You DO NOT Have To Include Mortallity Rates in The Bear Research

One of the reasons many uninformed people site as a reason for the bear research being done by Dr. Lynn Rogers and his staff at the Wildlife Research Institute in Ely,MN, is because bear mortality rates are not being consdered. These people believe that it should be alright to hunt and kill one of the bears, after years of unbroken research on many of them, because mortality rates are part of a bears life cycle.

First, let me say that there are many different types of animal resaerch, and many different ways of doing that research. What we knew about animal biology and behavior in the past, and what we want to know know, - has changed. And research techniques hve changed, and so has the technology to do wildlife research.

To respond to the "mortality" claim, let me ask a few questions:

When I was doing whitetail deer scraping activity research for 10 years, what did the mortality rates of the deer have to do with deer scrape activity? When I was researching how goose feeding strategies and feeding patterns changed in response to changes in the weather, what did goose mortality rates have to do with goose feeding habits? When I was doing turkey gobbling activity research in relation to turkey breeding phase changes, what did turkey mortality rates have to do with turkey gobbling activity? When I was doing elk communication research, what did elk mortality rates have to do with how elk communicate with each other?

Now let me ask this question: What do bear mortality rates have to do with the denning behvaior of pregnant sow bears, or to sow and cub behavior during the cub's first two years of life, or the home range size of different sexes and ages of bears, and individual to individual interactions of an extended clan of bears to each other, and to unrelated bears?

The answerto all of thequestions above - is nothing. Mortality rates do not have to be considered in every type of animal research project. And mortality rates do not have to be considered in Dr. Rogers bear research.

So - the contention that Dr.Roger's research is invalid, because bear mortality rates are not included or considered in it - is false.

In answer to the claim that Dr. Rogers resaerch is unethical, because he places camers in the dens of the bears, let me say this. If researchers want to know what occurs in a bear's den during the winter, they have to regularly observe the bears in the den, so they can document the behavior of each of the bears and the interactions between the sow and cub. As far as I know there are only two ways to observe bear behavior in the den; 1. to either physically enter the den, possibly distrubing the bear in the process, or 2. to place an unobtrusive camera within the den, and watch it from a distance, without entering the den at all or disturbibg the bears.

The sceond option seems to me to be the best alternative.

These objections to hunting research bears, seem to be raised by a very vocal minofrity, some who appear to have no good reason at all (they just like to be obnoxious), some who just do not like anyting to impede their "right" to hunt, some who appear to be young and/or uneducated, or cannot comprehend the damge the loss of one of these bears will do to this longstanding research project, some who have no hunting ethics, some who believe that killing one of these research bears with ribbons attached to their collars will elevate them to the status of "super hero" with their friends, or to famous hunting personalities - and all who seem ingnorant of the damage that their behavior portrays about hunting and hunters in general, to a public that has just as much right to enjoy the bears alive, as these hunters do dead, and whose tax dollars help pay for wildlife conservtion and management too.

Those people who actively want to hunt and kill one of the resaerch bears, do a great injustice to those hunters who see no need to kill one of the bears, and in fact who can see the benefit of keeping the bears alive.

The owner of the "Lily;Bear with a Bounty" Facebook page, those who agree with his position, and those who are actively trying to kill one of the research bears, are no friend to the rest of the hunters, and the hunting industry, in Minnesota.

God bless, and enjoy the great outdoors,