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Post by Gorilla king on Dec 27, 2021 23:02:22 GMT -5
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Post by Gorilla king on Dec 30, 2021 22:29:22 GMT -5
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 3, 2022 9:29:43 GMT -5
Brown bears causing serious problems in Hokkaido
The Yomiuri Shimbun
SAPPORO — Brown bears have been causing serious problems in Hokkaido this fiscal year, killing four people and injuring eight others as of the end of November, with 2,163 sightings. These figures have all hit record highs.
The increasing number of interactions with brown bears is believed to be the result of a lack of food and their increasing population, as the Hokkaido prefectural government suspended a campaign to cull them decades ago.
The prefectural government is now considering extending its annual brown bear hunting season, which is from October to January, to April 15 at the latest.
Brown bears are the largest land mammal in Japan and can only be found in Hokkaido nationwide. A male brown bear can weigh over 400 kilograms, much heavier than the Asiatic black bears mostly found in Honshu. The diet of brown bears mainly consists of fruits and plants, but they also eat deer, salmon and trout.
One early morning in June, four people between the ages of 40 and 89 were attacked by a brown bear in a residential area in Higashi Ward, Sapporo, including one person who was taking out the garbage. The bear, about 1.6 meters in length and weighing 158 kilograms, then broke into the Ground Self-Defense Force’s Camp Okadama nearby.
The incident led to Sapporo Okadama Airport temporarily shutting down as it shares a runway with the camp, resulting in eight flights being canceled.
This was the first time a brown bear was spotted in the mostly flat Higashi Ward since 2004 when such records started being kept. The city government believes that the animal came down from the mountains following rivers and waterways in search of a female during breeding season.
In recent years, there have usually been either zero or just one death reported each year, however, four people have already been killed this fiscal year. In one incident, a woman in her 70s was attacked in July while working on her farm in the southern town of Fukushima, which faces the Tsugaru Strait. The farm is part of the habitat for brown bears, but until that incident, they had never attacked humans in that area before.
“Brown bears and humans seem to have coexisted to some extent,” said Hifumi Tsuruga, a senior researcher at the Hokkaido Research Organization who conducted an on-site investigation. “In this particular incident, the brown bear might have unintentionally come across the woman and instinctively attacked her.”
From fiscal 1965, the prefectural government had a campaign to cull brown bears during spring, but the initiative was discontinued in fiscal 1990 because the population began to decline. It is now estimated that their numbers have doubled to 11,700 in fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 1990.
However, brown bears faced a serious food shortage last year with fewer chum salmon and pink salmon migrating upstream, as well as fewer acorns. It is believed that the animals have been spotted more often because they are nearing people’s homes in search of food.
“Because the brown bear population has increased, we have entered a new period in which humans are coming into contact with them more often,” said Yoshikazu Sato, professor at Rakuno Gakuen University in Hokkaido and an expert on brown bear ecology. “Whenever we go into a forest, we need to assume that bears are nearby.”
A prefectural government official said, “We want to have bears fear humans and reduce the amount of damage they cause.”Speech
the-japan-news.com/news/article/0008132201
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 4, 2022 20:58:04 GMT -5
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 12, 2022 7:30:41 GMT -5
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 23, 2022 7:48:22 GMT -5
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Post by oldindigosilverback on Jan 25, 2022 3:48:20 GMT -5
Hope someone helps the poor bear cub out.
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 31, 2022 6:10:16 GMT -5
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Post by oldindigosilverback on Jan 31, 2022 6:53:32 GMT -5
/\ What a cruel mother. The little girl did nothing wrong. The bear has more of a heart than that mother.
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Post by Gorilla king on Jan 31, 2022 10:40:03 GMT -5
/\ What a cruel mother. The little girl did nothing wrong. The bear has more of a heart than that mother. That's right. The bear didn't touch her.
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Post by Gorilla king on Feb 1, 2022 0:20:11 GMT -5
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Post by Gorilla king on Feb 2, 2022 8:39:45 GMT -5
Winter means hibernation for some — but not all — of Kodiak’s bears
Jennifer Fogle Smith is a wildlife photographer in Kodiak. She’s been documenting the island’s bears for over 20 years — and she has some stories.
“This last year I had a beautiful ,sub-adult female, who was very athletic, was an acrobat,” she said. “And she had a beautiful, brilliant red salmon. And she picked it up, and then she caught it, and then she threw it up in the air again and caught it fully extended. And then she played with it for a little while and then she sauntered down the beach.”
She calls moments like that magic. They’re harder to come by in the winter, but this year was special — thanks to an earlier than usual snowfall and frigid November temperatures.
“Mixed all together, we had bears that we could see that were actively fishing, and they would be covered in ice,” said Fogle Smith. “And ice bears are kind of unique and exciting to see.”
Larry Van Daele was the bear biologist on Kodiak Island for 34 years and most recently served on the Board of Game. He retired last summer. Van Daele said the last time the ice bears were out was four or five years ago.
“And it’s an opportunistic thing as well because we have a group of bears here on the road system, especially this year, that are real tolerant of people,” he said. “And they’ve stayed out longer than usual on the salmon streams because the silver salmon are running real late.”
There are more than 3,000 bears on Kodiak and the surrounding islands. They’re the largest species of brown bear in the world. And they’re generally less aggressive than grizzlies, their Interior relatives.
Van Daele said Kodiak bears don’t have to fight over food and territory like other brown bears, thanks to Kodiak’s expansive habitat and food sources. And they’ll generally stay within one or two drainages looking for food.
“The bears on the north end of the island don’t go down to the south end to go fishing,” he said. “They just use basically what’s in their backyard.”
