Apparently some folks are upset about a bear named Bozo being killed during this year five day archery bear season, after a man fed the bear for 17 years. As far as I’m concerned the hunters performed a public service, and the guy who fed him needs to stop his whining and be thankful he’s not getting fined. Wild animals habituated to being fed by humans are potentially dangerous.
New Jersey is finally going ahead with a bear hunt after several years of not having one, due to Corzine caving to animal rights whack jobs. I expect this coming bear hunt is going to be protested.
I read an article on the death of Tim Treadwell (might have been the one that got expanded into “The Grizzly Maze”, might not) where they interviewed a bunch of park Rangers on the issue of bear attacks. One of the things they all agreed on was that bear attacks mostly happen when the bears lose their natural fear of humans: until that point, the bear will avoid contact and he’s better at that than humans are at forcing it. One of the rangers made it explicit that feeding bears caused them to lose their fear of humans and then to equate humans with food… and after that, that bear was going to need to be killed.
I seem to remember that Michael Crichton once made the case that feeding bears actually wasn’t dangerous; a couple of years ago, I tried to find the link to his presentation, but I couldn’t. It was in something where Crichton was complaining about how the wilderness was very mismanaged. I should probably try again to find it.
In any case, if you’re feeding a wild bear–and even if it is safe to do so, as Crichton may have been claiming–if that wild bear gets legally hunted down, you have no right to complain.
If you’ve somehow domesticated that bear, and it was on your property (I would suspect that the law would frown on that, though), and then someone killed it, then complain, and even sue, as much as you want.