Baby Bears Say Please Help Us

Okay, so I am not a crazy environmental freak, but Herr President and his cronies have such a bad record on protecting out furry friends that I feel myself speaking up more and more. Today they have put forth a proposal to to delist the Grizzly Bear from the nation's endangered species list. They would like to 'upgrade' their status from endangered to threatened. On the surface, this would seem to be an item for celebration: since 1982, the number of Grizzly Bears in Yellowstone park has risen from the frightening 200 to about 600. But removing the Grizzly Bear from the endangered species list opens it up to a whole lot of, well, danger, such as the potential for Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana to legalize the hunting of the bears. Although the population would be tightly monitored for 5 years after the change, this would only cover the 6 million acres under the proposal, even though the Grizzly Bear's natural range is nearer to 9 million. One-third of the bears' current habitat could be opened to drilling, logging and human development under the agency's plan. Proponents of the delisting point to the recent revival sparking between elk hunters and bears. This is in part because the whitebark pine seeds grizzlies need are in shorter supply now from a beetle infestation induced by warming climate. OKAY WAIT - so we are supposed to let bears die in foavor of people who shoot animals for fun, because bears have go out looking for a seed closely linked to female bears ability to have children because we've fucked up the environment enough to cause climate change ?!?!?!? Does that seem fair? And who gives a shit about elk hunters. These people want to SHOOT BEARS. THat's what they want. Defenseless elk are not enough. They want to kill bears. And the reason the bear population dwinded in the first place was do to hunting and the destruction of habitat. Isn't that what Herr President is proposing again?

Grizzly Bears are considered a keystone species to an ecosystem, that means you can tell if the ecosystem is healthy by the number of bears that it can sustain. And just a reminder, Bear Attacks on humans are extremely rare. A person is 180 times more likely to be killed by a bee than a bear and 160,000 times more likely to die in a car accident.

If you love bears like I do, please check this blog for updates as the public will have 90 days to comment on the proposal and I will include links to where you can do that. If you want to help the bears right now, you can ADOPT-A-BEAR like Erin and I have. It only cost $25 and it will make a great christmas gift for someone who cares about their world.