By late November and into early December, they head into their dens for hibernation — but not all of them. About 30% of the Kodiak male bear population don’t den at all, according to Nate Svoboda, the state’s area management biologist with Fish and Game.
“So, there are bears out and about on Kodiak Island year round,” he said. “And that’s an important thing as a manager to know and certainly an important thing to know as a resident of the island.”
Those bears spend their time foraging and intermittently bedding down under spruce trees, kind of like a winter nap schedule. Biologists don’t know exactly why some of the bears don’t hibernate, but Svoboda said it is unique. Running across a Kodiak bear in winter is unlikely, but it can happen.
“And if you do, I think it’s important to realize that, you know, bears this time of year are very slow and lethargic,” said Svoboda. “Their metabolism is slowed down, they’re moving very slow, so they might not respond to people like they will in the summer.”
There’s been just one bear-related fatality on Kodiak Island in the last 75 years. The last attack was back in late summer of 2020, when a runner surprised a bear on a trail on Pillar Mountain, just above town. Svoboda said Fish and Game managers from all over the country call him for advice on how to cut down on interactions between humans and bears. He said locals’ respect for bears is key to that relative harmony. Part of that is economic – visitors fly to Kodiak Island for bear sightseeing tours and trophy hunting trips. But veteran bear biologist Larry Van Daele said there’s also a cultural pretext.
“The Alutiiq people, the Sugpiaq people, who were the original stewards of this land, they have a very strong tradition of respecting bear,” he said. “And I think the other folks that have come over the years have blended in with that strong tradition of respect.”
Svoboda said the bears should start making their way out of the den in June.
www.alaskapublic.org/2022/01/31/winter-means-hibernation-for-some-but-not-all-of-kodiaks-bears/
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Post by Gorilla king on Feb 7, 2022 17:56:02 GMT -5
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Post by Gorilla king on Feb 10, 2022 18:05:28 GMT -5
Tech leaders justify project to create army of AI-controlled bulletproof grizzly bears as inevitable part of progress:SUNNYVALE, CA—Attacking the “ignorant Luddites” who questioned the wisdom and necessity of the program, the nation’s top tech leaders issued a statement Thursday calling their industry’s plan to create an army of AI-controlled bulletproof grizzly bears an unavoidable and inevitable part of progress. “Let’s be real: Sentient machines that control thousand-pound bears with razor-sharp titanium claws are going to happen no matter what we do, so we might as well be the ones who do it,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who, along with leaders such as Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, signed a letter pushing back against critics who had described the Grizzly Project as dangerous, unnecessary, and damaging to humanity. “Any kind of regulation on this front will only hinder America’s ability to design and mass-produce high-quality indestructible grizzlies, which is the way the world is headed. You can’t stop progress, and you can’t really separate deadly bears that shoot acid from their mouths from the technology that helps people every day. Besides, these grizzlies have many nonlethal uses. Do you want to deny an elderly woman a powerful machine-bear hybrid that can carry her groceries and dispense her medication just because it also has the potential to kill millions of human beings?” At press time, Congress had approved $8 billion in research grants for the Grizzly Project after hearing China was well on its way to developing fire-breathing pandas.
www.google.com/amp/s/www.theonion.com/tech-leaders-justify-project-to-create-army-of-ai-contr-1848402815/amp
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Post by Gorilla king on Feb 17, 2022 0:23:42 GMT -5
Enormously Round Bear Causes Turmoil In South Lake Tahoe
The California Fish & Wildlife is on the hunt for a massive 500-pound bear in South Lake Tahoe. This tank is apparently a frequenter of properties in the Tahoe Keys community, often spotted searching for food in the area, and has damaged 38 homes and caused more than 150 calls to officials. Because of the beasts frequent visits to populated areas, state officials want to trap the bear and put him down. The Bear League, and some locals, consider this to be cruel and unusual punishment.
“It’s how the community feels. They do not want the bear to pay the price for human ignorance. So when a bear is set to die in their community, people take a stand.” – Ann Bryan with the Bear League, CBS Sacramento
Both the Fish & Wildlife and the Bear League agree that a relocation for the bear would be a death sentence, as it never learned to properly hunt and would likely die a terrible death of starvation. Instead, the Bear League is hoping the bear could be moved to an out-of-state sanctuary, and a meeting will be held to discuss the bear on Wednesday, February 16th.
www.google.com/amp/s/unofficialnetworks.com/2022/02/16/enormous-bear-causes-turmoil/amp/
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Post by Montezuma on Feb 17, 2022 5:24:38 GMT -5
I want to hug this bear.
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Bear news
Feb 17, 2022 14:29:31 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by fluffyfatbear on Feb 17, 2022 14:29:31 GMT -5
A cyborg grizzly bear… I don’t know why but the idea just sounds funny! It’s astounding there is a chance that this will become reality
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Post by fluffyfatbear on Feb 17, 2022 14:29:51 GMT -5
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Post by Gorilla king on Feb 17, 2022 15:28:45 GMT -5
A cyborg grizzly bear… I don’t know why but the idea just sounds funny! It’s astounding there is a chance that this will become reality You think a tiger would attack one of those?
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Bear news
Feb 17, 2022 19:49:15 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by Montezuma on Feb 17, 2022 19:49:15 GMT -5
A cyborg grizzly bear… I don’t know why but the idea just sounds funny! It’s astounding there is a chance that this will become reality You think a tiger would attack one of those?A tiger does not even tries to attack the smaller sloth bear from front. So i guess the tiger will do nothing. O wait, i forget, the tiger will run away as far as the bear could not smell him.
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