The dilemma of wandering wildlife

Nothing else will get a controversy going like wildlife being somewhere where it should not — especially if it’s in conflict with the safety and welfare of Homo sapiens.

Moose that wander into town in Canada, Maine, Alaska, and other places are a case in point. They sometimes jump into the windshields of cars, run through people’s backyards carrying off clotheslines and underwear, kick or gore people’s pets and even run into trains. However, people love them anyway.

A coyote wandering through someone’s back yard with the sun highlighting his jaunty tail can be a moment of beauty to one person, while to another it represents death to a pet lamb.

Alligators are eating people and pets in the Southeast and it appears that situation is going to get even more exciting as alligator and human populations expand and spread into each other’s territory.

Cougar have attacked people riding bicycles, stalked hikers, wandered through people’s backyards and at the least scared the daylights out of a variety of humanity that never — in their worst nightmare — thought they would meet one head-on. However, we love them anyway.

Even unsuspecting people feeding birds in their backyard have had serious conflicts — like the person who was filling a bird feeder and was suddenly attacked by a mule deer looking for a handout.

The lovely and oft-loved common golden mantel ground squirrel of Sisters, Crater Lake and Disney fame is an audacious moocher and at the same time, a known carrier of the bubonic plague. I have seen people invite these charming little critters up into their laps and when they are told that they are making contact with a plague-carrier they are offended. You just cannot help lovin’ ’em, no matter what.

The controversy spreading through the Sisters’ community at this moment over a young bear that was shot because it was in the wrong place at the wrong time is another example of the conflict between wandering wildlife and the safety of people. It’s a can of worms no matter how you look at it.

It is nearly impossible for some people to look at a bear confrontation in the objective or clinical way in which professional wildlife managers have to see it.

The bear in Sisters that was shot as a “nuisance,” as innocuous as he may have been, had the potential of killing someone or their livestock. However, when it was killed the pot was stirred between those who look at the contact as a lovely moment in nature and those who saw it another way.

If a wild animal is allowed — invited? — to run loose in your backyard and we hope that it will eventually get the message and go back to where it belongs, the risk of serious injury to man and beast is always there. When it does happen — and it’s not a case of “if” but “when”— the stuff will hit the fan and the Legislature (and public) will point the finger straight at the wildlife managers and demand that “something must be done!”

If the wildlife managers live-trap a bear, alligator, moose, snake or cougar and send it off to somewhere else — as it often the case — they are placing that animal into direct conflict with those of their kind and passing the “problem” on to someone else.

People desire to live closer to nature, but find themselves at jeopardy when that very nature steps into their backyard.

Right in the thick of all this is that detached wildlife manager.

To some professional managers a bear on the loose near people is nothing more than a nuisance. “Kill the stupid thing,” may be the only solution that person can see. Mitigation is just not in the cards. Bang! Problem solved, on to the next project and don’t pay any attention to those “bleeding hearts.”

Another part of the problem are the people who desire to make contact with wildlife, have great concern over the welfare of wildlife, lovingly protect wildlife, enjoy the presence of Bambi and his kind, but often do not, or refuse to understand the risks involved.

The Magical World of Disney, Aesop, and thousands of beautiful folk tales about the beauty of wildlife sometimes cause problems when the fact is overlooked and misinterpreted that there is no such thing as “good” or “bad” in the World of Nature. What happens just happens within a set of “rules” that many people cannot understand, appreciate or tolerate.

The solution of these conflicts may only be found in forbearance. Everyone has to stop for a moment and understand the other person’s point-of-view and what is best for people and wildlife — in that order. If the danger to either people or wildlife is critical and demands instant action then communication is vital to allow people to grasp why the action must be carried out immediately.

It is time for wildlife managers to go public with a clear-cut policy that will keep conflict between philosophy and management from becoming a controversy.