Life with the bears

Commentary by Adam Tanous

Biologists have estimated that at the time of the European settlement of the lower 48 there were 50,000 brown bears roaming around. That would be like the entire city of Twin Falls being comprised of grizzlies.

Now there are estimated to be 800 to 1,000 brown bears living in five scattered populations in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Washington.

Undoubtedly, the reason for the decline will be argued over ad nauseum. But most knowledgeable people seem to say that the loss of population is a function of both over-hunting and the loss of food sources such as anadromous fish and pine nuts.

Added to this is the fact that big animals at the top of the food chain are generally in a more biologically precarious position than other animals. This has to do with the fact that at every step in the food chain only 10 percent of the available energy gets passed on (starting with the energy of the sun incident on the plants).

It does not help that grizzlies are slow to reproduce. They don't start having cubs until they are three, and then only every other year after that. It is also true that animal populations falter when they exist as isolated islands. A given isolated population loses its genetic diversity and becomes much more susceptible to disease and climatic changes.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, among other conservation groups, would like to increase the grizzly population by reintroducing them to a habitat big enough to support them. And because life is never as simple as we would like it to be, our backyard turns out to be a great place to put the bears.

Idaho has more wilderness area than any other state in the lower 48, most of it ideal grizzly habitat. The Fish and Wildlife Service plan is to designate roughly 5,500 square miles in central Idaho and western Montana as a recovery area. This area would cut a wide swath starting north of the Lochsa River running through the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness down to Stanley.

Fish and Wildlife would capture three to five bears per year from healthy populations in British Columbia and northwestern Montana and release them in the recovery area. It is estimated that the 5,500 square miles would support roughly one bear every 30 square miles. So the goal is to eventually increase the population by 200 to 300 bears or 30 percent. It is easy to see that this would take a long time, perhaps up to a 100 years.

So who cares? In some ways it is an abstract issue: all that land, a few bears. It is abstract unless you happened to have spent some time in Alaska.

At any population density, grizzlies are a very real presence. Some friends and I once spent two weeks camping and sea kayaking in southeast Alaska. Very few moments went by when we weren't thinking about those bears.

So my first reaction to this reintroduction idea was, "No way!" We are finally in charge; why should we give up control now? Not that there are any really super ways to die, but being eaten by an animal seems like it would be a pretty bad finish to an otherwise good life.

It also struck me as a strange twist on evolution. Here we would be taking actions that would diminish our chances for survival and reproduction, really our only two goals in the big Darwinian picture. While we’re at it, why not reintroduce small pox as well'? After all, an endangered species is an endangered species.

The argument would be, of course, that grizzlies have a little more voter appeal than some sickly little virus. But playing favorites is asking for trouble.

My second objection was that having grizzlies around would just make camping such a bloody hassle. A guy would have to carry a gigantic rifle at all times (pepper spray just does not seem like it would do the trick). And if something did happen you'd actually have to use it.

Shooting a charging grizzly bear seems a little absurd to me. First of all, if he's charging, he's going to be very close. So you'll have, basically, a second, maybe two, to pull yourself together, raise the monster rifle, and blow the bear's heart open before he lands on you and turns into a rug mat. Somehow, 1 don't think it’s like shooting a pheasant in a wheat field.

All that having been said, I think, ultimately, there are some good reasons to bring the grizzlies back, but probably not the same reasons the Fish and Wildlife Service offers.

First of all, anyone who wants to save Idaho from the disease of excess (people, development, taming of any kind) will realize that having grizzlies around will solve that problem. There is no way Idaho will become the ever-dreaded Disneyland when there are carnivores bigger than us roaming around. And for people who complain about the summer crowds in town, we could always relocate a big sow and her cub down there in Atkinson Park. The crowds will thin out.

But more valuable than what grizzlies will do for the character of Idaho is what they will do to our way of thinking.

For a while now, probably since we moved from the agricultural era to the industrial era, we have developed a sense of ourselves as being separate from and independent of nature. It is a dangerous way of thinking, because once we start to dominate, biologically speaking, we can very easily create our own demise.

It is a lesson we should have learned from those ugly little viruses.

A virus, take HIV for example, needs a host to live. So out of self-preservation, a virus does not want to kill its host too quickly, at the least, before it has had a chance to spread to another host. For the most part, Ebola and other hemorrhagic viruses are losing the Darwinian game (the only one that really counts), because they kill their hosts so efficiently that they select themselves out of the big gene pool.

We are not immune to this kind of suicide. We are bumbling toward it on other fronts.

One of these days we are going to end up mowing down too much of the forests-- say everything between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn-- and so goes our source of oxygen. Game over.

What does this have to do with grizzly bears, and why do we really need them?

We need them for what they can teach us, or rather remind us of: namely that we are still and always will be part of a biological system. In some ways it is like we are living in a house of cards. We might be able to take one or two cards out, but take more than that and the house comes tumbling down.

Then there is the fact that having bigger, faster carnivores around reminds us of all the valuable lessons we learned from our parents way back when. They sometimes get lost in our hurry to get old. These are things like "Pay attention to what you are doing," "Be thoughtful in your actions," "Respect the space of others," "Look around you as you go through life, not at your feet," "Don't mess with mothers and their children," "Never take life for granted."

As soon as we start to drift into our own sense of comfort is when we start to lose the sense of life. Sometimes we need the threat of imminent danger to keep us truly engaged in life. And if the remote chance of being eaten by another beast, or even just the idea that the possibility exists, is what it takes to wake us up, then I say, "What the hell, bring them back."