure the smell, the touch, and the indignation forced on them by the educated elite. They do it because they can. Jobs for life. and now these same ‘experts' want to attach "critter cams" on these animals — the ability to film their activity — all in the name of science.

I will guarantee that this kind of handling of wild animals to study them will turn into more frequent deadly encounters with predators of the size and intelligence of the grizzly. Every time we tranquillize these animals — in the name of science — the natural fear of humans is replaced by a rage and hate.

Think back to the young grizzly: By nature, proud, a predator. a few short days ago, he had been forced into indignities by humans. Now he spies three of these new enemies running by him, an action signifying flight in his world. In justifiable hate, he chases them.

One climbs a tree. Perfect. Young grizzlies climb. The old wives' tale that grizzlies won't climb is nonsense.

The end result is a dead human being. and then, by extension, there is also a dead young grizzly.

Canadians must stop this over-indulgence by a very few to study these animals. Experts are denying people access to the sections of the planet we live on. The fear-mongering has turned the bear into the great killer sharks of the mountains - all nonsense of course.

More people will be killed on the Trans-Canada highway this year than from all the bear, cougar, and wolf attacks in the next twenty years.

There is something very ugly at play here. a very small group of people is using these encounters for their own benefit and to study the studies. Here on this ranch we commonly see the bears, daily see the deer, the moose, the elk, the coyotes. Quite regularly we spot cougars. Without the interference of the so-called biologists/naturalists/environmentalists, we and our neighbours have lived in harmony with these animals for years.

We lost a young woman and a young grizzly in a tragedy caused by man's interference. The manipulation of what really happened is out of control and it's being used to deny Canadians and the world access to some of the most beautiful natural habitat in the world.

There is no need for this.

Canada Free Press columnist Garth Prtitchard, is an award-winning documentary filmmaker living in alberta.



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