Peter Fimrite – Worth A Dam

So what kind of person are you? The one who says give me the bad news first? Or the one who happily opens all his Christmas presents even though his nervous looking parents say they have something important to talk to you about? What kind of person should I assume you are? Like me, get the hard stuff out of the way so that the easy stuff is easier?

Here’s the hard stuff. It starts with a hard hitting article in this mornings SF Gate and features two familiar faces (but only one of the pretty): Wildlife Services and Camilla Fox.

Wildlife groups take aim at lethal control of predators

Brennan, a 55-year-old trapper for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, has killed coyotes, mountain lions, bears, skunks, raccoons, bobcats and, by his own estimate, 400 dogs.

“He represents a kind of mind-set, a culture,” said Camilla Fox, the executive director of Project Coyote, a wildlife advocacy organization that is calling for government support and training in nonlethal methods and techniques for controlling natural predators, and for widespread adoption of programs like one that has succeeded in Marin County for 15 years.

Brennan and his fellow trappers are the target of a nationwide campaign by Project Coyote and other wildlife conservation organizations to stop what they characterize as indiscriminate killing of wildlife by a rogue agency that still lives by the outdated slogan “the only good predator is a dead predator.”

The latest sortie occurred in February when five conservation groups sued the Department of Agriculture for the “wanton killing” of wildlife in Idaho. They want the agency to promote nonlethal methods of control, including guardian dogs, fencing, hazing techniques, night corrals and lambing sheds.

So Camilla Fox and the Coyote Project teamed up with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Animal Welfare Institute to sue Mendocino County for renewing their contract with WS without the necessary environmental review. The team already managed to pressure Sonoma away from renewing its contract.

You better believe this kind of work is making an impression on both politicians and a certain population of hunters and trappers who are deeply devoted to making the scrutiny go away. Case in point? When the John Muir Association named Camilla as conservationist of the year, our board was peppered with complaints from a few very difficult men who objected vociferously over and over.

Should WS maintain contracts all over California? Or the country? You can guess my answer. I went through the numbers yesterday and saw where we fall in comparison. California USDA doesn’t kill the most beavers, by any means, but we’re definitely in the top 10.

Congratulations Camilla on a very sympathetic article. You are really good at your job, which is apparently three times harder than ours. (WS killed 60000 coyotes nationally, and 22000 beaver).

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Now for the good news. Rusty and Robin at Tulocay creek last night were delighted to find TWO kits instead of one. Although they never posed together in the camera frame they were clearly witnessed, and the smaller one generously hung out with mom for a while providing what is possibly among the top five cutest beaver videos I have ever seen. Watch it all the way through. If this doesn’t melt your heart you should see your cardiologist immediately because there’s probably something wrong with it.

Peter Fimrite’s alarming aricle about Tahoe Bears Gone Wild triggered my skepticism meter even before I heard from our friends in Kings Beach. There are several telltale signs of hyperbole in the article, which I’ve come to recognize after years of reading countless “Beavers Blamed for Another Bank Failure” articles. Let’s look at them together, shall we?

Maybe we should start with the title. “Black Bears Wreaking Havoc on Tahoe Area.” Not exactly subtle. Clearly the problem with Tahoe isn’t unfettered development encroaching on animal habitat and hardscape causing acres of erosion down the mountain side. The problem is BEARS!!! Wreaking Havoc! Well, often the reporter doesn’t choose the headline, so we can’t blame Pete for that. Let’s keep reading.

Black bears, normally shy around humans, have been smashing windows, yanking doors off their hinges and entering homes and businesses in the Lake Tahoe area like never before, according to the California Department of Fish and Game.

Smashing windows! Yanking doors off their hinges! Is this bear gang violence? (Has there been tagging? Is that what that bear was doing hanging over the bridge?) Of course bears have always yanked doors off their hinges and smashed windows to get things they really want. They’re BEARS after all. You know there used to be people in Tahoe that understood that. They were accustomed to dealing with bears. Now if you walked down the condo’d streets and canals you would see the very same neighbors you’d recognize from your home in the Bay Area. 62 depradation permits? Nice to know Fish & Game still has a purpose. It occurs to me that its possible the number of blood thirsty bears hasn’t gone up, Pete. But the number of bear-stupid humans who leave food and ice chests and candy wrappers out, has.

