On the rugged Kamchatka peninsula in Russia, Russell first travelled to answer two questions to which he was confident he had answers: Are grizzly and spirit bears unpredictable? And, are they dangerous if they lose their fear of people?
The answer to both, he says, is an unequivocal no.
__________________
Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
Corporal Jean-Marc H. BECHARD, 6 Aug 1993
The Following User Says Thank You to undercoverbrother For This Useful Post:
If I swam beside a Great White without being eaten I could claim things are all good just because I survived. Doesn't mean any other shark wouldn't have ripped me to pieces.
Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently overlooking those that didn't because of their lack of visibility.
The Following User Says Thank You to Frequitude For This Useful Post:
If I swam beside a Great White without being eaten I could claim things are all good just because I survived. Doesn't mean any other shark wouldn't have ripped me to pieces.
Been there done that......course there was a cage in between us.
__________________
Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
I went to a talk he did in Canmore a couple years ago. He is not nearly so crazy as the Grizzly Man. That bear in the picture beside him is one he rescued from a zoo as a cub, and is one of the ones he is working to integrate into the wild. The guy has been working successfully with bears for so long it would be silly to dismiss him as crazy just because he suggests bears aren't necessarily dangerous.
His ideas are controversial and very much debatable, but he's not crazy. And he's absolutely right, IMO, that the problems between bears and people are caused by us, not them.
Violent encounters with bears are the rare exception, not the norm, and usually happen for a reason.
I've had a couple close encounters with bears on my old dirt bike, it was a quiet 4 stroke and they wouldn't hear me coming until I was right on top of them. One time I came over a hill and a big lazy bear was sitting in the middle of the trail. I stopped about 15 feet away, he looked at me, I looked at him, and he slowly got up and ambled off the road. I also rode within a couple feet of a cub once, I was going pretty fast and didn't realize what it was until I was past it. I fear cougars much more than bears.
The Following User Says Thank You to burn_this_city For This Useful Post:
I went to a talk he did in Canmore a couple years ago. He is not nearly so crazy as the Grizzly Man. That bear in the picture beside him is one he rescued from a zoo as a cub, and is one of the ones he is working to integrate into the wild. The guy has been working successfully with bears for so long it would be silly to dismiss him as crazy just because he suggests bears aren't necessarily dangerous.
His ideas are controversial and very much debatable, but he's not crazy. And he's absolutely right, IMO, that the problems between bears and people are caused by us, not them.
Violent encounters with bears are the rare exception, not the norm, and usually happen for a reason.
I actually don't totally disagree with him but I also don't think its all man either....You get face to face with an old grumpy grizzly that hasn't eaten in a while and you're in trouble which has nothing to do with man, and even if there are reasons why they attack like defending a berry patch or a kill they are eating, that you happen to stumble upon, it doesn't make it less dangerous.
Basically I'd say I agree with him that they are not near as dangerous as people make them out to be but I also don't believe they are as safe to be around as he says either. And I don't think that it's entirely man's fault when there is a dangerous encounter.
The Following User Says Thank You to Bootsy For This Useful Post:
I watched a TV documentary about this fellow a while ago. IIRC he acted as a mother for orphaned cubs and would take them out teaching them to fish, etc. He would also teach them to avoid older males as they could kill the cubs so I wouldn't say all bears aren't dangerous but he understood which ones and which situations to avoid.
Bears, they ain't all bad.
