Black Bear

On Thursday night (28th January) I watched a Natural World documentary entitled 'Bearwalker of the Northwoods' on BBC iPlayer. I put this on thinking it would be simply the story of a biologist gaining black bear's trust using food but this documentary was so so much more. I love watching anything to do with animals and nature, if there's a program on I’m there, totally enthralled in it. However, this documentary meant more to me than any other. It truly hit home and was an intimate, heart wrenching story that had tears welling in my eyes.

The fact that this biologist had worked with black bear's from ever he could remember and had such a relationship with these often feared animals was incredible in itself but the story he told and the following of the bears he worked with, brought you straight into the story and had you feeling every emotion that he was going through. Mother bears leaving their cubs after a year so that they could find a new mate, the rivalry between mother and cubs afterwards because her new cubs were now what she protected, cubs suffering due to disease and mothers having to leave them behind dying - all of these brought emotions that I just couldn't simply believe. Disbelief, shock, enlightenment but most of all pure sadness.

There was one thing though that I could not and I mean could not simply get over - hunting season. The length in season varies between each state in America depending on the black bear population, for some it's an all year round season for others it last 6 weeks. "Black bears can live to a staggering 25 years old but due to hunting most are lucky if they reach the age of 2"; I couldn't believe what I was heaing when this was said. To help protect the bear's being followed in this documentary, the biologist's had wrapped brightly coloured ribbons around their tags so that they would stand out. Posters were even created welcoming the bear hunters, with large fonted messages, asking them to spare any tagged research bears. Sadly, the hunters weren't interested in research or as courteious as the biologist's as many of the bears that I had watched and been following in the program had been killed within the first 2 days of hunting season. Heart wrenching and too sad for words. Not only was this bad enough but soon came the feeling of being appalled. As much as I love animals when it comes to hunting them, under certain circumstances I can understand that it's food for tribes and so on but this, this was just murder in my eyes, a game to these hunters, a trophy kill, a rug for their floor and a head for their wall. To me this is totally unacceptable and just not right! This is simply one thing that I will never condone or understand.