To co-exist, some bears must die

Then what?

When an aggressive bear decides to drop down lower on Campbell Creek to fish in one of the bandit snagging holes near Lake Otis Parkway and Tudor Road, do we give the bears Campbell Park too?

And after that what?

Do we give them the entire Campbell Creek greenbelt, move all the trails and human use out of there, and wall the area off with bear-proof fencing to separate bears and people?

Look, nobody with a heart can avoid feeling sorry for the sow grizzly now implicated in a variety of confrontations and at least one mauling in Bicentennial. Yes, she is trying to be the best mother she can be, but the same could be said of some crack-addicted human who takes her children to the crack house with her because she can't find a baby sitter.

Nobody feels much sympathy for those people. The public clamber to take their children away.

Why is it so different for bears? The fact is that the sow making Bicentennial dangerous is not being a very good mother.

Consider, for a moment, the lesson she is teaching her cubs:

When people come around, don't slink back into the woods and hide, confront them and chase them. If you get hold of one, maul them.

According to the latest mauling victim, the cubs have already learned to chase. How long before they learn to grab and bite if their constant exposure to the practices of their mother continues?

What do you think the expected survival time is for a cub that leaves mom with this understanding of how to behave around humans?

Not long.

Aggressive young grizzlies in Alaska invariably have their lives cut short by bullets. Just this summer, a bunch of them have died that way in the Cooper Landing area alone. And it's worth wondering if a couple of them didn't die that way in the Bird Creek area two years ago.

Remember the two aggressive young grizzlies at Bird Creek in 2006, the ones chasing anglers to get fish? A couple carcasses of grizzlies were found of Konickson Road in Bird last year. Grizzlies weren't chasing anglers that summer.

Could the two events be connected?

And please, don't any of you jump to the conclusion this is an endorsement for shooting and dumping bears. That is wrong in a whole bunch of ways before you even consider the fact it is illegal. People who shoot and dump bears should be caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law -- if for no other reason than the waste of a valuable resource.

The legal removal of some bears here and there is a different matter.

If bears and humans are to comfortably co-exist, some bears must die. It's that simple.

This is nature's way of sorting things out. Animals -- humans included-- who fail to learn proper survival strategies, die.

The sow causing problems in Bicentennial has not learned the proper survival strategy. The proper survival strategy for a bear living on the edge of Anchorage is constant vigil.

Stay alert. Sense people before they sense you. And avoid them.

Most of the park's bears are amazingly good at that. Such is the reason wildlife researchers were surprised to discover how many grizzlies were using the area when Sean Farley got in there and started studying bears.

Not only were the animals doing an excellent job of staying out of trouble, they were doing an equally good job of staying out of sight.

Starting with young Petra Davis, that all changed this summer, as we all now know too well.

No one will ever know if the 15-year-old Davis was mauled by the same sow with two cubs who chewed on 51-year-old runner Clivia Feliz on Aug. 8 and chased or confronted others in the days leading up to that attack.

Given the extent of Davis's injuries, I was always inclined to believe she ran into a lone bear. The attack was out of character for a sow with cubs.

In the usual encounter involving such bears, the sow flattens a human and takes off with her cubs almost as soon as she's got the threat on the ground. Injuries are usually minor. Sows don't usually hang around long enough to engage in significant maulings as happened with Davis and again with Feliz.

They can, but they usually don't.

So what can we do about a sow that behaves differently? Fish and Game has decided to shoot her.

Maybe, by the time you read this, they will have found her (not nearly as easy as it seems) and that will have happened.

Maybe not.

Maybe the pleadings of people who want to see the sow live will have prevailed. Maybe the public pressure will have been enough to make authorities decide that if they can just get through a few more weeks without anyone being injured the bears will slide back into the mountains to look for berries in the weeks leading up to hibernation and the problem will go away.

Let's hope not.

Because a bear as inherently aggressive as this one appears to be isn't going to become a placid, secretive bear overnight. That isn't the way it works with animals -- moose, bears, dogs, even humans.

Yes, the latter two can be taught various forms of anger management, but it isn't always easy. And even that doesn't always work.

Since the state has yet to set up an anger-management program for bears, the only thing to do with a bear like this is kill it. And forget this nonsense about darting and relocating.

That's just setting up a disaster for someone stumbling into an aggressive bear far from anywhere. At least if the animal mauls someone in Anchorage, medical help is close at hand. If she mauls someone deep in the Susitna Valley or far back on the Kenai Peninsula, they will likely die.

Better the bear go first.

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Outdoors editor Craig Medred is an opinion columnist. Find him online at adn/com/contact/cmedred or call 357-4588.