Please don't feed the bears

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/05/opinion/sterba-wildlife-intrusion/index.html?hpt=us_mid Please don't feed the bearsBy Jim Sterba December 6, 2013 -- Updated 0037 GMT (0837 HKT) A bear ambles in a Montrose, California, neighborhood. Bears come to urban areas for water, pet food and trash.STORY HIGHLIGHTS Jim Sterba: Wildlife more and more encroaching on our space, and we into theirs A bear mauled a woman in Florida neighborhood; deer-vehicle accidents kill Sterba: Conflicts between people and wild animals will rise as they lose fear of us We indulge them, he says, but we should be reinstilling their fear Editor's note: Jim Sterba is the author of "Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Conflicts Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds." The paperback edition was published in November. He was a foreign correspondent and national affairs reporter for four decades, first for The New York Times and then the Wall Street Journal. He also wrote "Frankie's Place: A Love Story," about summers in Maine with his wife, the author Frances FitzGerald. (CNN) -- Fear is a terrible thing to waste. Yet modern Americans have squandered it as a tool for managing burgeoning populations of wildlife. A woman is in the hospital after she was mauled by a bear while walking in her central Florida neighborhood on Monday. Authorities caught a 75- to 100-pound yearling, but think the larger predator bear is still on the prowl. Tom Shupe thinks black bears have a people problem. He's a state wildlife biologist once responsible for dealing with growing bear-vs.-people conflicts in central Florida. I spent time with Shupe while researching the book "Nature Wars." He explained that perpetually hungry black bears need plenty of food habitat. Parents disown yearlings, forcing them to find new space. As their populations grow, they spread out, often from the Ocala National Forest south into the swampy sprawl of Greater Orlando. Trouble starts when a bear turns up in a backyard. Instead of scaring it away, too many people say: "Oh, isn't he cute. Let's toss him a cookie. Get the camera." Thus begins a photo collection of "Our Bear." But it's the beginning of the end for that bear, because the people are teaching it to associate the smell of people with food. The bear comes back for more. Soon it's breaking into the house. The people call 911: "Do something about your bear." Jim SterbaShupe arrives, darts the bear and moves it 100 miles. But the bear has learned people equals food, and does it again. After three strikes, the bear is shot -- euthanized. But it's not the bear's fault. It's the people's fault. Deer are eating our gardens and spreading ticks that cause Lyme disease; coyotes are killing our pets; turkeys are chasing our children to school; and geese have overrun our soccer fields because they don't fear us. And we have done all sorts of things to help them lose their natural fear. People say our conflicts with wild creatures are our fault because we encroached on their habitat. True, but only half the story. Many species encroached right back. Why? Because our habitat is better than theirs. Ours can sustain many more of them than their un-peopled landscape. We put out all sorts of food for them: lawns, gardens, shrubbery, birdseed, grill grease, garbage, dumpster waste. We offer water: Air-conditioner drip pans are water fountains for raccoons. Edges and hiding places are homes: A coyote can have a litter of pups in that brush behind your garbage and you won't know it. And we offer protection from predators, mainly ourselves. The results are mounting in people-vs.-wildlife conflicts. We should be celebrating a conservation success story that is unique on the planet. Instead, we demonize elegant creatures and fight over what to do, or not to do, about too much of a good thing. How did this happen? How did we turn this story into such a mess? In a nutshell: Over the last century and half, forests grew back on abandoned farmland; a century ago we ended commercial hunting and began restoring wild bird and animal populations. Since World War II we sprawled out into suburbs and exurbs -- something early conservationists didn't imagine. The 2000 census showed that for the first time, an absolute majority of the population lived neither in cities nor on working farms but in the vast sprawl zone in between. That's where family farms were a century ago. Today, it's full of trees and filling with wildlife. We've become forest people -- yet we spend 90% of our time indoors. There we get most of our nature on digital screens, where wild creatures are often portrayed as pets performing all sorts of antics. Research suggests that the white-tailed deer's biggest predator since the last Ice Age has been man. But sprawl man has largely gotten out of the predation business. He doesn't hunt and doesn't want others to hunt around him. He's peppered the landscape with hunting restrictions and enacted all sorts of laws against hunting, firearms discharges, even bow-and-arrow use in some places. What this means is that in just the last few decades, for the first time in 11,000 years, huge swaths of the whitetail's historic range -- the Eastern United States -- have been put off-limits to its biggest predators. No wonder deer have burgeoned out of control. In Massachusetts, for example, it's illegal to discharge a firearm within 150 feet of a hard-surfaced road or within 500 feet of an occupied dwelling without the occupants' written permission -- often not easy to get. Those two laws alone put almost two-thirds of the state effectively off-limits to hunting. Trouble starts when a bear turns up in a backyard. Instead of scaring it away, too many people say: "Oh, isn't he cute. Let's toss him a cookie." Jim SterbaLots of states have similar restrictions and most were imposed in the name of safety. Guns kill 31,500 people annually in the United States, but hunters are relatively safe. Estimates say about 100 people die in hunting accidents, mainly in cases of mistaken identity. These days, deer kill more than twice that many, both in deer-vehicle crashes and when drivers swerve into a tree or an oncoming vehicle. These accidents hospitalize another 30,000 people. Don't swerve: Hit the deer. Overabundant white-tails, meanwhile, do enormous damage to the landscape, and not just gardens and shrubbery. They are ruining our forests by eating their understories so trees can't regenerate. No seedlings. No places for understory birds and the insects they feed their newborn. Black bears are shy and docile creatures motivated by hunger and fear, but they, like deer, beavers, turkeys, waterfowl and others, were almost wiped out in the United States by the end of the 19th century. Daniel and Rebecca Boone reportedly killed 155 of them in one season in Kentucky. With protection, they slowly came back in the 20th century, to about 750,000 in 2002 and perhaps a million or more today. Between 1900 and 2009, black bears killed 63 people -- 86% were in the last 40 years. Why the increase? More bears and more denatured people living in the same habitat. Birdseed sellers now refer to wild birds as "outdoor pets," helping to condition people to think that putting out food for wild animals is an act of kindness. It isn't. Food and no fear have turned many normally nocturnal wild creatures diurnal. They hang out among us in the daytime. Nuisance wildlife control people say tossing rocks at coyotes would help reinstill their fear of people. Instead, I've known people to toss them dog biscuits. Carrying a stick or a golf club is enough to deter wild turkeys, mail carriers tell me. Bear-proofing your garbage cans and taking down your birdfeeders in spring are no-brainers. Conflicts between people and wild animals will continue to rise as both populations grow into one another. There are all sorts of ways to mitigate them, both lethal and nonlethal. Some work better than others. Reinstilling their fear will help. Feeding them won't. Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter. Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jim Sterba.

