Wildlife and People

Grizzly Bear Cognitive Dissonance

For decades the US Fish and Wildlife Service and state fish and game departments have promoted grizzly bear worship. Now they seem to be sliding into apostasy.

The allegedly “iconic and charismatic” predators have been placed on the high altar of the Endangered Species Act, even though they are in no way, shape, or form endangered. Anti-human rights groups have used grizzlies to scam hundreds of $millions out of little old ladies burdened with liberal guilt, and the agencies have milked that cow for all it’s worth.

The latest insult to intelligence was Judge Molloy’s refusal to delist grizzly bears because of global warming! That’s right sports fans, da judge said that gloooobal waaaaarrming is gonna kill off da bears, and so they must remain sacrosanct wards of the State [here].

The judge based his decision on the junk pseudoscience that spews from our wonderful wildlife agencies, the same folks who drug grizzlies and them leave them to wake up grouchy in your back yard [here]. If you get attacked, killed, and eaten, it’s your fault.

There is no accounting or audit of what the taxpayers have forked out for decades so that gummit employees can live like kings while spewing junk science and pagan grizzly bear worship, and packing your neighborhood with 1,000 pound man-eaters. Just another public service from a government that’s here to help. And as usual with helpful gummit services, money is no object.

Despite the fact that grizzlies kill elk as well as humans, sportsman groups are far more concerned about wolves, and Rocky Mountain gray wolves in particular. As we reported [here], a move is afoot to delist wolves by Congressional action. The rest of the ESA atrocities (bears, owls, smelt, etc.) will have to wait for some other time.

The assumption is that US Congress will possibly (doubtful) do something about wolves, but are too anti-human liberal to fix the ESA, an Act that was promulgated by the UN during the Vietnam War and is perhaps the most anti-American un-Constitutional law in existence.

Gaia forbid we should sully the altar of pagan iconic animals that kill citizens in their back yards. When the Founding Fathers came up with the nutty notion that human rights are unalienable, they were smoking crack.

To be fair, more than fair, some government employee wildlife biologists are now questioning whether grizzly bears should be allowed to multiply like rabbits and freely roam the countryside in Fly-Over Land. They don’t question their own junk pseudoscience, and are still fully invested in numerous hoaxes like glooooobal waaaarming, but they are toying with the idea that wildlife management might be preferable to wildlife worship.

Grizzly bears moving out of core habitats, changing management message

By ROB CHANEY, the Missoulian, January 22, 2011 [here]

If we care about keeping grizzly bears alive, perhaps we should worry less about how they die.

The idea won a serious listen at last week’s Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee work session in Missoula. Since 1983, when the group of state and federal bear managers started meeting, grizzly survival has been the top job. Now science and public opinion may be heading in a new direction.

“We need to rethink our grizzly messages for the Greater Yellowstone area,” Steve Schmidt of the Idaho Fish and Game Department told the committee. “This population is recovered. We are now transitioning into management. Some bears are gonna die. That is a natural consequence of bears expanding their distribution.”

Schmidt chairs the IGBC’s Yellowstone grizzly committee, which oversees bear recovery in one of the two largest bear habitats in the continental United States. Between 2004 and 2008, grizzlies have stretched their active range around Yellowstone National Park by 34 percent. And most of their conflicts with livestock, hunters and cars are now taking place on the developed fringes of that range.

“The bears in the Yellowstone area are filling up their logical habitat,” Schmidt said. “We also believe as a committee that bears have met or exceeded their social carrying capacity. The public appetite for further expanding this bear population is very small. And the political appetite is nil.”

Scott Talbot of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department agreed.

“Last year we moved 65 bears,” Talbot said. “Our average is 28. And we are seeing a significant increase of bears outside socially acceptable areas. There used to be large amount of public support for bears. Now we’re seeing a big decline, plus growing legislative interest. That’s very concerning to us.”

Montana’s Legislature has already put forward five bills aimed at bear management, compared to just one so far on wolves. ..

“The public views these as ‘federal bears,’” Schmidt said. “They have no ownership of these bears because they’re still listed. Without state management and a chance to participate in how they’re managed, and the opportunity to harvest once in a while, they will oppose all the conservation efforts we’ve worked on so hard in the past.”

“We’ve gone from 200 bears (in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem) in 1983 to over 600 today,” Schmidt said. “We need to focus on the health of this population and less on the bears that need to be removed. Bears on the fringe aren’t essential to the health of the population. We need to start communicating that idea now.”

Hold the presses, the message is changing, maybe. Yes sports fans, the old propaganda is going to be replaced by new propaganda, possibly, or possibly not. So be prepared to undergo cognitive dissonance yet again. Or possibly not. Big Brother is confused.

Meanwhile, when you go shopping, or work in your garden, or when the kids are waiting for the school bus to ferry them to our valued government Indoctrination Centers, carry a gun. A big gun. One capable of killing a grizzly bear. Or a wolf.

Unless, of course, Big Brother has seized your guns, in which case huddle in the cold and dark and wait for your opportunity to serve the State by becoming bear chow.