Black bear captured in Medford returns

What's wrong with people that they believe killing an innocent animal is the best way to deal with a problem.
How hard would it have been to trap this bear and take it further out, in an appropriate environment and then set it free?
Personally, I would much rather be surrounded by bears than the people who think killing them is okay.
The greatness of a nation can be judged by how they treat their animals. The same can be said for a town. Shame on the powers that be in Medford, that deem this behaviour to be okay.

What part of "78 mile return trip" did you not read? I can agree on some of what you said but how many times does it have to wonder into town before action is taken?

I, too, hate the thought of killing a bear like this, but I would rather the bear be dead than have some child attacked. It was obvious that if the bear was willing and able to travel almost 80 miles after being released in an area which would have had plentiful food and shelter, then it was establishing a territory near an elementary school. Removing it again, based on past history of bears, would not solve the problem. Once a bear has staked out a territory, it will return again and again until something terrible happens. This will happen again and again with a variety of wild animals as long as human beings continue to encroach on the territory of our wildlife. Once again the apex predator on the planet (humankind) has won and protected its territory.

Candy you are again absolutly right.These animal killers could have could have made at least one more attempt at saveing this young bears life. As opposed to senslesly slaughtering an animal,thats only doing what comes natural to it.

Paul, killing the bear may seem senseless and I am not any happier about it than you are. But you do have to weigh the safety of our children against that bear's life. If it had been able to sneak back to the school and injured or even killed a child before they could capture it again, would you still feel the same? I don't think so. When that bear chose to return to the same area near the school, the wildlife officials really had no choice. They can't keep capturing and removing every animal every time it returns. Some one would end up getting hurt or killed. Better the bear than a child. Remember we are not talking about a cute little bunny rabbit here. We are talking about a bear that has sharp claws and teeth and is big enough to do some real damage to someone if it becomes frightened or angry or is aggressive.

We can put people on the moon, surely we can figure out how to keep a bear out of a town and away from a school.

P. S. If they want to start getting rid of bad elements after giving them one more chance, let's start with the criminals that commit crimes over and over again.

Candy, I wish it were as simple as you make it sound. How would YOU keep a wild animal from returning to its territory? Any way that would involved technology would be prohibitively expensive. Do you have any idea what it cost to put a man on the moon? I'm sure the taxpayers would not want to spend that much on relocating stubborn bears, not even an endangered species. Sometimes, whether we are comfortable about it or not, we just have to do something drastic to protect our children. As our population keeps expanding and we keep building homes in the territories of bears and cougar, we will see these encounters increase.

Hey idiots, stop feeding the wildlife. That is how you keep them away.

Sheesh.

You might want to consider a suggestion to not respond to anything OID posts. He is obviously just a poor, lonely, and possibly mentally challenged rabble rouser and makes comments only to stir up trouble and show his negativity. He isn't worth the aggravation. I have chosen to ignore anything he posts on ANY forum, not just this one. You might consider joining the boycott against him. It will help clean up the posts which have no probative value.

GaiaGirl~ Here's my idea for keeping bears out of town. Stop building houses. In this economy new houses are not needed. Let's start selling the houses that are already here for a reasonable rate. And allow the people facing foreclosure to live in their homes for less. Thereby freeing up more land to leave for a buffer between us and wildlife.
Take the repeat offending criminals and the bears together and drive them a couple of hundred miles out (come on: a 78 mile round trip isn't that far) into the wilderness and release them together. That way the bears have a food source in their new home. After this, truck out all repeat offenders once a week to the bears new home and release the criminals, thereby ensuring the bears have a constant food source in which the bears will have no need to return to the populated area. The only cost would be the gas, vehicle upkeep, security efforts and employees to take the criminals out to the bears. I'm sure in the long run it would be less than what it cost to constantly process, incarcerate, feed and cloth them.
I know this sounds extreme but desperate times call for desperate measures. And to say that this bear returned even tho it was released where there was plentiful food I have to disagree. With the pollution and distruction of land and water, wildlife is having a harder time finding food.

To Candy:

I certainly agree with not building more homes. There are so many sitting empty right now, including many half-built homes that the contractors abandoned when the economy tanked. The people who insist on building huge homes miles from town, in the pristine forests, certainly are asking for trouble from bears and cougars and I have no sympathy for them when they loose their pets (pets that are perfect snack size for the predators in the woods).

Of course, the best answer is zero population growth, but that cannot be legislated. Birth control and the advantages of limiting family size should be taught to everyone the world over. If the world population stabilized then we would not be losing our rain forests to developers and our resources would not be overexploited.

But as long as people continue to overpopulate we will continue to have problems of poverty, hunger, illness, habitat destruction, and loss of good living conditions for all. We are our own worst enemies and too few of us really care enough to try to do anything about it.

GaiaGirl wrote:

You might want to consider a suggestion to not respond to anything OID posts. He is obviously just a poor, lonely, and possibly mentally challenged rabble rouser and makes comments only to stir up trouble and show his negativity. He isn't worth the aggravation. I have chosen to ignore anything he posts on ANY forum, not just this one. You might consider joining the boycott against him. It will help clean up the posts which have no probative value.

Typical thuggish Oregonian behavior on exhibit here.

Oregonians do not believe in free speech or opinions different from their narrow minded ones.

Can you imagine having these people living near you?

I'd rather have the bears.