韓良露／中產階級移民失落的美國夢

【聯合報╱韓良露】 2013.04.23 01:50 am

在舊金山灣區、洛杉磯待了一個多月，和親友故舊閒聊，發現有一主題隱隱浮現其中，可將之定為失落的美國夢。 起因是許多來自台灣的移民第一代，不少是碩博士的菁英，雖然大多自覺英文不夠好，卻也可以晉身年薪八萬十萬以上的中上階級。這些第一代移民對美國生活都不 能說是完全適應，但大多都是為了在美國出生的ＡＢＣ小孩或小學、國中後才來美國念書的小留學生兒女，選擇留在美國打拚，目的都是為了給子女更好的教育、更 好的未來，追求所謂犧牲第一代來成就第二代的美國夢。 我曾聽過不少第一代移民的父母，說他們自覺不如他們的子女優秀，首先第一代移民的英語當然不如從小說英語的子女，常常被子女糾正英語的父母，就容易以為子 女的英文很好，卻不知他們的小孩英語不錯，並不等於英文夠好。語言與文化的學習並不能單靠學校，家庭提供的養分也很重要，許多在加州（尤其是洛杉磯）生活 的台灣移民，都像過著雙重生活，上班上學才要面對美國社會，下了班放了學則過起了華人聚居的生活。 對優秀子女懷抱遠大夢想的父母，許多在過去幾年遭逢到全無所料的意外打擊，他們怎麼也沒想到花費了他們大半養老金從名校畢業的優秀子女，有不少竟然找不到工作或找不到與學歷相當的工作，雖然這是世界性經濟不景氣與年輕世代失業潮的全球問題，但誰像他們為子女付出這麼多？ 像他們在台灣的親友對小孩的投資就不如他們多，而他們早年一直偷偷覺得他們在美國長大的小孩可比台灣同齡的小孩優秀，他們曾對子女懷抱著美國夢，如今夢想 卻不能實現。最殘酷的是每一代的父母都希望子女比自己強，但身為第一代移民的他們，勉強還可以在美國主流社會工作，收入也屬中上階級、中產階級，怎麼他們 的子女卻變成進不了主流職場、淪為無工作、無健保、打零工的低層階級。 前陣子，美國有一份調查顯示，美國各校的畢業生中，最有表現者呈現Ｍ型，一是家境極為富裕的學生，另一是家境極為窮困的學生，而中產階級的子女卻像在社會 階級上淪落的中產階級般陷入困境。為什麼如此？因為極富者有足夠的家庭資源完成野心，極窮但教育良好者也有夠強的野心爭取社會資源。 有個朋友跟我提起，她移民美國時，大女兒已經念高中了，小女兒才念小學，早期小女兒適應良好，學校也念得好，但畢業後先找不到工作，後勉強找了個不到三萬 美金的文書工作；沒想到大女兒卻因為會說讀寫中文，在舊金山找到了為中國商貿的譯事工作，年薪近十萬美金。在校成績並不比妹妹好的姊姊，職場利基卻在可同 時掌握美、中兩地的語文資源；另一位剛從美國被聘任進入上海外商工作的第二代台灣移民，在眾人中獲得新職的利器除了專業外，還有英文好及會說讀寫中文。 美國今日即使還是世界舞台的中心，但完成美國夢的平台卻不一定在美國，只看到美國資源卻忽略原鄉資源的移民父母可要好好深思了。 （作者為南村落總監、生活美食家） 【2013/04/23 聯合報】@ http://udn.com/

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