I am a "Bear Enthusiast."

Bear breakfast sausage, mighty tasty. Any other way you cook it, not so much.

KTK

 

You really have to get with the times. In Scotland the last bears were over a thousand years ago. The only thing that eats you now is the midgie which is not deadly and seasonal.

 

And here am I believing all that history stuff when the movies got it right. So, did King Kong really climb the Empire State Building?

 

My new home in Arizona was chosen only after carefully calculating the entire western US for bears per square mile, then measuring the distance to the nearest possible bear habitat while taking into account any water source for possible salmon runs, berry patches, Christian School campgrounds (which are prime bear feeding habitat) and other bear attractants. I then converted all that data into a color-coded map with red zones for "Danger! Bears Fookin' Everywhere!" to green zones tagged as "Bears Highly Unlikely" I then chose this place along the Peloncillo Mountains which, while technically in a green zone, has a bordering yellow zone in the higher altitudes marked as "Not Every Bear Shot Dead By Local Rednecks. Yet."

So far, this has paid off. A skinny black bear will come down and eat somebodies sheep once in a while, but I haven't seen as much as a track around my place.

 

Messican Gray Wolves, but not many.

 

They just recaptured one a few miles from here for dining on numerous livestock. I don't know why it went after livestock, unless the breeding system habituated it to the presence of people. The area is rich in wild game, and especially rabbits which are supposedly a mainstay of this smallish subspecies.

 

This situation was pretty clear cut. The NM wolf reintroduction guys came out and checked pretty carefully and fingered the wolf, rather than wild dogs or the other usual culprits. I don't oppose wolf reintroduction, in general. Most of these ranchers are running beef on public lands and losses to wolves or bears should just be part of the entry fee - public land is multi-use land, not just for cattle ranching. Predation on private land (in my opinion), is a wholly different matter that landowners should be able to handle in any fashion they please.