Hunter said the brute tore a window out of the restaurant on Nov. 11 and raided the kitchen, gobbled a 3-gallon tub of spumoni ice cream and sampled the salami, ravioli and tortellini before sacking out in a wine box in the kitchen. He found the snoring beast the next morning and, with help from his son and an expert from the Bear Education Aversion Response, or BEAR League, splashed ammonia on the hairy slob’s face and shooed him out.

Brute? Hairy Slob? Are we talking about an animal break-in or a frat party? Well I’m sure after the reporter exhausts his supply of perjorative labels he’ll get down to the real story. Maybe he’ll talk about the increase in development in the Tahoe area, or how, when the economy tanked, newly developed units got abandoned and allowed more animal traffic. Maybe he’ll talk about since we humans know this, we’re responsible for keeping our supplies locked up and out of sight. We need to make our trash bear-proof. We need to keep from attracting these animals into our backyards and restaurants.

These skills take education and community response to develop, so enter the program described later in the article “BEAR” (Bear Education Aversion Response) Guess who’s on the BEAR team? The husband of our beaver-saving friends in Kings Beach. Guess who the reporter didn’t talk to? I’ll give you a hint, here’s his response to the article.

This account is completely wrong. I was the volunteer who originally showed up to chase the bear out of Bacchi’s restaurant. No ammonia was thrown on anyone’s face – I tossed about 1/4 cup of ammonia on the floor near where the bear was lying down. He exited, and I chased him down the hall and outside across the meadow and into the woods. I shot him with a paintball gun to even keep him moving. This was a very old, very sleepy and slow bear, well known by neighbors for years, and never aggressive.  As volunteers for the BEAR League, we advised the owners of several precautions to take, including securing their garbage (their dumpster bin was NOT locked) and securing old, loose windows. This was 10 days before the bear was shot, plenty of time to have done something.  Mr. Hunter’s account also clearly shows he was blocking the bear’s exit path – ‘the bear realized it was a dead end and turned back toward me’ – which is the only reason a bear would come toward someone, other than the short ‘bluff’ that Mr. Hunter also described. Nobody was attacked, but someone obviously likes the undeserved attention. Your reporter should have known better than to repeat such hyperbole without checking the facts. Ted Guzzi

So let’s get this straight: you’ve written an article that blames the animals for exaggerated human fears, thus creating more human fears so that more animals can be blamed in the future. The article fails not only to discuss the responsible options this man neglected to exercise, but it goes on to describe a rampant increase in the number of bears roaming about the state without mentioning the rampant increase of humans.

“He came around that table and just charged me,” Hunter said. “He covered about 30 feet in three bounds. I knew bears were fast, but this was the fastest thing I’d ever seen in my life. I had no time to get the shotgun around. It was the proverbial life flashes before your eyes kind of thing.” Miraculously, Hunter said, the bear turned away at the last second. “He was between these two tables 6 or 7 feet away when he realized he was trapped there and he reared up again and turned back toward me,” Hunter said. “I wasn’t going to let him get close to me. That’s when I shot him.”

What was the man’s name again? The innocent victim who was forced to shoot the bear. I won’t say it. It’s just too easy. But tell me the truth, Pete, have you been watching a little too much Stephen Colbert lately?)

Mary also wrote the chronicle. Let’s see what she has to say,

I am a 39 year resident of Lake Tahoe. What happened at Bacchi’s is tragic. This man was advised over and over to secure his property and make his garbage inaccessible, but instead he ignored the experts advice and shot this old bear that was known and not feared by the neighborhood. Now his photo is on the front page of your paper as if he is some hero that narrowly escaped with his life. In addition, your story and the story in our local paper, the Sierra Sun, are only vaguely similar. Is the sensationalism for the sake of circulation or dinner counts? Shame on you.

Well, what Tahoe residents read the SF chronicle anyway? Oh, right. The flatlanders who come up for Christmas and the weekend ski and wish it was more like the Bay Area. They’ll get together with Fish & Game and make sure the hunting regulations are changed for bears in the state. I can see it coming. So can Mary. She’s organizing a candelight vigil at the restaurant and calling the media to invite them. I just had one piece of advice.

Invite children, and have everyone bring their Teddy Bear.