Dear Readers,
The killing of this bear is deeply felt by many of us who live here. Still, the demonizing of the U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer and the CDFW warden by many of those who wrote to us in the days following made me feel that we need to look at a bigger picture.
Reading some of the first letters that came in, I was concerned that my attempt in part one of this two-part story (September 5) to tell a more complex and nuanced tale about how this bear came to be in harm’s way was not successful. Please read the second part today.
I checked with several of you to confirm that much of the extreme anger at the officers about the shooting of the bear on September 5 was whipped up by internet postings which had bent the facts and sometimes said things that were not true. Our concern about wildlife is legitimate. But the issues and the facts are more complicated than a simple “bad guys in the woods with guns” story. We have good guys living in the woods harming bears without heed for the damage they are doing, killing our wildlife with “kindness.”
People often respond before they have the full facts. Mix that with untruths and misunderstandings, and it makes it hard to have a rational, problem-solving dialogue.
1) This bear was not shot in the back; it was shot in the chest/neck area. I saw the bullet hole.
2) The bear did follow the law enforcement officers and did not respond to attempts to scare it away by pounding on trees and yelling at it. It was shot in the front at close range.
3) The officers saw it had zero fear of humans, which is a danger signal for those trained to work with wildlife. They did not know what it might do. Remember, they were in a dense, wooded area with poor visibility. They could not see how large the bear was.
The bear appears to have acquired this interest in following humans from a human who taught it to come to him for food, according to reports from neighbors and law enforcement.
The decision by a Pine Mountain resident to act irresponsibly with a cub was what caused this bear to lose its life as a two-year-old.
September 13, 2014
Dear Editor:
Your article “Cover-up?” [The Mountain Enterprise September 12, 2014] was inspiring. I first heard of this incident on PMC’s Facebook page and was outraged then.
After reading your article, I was even more so.
The obstruction of the press was outrageous. I saw a deer in back of my cabin the other day. It did not appear afraid of me. Should it be shot too?
I am very thankful that we on the mountain have such excellent reporting.
Richard Kotler
Pine Mountain
September 15, 2014
Dear Editor:
I want to compliment you on the wonderful job you do of publishing both the Pioneer and the Enterprise. You’ve taken it to the ultimate. It’s the best little paper I’ve ever read, and you’re a good writer. You do a great job, and we love it. We look forward to it every week.
[As nice as those words were, we were a little alarmed to read what came next. I called this reader to ask if she had read our report about the bear before the rest of this letter was written. Ann Garcia said, ‘No, this was from something on the internet.’ Here is what she wrote… —PH, Editor]
Reports here in Pine Mountain about two forest rangers who are going around with rifles that killed I don’t know how many bears. I saw that on the Little Bit of Wildlife website. And I don’t know why they’re killing the bears.
I don’t know if they’re doing it to sell parts and skins or whatever, but we’re not supposed to wantonly kill bears.
Sure, they cause a little bit of problems every now and then, but good grief, we don’t just go out and just start slaughtering them. It’s not right. They’re hungry and thirsty and these two especially vicious rangers that go around with rifles. I’ve seen them in the forest with their rifles looking for bears to shoot, and it’s not right.
Ann Garcia
Pine Mountain
These officers shot one bear. In Tehachapi last week a bear was shot by the Tehachapi Police Department, and in Bakersfield last week a sick bear died after wandering into a residential neighborhood where a biologist tried to capture it with tranquilizer darts. The tranquilizer was not the cause of the death, but the autopsy is not complete to give the full facts. The supervising biologist for nine counties in California, including Kern County, repeated several times that there has been an explosion of bear-human conflicts in California in the past few months. –Editor
September 12, 2014
Dear Editor:
The slaughter of one of our black bears last week was tragic, but it was so much more than that. This was a curious bear cub, about 18 months old, weighing less than 100 pounds. How do I know? Because I interact with and monitor these bears nearly every day.
I have been trained in wildlife care and rehab by the experts at the Lake Tahoe Wildlife Center. The “official statements” that this was a 3-4 year old bear is just a bald-faced lie, and was not the only bald-faced lie told in an attempt to cover up and justify this crime against nature. This event has the stink of local politics all over it. Please note this is my personal opinion, and not necessarily the opinion of my employer or any organization I am affiliated with.
Patrice Stimpson
Pine Mountain Club
September 12, 2014
Dear Editor:
In response to the statement of John and Diane Croxton, I will say that reading this statement made me extremely nauseous and teary-eyed.
The CDFW and the Forestry Police should be ashamed. I would hope that this is not the norm. I am so saddened for the mama bear. This kind of stuff just breaks my heart. The wildlife was here first. I am sure other measures could have been taken. In my opinion, our community does not need this kind of “help.”
Mary Irvin
Pine Mountain
I was on the scene and did detailed research with the agencies and the family mentioned. I can tell this reader that the statement referred to here does not fully coincide with the facts we have. Please see the note at the top of page 7.
Please keep your letters coming. These are very distressing issues, but we can all take steps to live more responsibly in the forest. At the same time that we can demand that our wildlife wardens and officers also rethink how to deal with habituated bears that have lost the wild instincts that keep them safe.
Keep the wild in wildlife.
—Patric Hedlund, Editor
A special meeting on emergency rules against feeding wildlife will be Friday, Sept. 19, 6:30 p.m. in the Condor Room, PMC clubhouse. Open to all members.
Photo caption:
KCSO Sgt. Mark Brown walks down the hillside with USFS officer Brian St. Clair, shaken after Warden Eric Craig shot the bear that was rapidly advancing on them. Two days later a large bear approached his 8-year-old daughter while she was playing on a trampoline in the yard of their home.
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This is part of the September 19, 2014 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.
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