Tweeters,

The grizzly killed near Cusick has been fairly well publicized. The man
who killed the bear apparently had no idea it was a grizzly until
well after it was dead. Over the past 10 or 20 years, there have
been quite a few grizzlies killed in the Selkirks Ecosystem, most
of them in Idaho or British Columbia but this makes the second
grizzly killed in the Washington portion of the ecosystem in
recent years. The previous one was a sow that had been fitted
with a transmitter for many years. It is believed that her two
cubs died after she was shot though no one ever found them.
I believe she was the first animal in the Selkirks fitted with
a transmitter collar, put on by then graduate student Jon Almack
who is now lead researcher on the caribou restoration project in
the Selkirks.

On the issue of bears and cougars coming into people's yards, I
would like you all to consider one other explanation. Male cougars
and bears are immensely territorial. Numbers in most areas are
regulated by land area and the sizes of defended territories. It is
true that human developments are steadily reducing the amount of
suitable land area for them but this has been the case for many
decades and the current spate of problems in residential areas is
rather unusual. Hunters using hounds and bait (prior to the prohibition)
usually hunted remote areas and killed animals that were maintaining
territories. Now that these most effective hunting techniques are
outlawed, fewer animals are removed from the core of our remote
landscapes. As a result, there is no room for young animals looking
for a place to establish their own territories. They must search
far and wide. Some of them end up trying out the shrubbery around
the subdivision on the outskirts of town where their attention is
soon drawn to the smells of the garbage can or the bark of the
resident Pekinese.

Kelly McAllister