Maureen Enns and Charlie Russell are a couple of naturalists who have been living with grizzley bears in Siberia, in order to demonstrate that grizzlies and humans can live together without violence. (They’ve got a website – be sure to check out the photo gallery).
Unfortunately, by protecting the bears, Enns and Russell pissed off some Russian gangsters who had been making money off of poaching grizzlies and salmon. This year, the gangsters decided to “send a message” to Enns and Russell by killing the dozens of bears the naturalists had been studying.
“I taught these bears to trust humans and it backfired,” Mr. Russell said.
Link via Metafilter..
That is sad…
Building, studying, observing, and preserving takes a lifetime. Killing and destroying only takes a few seconds. Human beings seem to be most efficient when doing the latter. What a sad and shameful story.
Damn silly idea, anyway. Grizzlies are notoriously dangerous.
This is one of the saddest, most disgusting stories I’ve heard in a very long time. They probably won’t catch the people who killed the bears, either.
Marcus, “Grizzlies are notoriously dangerous” is exactly the assumption that Maureen and Charlie were working to disprove–and for eight years, they were incredibly successful. It apparently wasn’t a “silly idea” at all.
I suppose it’s unfair of me, but I hope every last one of these killers dies some kind of hideous, pointless and premature death. As for the consumers of these “pricey folk remedies,” may they suffer violent nightmares –in which they relive the last moments of the murdered animals– every night for the rest of their lives. :( :(
amp, have you read any derrick jensen? if not, i highly recommend his books.
sorry, i only ask that because this topic, among others you have written about, remind me very much of his dialectics.
just tears…it’s almost unfathomable–the cruelty that lives inside some people’s hearts…
The irony of Marcus’ post just struck me:
A bunch of humans brutally murder twelve innocent animals–and he calls the bears dangerous.
A day later, and this story still bothers me.
How can we expect to create a peaceful society while this kind of meanness exists?
In this situation, teaching wild bears to trust humans was a really really bad idea. If you want this to work as a long-term conservation strategy, you have to be able to trust the humans first, and obviously you can’t. These researchers understand bears and there’s some good thinking behind their philosophy of conservation; but they’re hilariously bad at social engineering which is, after all, the biggest problem in conservation.
(slaps forehead.) Yeah, that’s brilliant thinking, Sander. It wasn’t the job of the corrupt and inept Russian Government to rein in the money-grubbing pieces of shit that murdered the bears. It wasn’t their fault nor the gangsters’ that the bears are all dead. It wasn’t the stupidity of the superstitious idiots willing to shell out their money for a bears’ gall-bladder thinking it would help them get a hard-on or whatever. No, it was those dumb, pathetic, irresponsible, flower-sniffin’ hippie scientists that are to blame. Got it, Thanks.
(rolleyes)
Ah my mistake. I see I should have offered some proof of my honorable intentions before submitting my opinion of an experiment conducted on wild bears in a place that isn’t secure against the intrusion of highly armed thugs.
Alright, I’ll replay in slowmotion: it was a good idea, any attempt to construct an environment in which reasonably civilized humans and reasonably wild animals can live together is a good idea.
To start by assuming that russian government, hunters, mafia, traditional medicine mob, etc. can be trusted not to interfere is a dumb idea, proceeding to wear away the natural defence of a wild animal is irresponsible.
‘”I taught these bears to trust humans and it backfired,” Mr. Russell said.’ The lesson I see here is: don’t teach bears to trust humans before you can trust humans. Which you can’t. That’s why I repeat: the basic idea is good, the execution is really really bad.
I think Amy has a point, though. Why does the entire human race get a smear for the actions of the Russian Mafia or the negligence of the government? Because bears don’t form mafias or corrupt governments? They don’t conduct scientific experiments of trans-special communication either. Human scientists do. Either way, it seems silly to judge the moral quality of the human race based on the actions of either scientists or thugs.
It is sad that the bears died. Those responsible should be brought to justice. But why give the scientists a hard time for not taking the Russian mob into account? How do you possibly incorporate their erratic actions into your prosectus?
Yet all in all, I do not see this as evidence of our inherent corruption as a species. Just further proof that there are self-centered assholes in the world.
Yeah sorry about that — I was angry about it when I posted, so it all came out a bit rabid. I especially didn’t mean to smear the whole human race, I used that word “humans” as an abbreviation in my view on this situation, because the researchers saw the site as a kind of testbed towards a transforming of the conventional relationship between humans and animals.
No, I can’t expect them to predict how the mob will react — but I’d say this is pretty conclusive evidence that it is a bad idea to reduce wild animals’ defenses against humans when you can’t be really really sure that the animals will be safe from them.
Their approach is called “extremely controversial in scientific circles” in the linked article. Maybe that’ll change to “dead end” soon. I still like their ideas and idealism and admire their dedication, and hope some safer iteration of their plans will be tried out in a safer place.
also, the article refers to how effective the anti-poaching police force had become in this part of the world, cutting down in bear poaching and caviar collecting. I guess that broke down too.