“Apple the Cow” investigates a Black Bear that wanted to share her apple tree. 

HYGIENE, Colo. — Cowabunga! Who needs a guard dog when you have a cow?

 

A bear trying to grab apples at a pasture in Hygiene was scared off Sunday by the homeowner’s heifer.

 

Nancy Dayton said a young black bear was in her apple tree and was starting to roam the area when her black cow, Apple, confronted it and chased it off.

Here is the news story from Channel 7 news of Denver,

An Oregon man was attacked by a grizzly while camped in a public campground near the Northeast Entrance to Yellowstone National park, on July 18th.  Steve Bartley was on a 5 day motorcycle trek and was awakened by the bear as it hit his head and neck through the tent.  When he tried to unzip the tent to escape the bear latched on to his right hand breaking bones, and lacerating it.  The bear was scared away by his screams and struggles, and emergency personell responded.  He was transported to a hospital in Cody Wyoming.  After surgery, stitches and pinning the broken bones. doctors expect nearly full use of his hands. 

What has happened AFTER the attack?

Well R.E.I. has replaced his four man tent that was destroyed in the attack, and thrown in a free can of bear spray.  That’s a pretty good warranty. 

Montana Fish and Wildlife officials have captured the bear and sent it to the Washington State University Bear Research Center to study. 

Now these two things raise a few questions with me…

Had Mr. Bartley defended him self in the attack by killing the bear, would REI have been as generous?   

The Article mentions that the bear was tagged #495.  Did he have a history of human encounters?  Or was this her first? It would be interesting to know whether she was a repeat offender to use the parlance of human “criminal justice”.  I did a quick google search and found from the Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks website:

FWP personnel set two traps in the Soda Butte Campground on July 18 in an attempt to trap a bear. A young adult female grizzly, known as bear number 495, was caught in a trap at the site of the incident on July 22. The bear was captured and collared in 2005 in Wyoming in a livestock depredation-related incident.

Will the WSU Bear Research Center be able to determine what we can do to re-establish fear of humans in bears and other predators who reside in high human traffic areas?  Certainly reducing attractants such as food is the first step, but a negative reinforcement, or aversion therapy based approach could prove worthwhile.  Obviously this bear #495 has a history of human and livestock encounters. 

While at the University of Idaho I often drove by the bear pens outside of Pullman Washington and mavelled at the size and strength of the large creatures.  Lets hope that the researchers there can determine how to make bears not view humans as prey.

You can read the full story from the Seattle times.

Once again another case of an urban mountain lion, near Denver, coming in conflict with humans.  i’ve caught some flak in the past from folks who don’t think this is a problem, but I think that this story illustrates how silent a big cat can be, to kill a labrador retriever in the house, and drag it out without waking the residents.

IDLEDALE, Colorado (AP) — A mountain lion crept through an open door into a house outside Denver, snatched a Labrador retriever from a bedroom where two people were sleeping and left the dog’s dead body outside, wildlife managers said Tuesday.

 Jacquie and Mack Anderson say they woke up to find a mountain lion in their bedroom outside Denver.   No one else was hurt in the home about 14 miles southwest of Denver.

Wildlife officials later trapped the 130-pound male cat using the dog’s body as bait and fatally shot it.

What if it was their child?

The news story from CNN

You don’t here about these encounters in ranches or cabins in far flung wild areas, where we would assume the reticent creatures would prefer.  Why?  I theorize it is because of the territorial nature of dominant male lions drives subadults into areas where human conflict is inevitable.  It is a shame that this immature tom had to be killed when perhaps a few experiences being treed by a pack of hounds may have been enough aversion to make it avoid a populated area.  I’d like to hear your thoughts on this matter as well.

The Durango Herald has reported a second mountain lion was killed inside the city limits of Durango in the space of a week.  The first lion leapt on a lawn mower while a 14 year old boy was mowing lawns in Cortez, CO.  Officials say both cats were females between 1 and 2 years old.  They surmise that the cats were littermates, after they had numerous sightings in the same neighborhoods. 

I think this should raise awareness of just how people need to take into account life in the west living with apex predators.

SINAPU, a Society dedicated to co-existing with large carnivores and predators in the Southern Rockies has this column about being vigilant in mountain lion country. 

It has some good suggestions that we should take to heart, but I find that these folks aren’t big fans of hunting to say the least.   But at what point will they realize that large predators like lions who are territorial will often drive adolescent cats into suburban areas where they come into conflict with humans?

It is my firm belief that hunting mountain lions actively discourages these predators from considering humans as prey. And reducing the population of territorial males will reduce the number of adolecent cats driven into areas and situations where a human cat conflict will take place. In fact if you do a quick search of mountain lion attacks in the west, most attacks are perpetrated by sub-adult mountain lions rather than dominant, territorial adults.

Another factor is that game animals move into the subdivisions and the predators follow them. Reason? Lawns provide green forage, as well as suburban residents feeding wildlife. As homes impinge on wildlife habitat along the Rocky Mountain Front, more deer, elk and moose become city slickers, and the predators follow their prey into the yards and conflicts result.

I would hate to see the people of Colorado go down the same path as California and lose hunting as a management tool for their mountain lion population. If we maintain suitable habitat outside of cities for game animals, prevent more subdivision sprawl, and manage the predator population then we will see fewer human - lion encounters that requires killing non mature animals.

Link to News Story on Mountain Lion Attacks

I get a kick out of the encounters that folks have with wildlife.  If you remember a few days back i referenced a jogger who was run over by a bear.  Well this week, a Colorado Cyclist seems to have tried to even the score, according to the Rocky Mountain News.

Tim Egan, 53, was riding on Old Stage Road Tuesday afternoon when suddenly a bear appeared in front of him. Egan hit the bear and ended up skidding across the road….

…Egan estimated he was going about 45 miles per hour at impact. He said the bear was about 6 feet tall and probably weighed 500 pounds.

That is a pretty incredible accident.  Luckily he was able to pedal himself to the hospital. What amazes me is that it is the second bike/bear collision in two years.  There must be a heck of a bear population there or one dumb, slow bear!

You can read the rest of the story here. 

I didn’t want to bring this up before the Anchorage Alaska Mayors Marathon, but now that it has passed, I can bring it to all my readers attention.  (I didn’t want to scare off the Team in Training folks I trained with.) It just serves as a reminder that there are still places in the West that wildlife is part of the landscape that we have to take into account in our daily activities.  There are cities in all of the 12 Western States where urban wildlife is a reality. 

From the Anchorage Daily News on June 18th 2008

On Saturday, the 50-year-old competitive skier and triathlete was run over by a grizzly as he and a running buddy were finishing a three-hour workout that took them from Hillside Park up to the base of Flattop Mountain and back.

Rogers happened to be wearing a heart-rate monitor for training at the time. He thought his maximum heart rate was 180. He later looked at the monitor and realized he’d hit 193.

“You hear about people dying of fright,” he said. “Well, this was scary, and I’ve the data to prove it. I think it aged me about five years.”

Rogers suffered no injuries, though

Read the rest of the story HERE