Grizzly bear kills two people in Banff National Park

[Mightyfire89]

A bear should not be put down for being a bear. You go into their territory, you’re taking the chance of running into one and being killed. That’s on you, not the bear. End of story. If a bear comes into a village or town and is relocated a time or two and still comes back and poses a problem for humans, then it’s unfortunate but true that the bear should be put down but this is humans going into bear land and paying the price. Judgement, risk management etc should come into play.

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by Sliver

This is ####ing ridiculous and so disrespectful to the humans with families who just violently lost their lives.

"A tragedy for the bear." What the hell are you talking about? What about the deer, moose, elk and dozens of other animals hunters kill every year that would never even contemplate eating...EATING...a human. Is it a tragedy whenever we kill one of those, too? Maybe you just don't even understand what the word 'tragedy' means? FFS. I've seen more sympathy for this ####ing bear today online than for the people.

It's absurd. And it's not just their habitat. It's ours, too. We're allowed to exist.

By that logic, the bear was just eating a dinner to survive and got killed for it. If we're allowed to exist, then so are they. You cannot be mad at nature doing what nature does. To resist is arrogant.

Do we need to get into a debate now about eating animals as part of our diet? No? I thought not.

[Geraldsh]

At the mines in northern Saskatchewan they shoot nosey bears with yellow paintballs . If they see a bear with yellow spots they shoot it with red paintballs. A bear with yellow and red spots get shot dead with lead.

[PepsiFree]

The easiest solution to the moral quandary of killing a bear for “being a bear” would be to butcher the bear if you kill it. People make up the silliest rules when it comes to this stuff. “If a bear is coming to where you have arbitrarily decided you live, it should know better, so put that sucker down. If you’re travelling in the 30 square miles a bear might be jogging along, then it’s allowed to kill you and you can’t stop it, end of story.”

But no, under *no circumstances when faced with the option of a human life and a bear’s life should you choose the bear’s life. That’s ridiculous.

*exceptions made for Hitler, or Hitler equivalents

[doozwimp]

No one has made the claim that humans are not entitled to self defense in confrontations with bears.

How does eating the bear flesh after make it better? It's not like a human could use as a defense, "it's okay that I killed him, because I ate his flesh after."

While rare an encounter with a bear ending badly is always a possibility when we choose to visit the backcountry. Sucks that this happened, but it's not appropriate to gleefully whish vengeful retribution on the bear. It's just unfortunate all around.

[for the record I believe euthanizing the bear was the correct action]

[D as in David]

Originally Posted by dissentowner

Bear doing bear t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶s̶...

...necessities.

[Doctorfever]

Originally Posted by D as in David

...necessities.

The bear necessities, the simple bear necessities?

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

Brutal..

Ya Ha Tinda is a beautiful place, but is also super isolated. No mobile service, no tourists and miles of rural forested dirt road from civilization (except for a few buildings at the ghost river bridge junction there).

If it could've happened anywhere, not surprised it was a place like that.

It sucks that they had a gps beacon but it didn't help to save them.

[troutman]

My cousin shot a Grizzly that charged his camp. There was a big investigation by Fish & Wildlife.

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

Honestly if it's charging you/people, and you can shoot it down.. better to take the shot and over-react than take half measures and get mauled. And I love those animals.

Did it say if the victims deployed bear spray, or (sliver's favourite toy) bear bangers?

If those did nothing it's going to inject some renewed fear/caution into the general public.

I still maintain that 98% of bears out there are harmless if you don't give them reasons to act defensively.

[Minnie]

As someone who has lost a family member to a grizzly bear attack (9 years ago, but 2 weeks earlier in the month of Sept), I still feel badly the bear in this situation had to be euthanized. They are beautiful animals and I simply wish it could have been left to live out its days naturally. But, I also understand why F&W chose the action they did.

In our case, the bear (a sow with a cub) was not euthanized. I know that pretty much our entire family was against that action, when the topic was brought up by F&W. But, while she was in the area when the remains were recovered, she wasn't as nearby as it sounds like this grizzly was, and she wasn't acting aggressively to the personnel tasked with finding the remains, so there's that difference.

Insofar as I know, that sow has not ever been responsible for any further attacks or situations. It was simply a case of the "perfect" storm of a series of unfortunate circumstances, when the fatal mauling occurred with our family member.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

But no, under *no circumstances when faced with the option of a human life and a bear’s life should you choose the bear’s life. That’s ridiculous.

*exceptions made for Hitler, or Hitler equivalents

This is an interesting tangent, not so much value of wildlife vs humans, but how about work of art vs a human life or something of cultural significance vs human life.

Would killing someone in the act of protecting, say, the Mona Lisa or some other significant work of art from destruction be justified? I’d like to think I am fairly pro-human, but if some no-name dork was threatening to destroy a one of kind priceless piece of art, I would definitely feel conflicted.

[doozwimp]

Originally Posted by Wormius

This is an interesting tangent, not so much value of wildlife vs humans, but how about work of art vs a human life or something of cultural significance vs human life.

Would killing someone in the act of protecting, say, the Mona Lisa or some other significant work of art from destruction be justified? I’d like to think I am fairly pro-human, but if some no-name dork was threatening to destroy a one of kind priceless piece of art, I would definitely feel conflicted.

Since the Mona Lisa doesn't posess sentience and holds only extrinsic value killing someone in defense of it would be unjustified against a sentient individual with intrinsic value.

I think we all value humans more, but that doesn't mean the bear, or animals in general have such low value that we should seek to destroy them at a drop of a hat. Animals have plenty of value as they too are sentient individuals.

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

Additional part of the article that might provide some consolation:

Fatal bear attacks rare
Only 14 per cent of grizzly bear attacks worldwide lead to fatalities, said Titchener, making this incident a rare occurrence.

"Often when people have encounters with grizzlies, usually the grizzly goes one direction and the people go in the other," said Titchener.

"So we rarely do see cases where we actually have everyone involved killed."

Also say that surprising bears - particularly when they're out and about at dusk - is when things most often go sideways.

So make lots of noise if you're on trails with limited visibility.

Also the hikers we all hate who lug around portable speakers might be on to something. Annoying, but they're not surprising any animals.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by doozwimp

Since the Mona Lisa doesn't posess sentience and holds only extrinsic value killing someone in defense of it would be unjustified against a sentient individual with intrinsic value.

I think we all value humans more, but that doesn't mean the bear, or animals in general have such low value that we should seek to destroy them at a drop of a hat. Animals have plenty of value as they too are sentient individuals.

It gets a bit weird for me though how humans basically just categorize different species essentially based on how cute they are and then in some instances seem to prioritize them above humans. It’s actually super weird when you think about it.

Shooting ducks and hunting deer? AOK! Grizzly bear shot? The horror, because look at how beautiful they are? Weird. Step on ants? Who cares! Rats? They’re gross! Pheasants? Shoot ‘em up!

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

It gets a bit weird for me though how humans basically just categorize different species essentially based on how cute they are and then in some instances seem to prioritize them above humans. It’s actually super weird when you think about it.

Shooting ducks and hunting deer? AOK! Grizzly bear shot? The horror, because look at how beautiful they are? Weird. Step on ants? Who cares! Rats? They’re gross! Pheasants? Shoot ‘em up!

That’s why I offered the caveat of butchering the bear earlier, because while different cultures place different animals in different places on the arbitrary value order, the general rule seems to be that if you want to eat it or use it to survive you can kill it.

The western cultural animal valuation seems to mirror the same values we like in each other. Smarter, more attractive, more powerful animals at the top, dumb, ugly, weak ones at the bottom. People (most) don’t walk through the meat aisle thinking “tragedy, tragedy, tragedy,” nor do they swat a fly and think the same. Animals that didn’t do anything to us but annoy us at best, but need to die so we’re less annoyed or to feed our insane level of animal consumption. But we have to kill a bear because it killed some people and somehow that is a tragedy.

[Geraldsh]

Originally Posted by doozwimp

No one has made the claim that humans are not entitled to self defense in confrontations with bears.

How does eating the bear flesh after make it better? It's not like a human could use as a defense, "it's okay that I killed him, because I ate his flesh after."

While rare an encounter with a bear ending badly is always a possibility when we choose to visit the backcountry. Sucks that this happened, but it's not appropriate to gleefully whish vengeful retribution on the bear. It's just unfortunate all around.

[for the record I believe euthanizing the bear was the correct action]

Shooting a bear without eating it is wasteful indeed. They are in the same family as pigs, who doesn’t like bacon? Ham? Chops?

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Geraldsh

Shooting a bear without eating it is wasteful indeed. They are in the same family as pigs, who doesn’t like bacon? Ham? Chops?

I knew a fellow who quit eating bear after he saw one skinned. They look to much like a person.

but as to your point:

https://bear.org/are-bears-related-to-pigs/

Are Bears Related to Pigs?
No more than people are related to bears or pigs.

[Geraldsh]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

I knew a fellow who quit eating bear after he saw one skinned. They look to much like a person.

but as to your point:

https://bear.org/are-bears-related-to-pigs/

Are Bears Related to Pigs?
No more than people are related to bears or pigs.

Huh! Learned something new today, or unlearned something old .

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

I knew a fellow who quit eating bear after he saw one skinned. They look to much like a person.

but as to your point:

https://bear.org/are-bears-related-to-pigs/

Are Bears Related to Pigs?
No more than people are related to bears or pigs.

So by the transitive property, people also taste like bacon?