Oregon woman who fed bears ousted from home

reply to post by PsykoOps



Bears who have been hand fed can be more dangerous then a normal wild bear. The fact that they aren't wary of humans means they are more likely to approach us. The hand fed ones, like the ones in the article, get used to being fed when they approach a human. When they are not fed when they approach us they become aggressive.


www.bearsmart.com...

Whoa, $100,000 spent on feeding the bears! This was not a case of letting them feed from the garbage can or leftovers. And two dozen bears! Sounds over the top.

She had moved into the area from California and had plans to move out. Guess this will mean a little earlier than planned.

Branford said he was ordering Noyes out of her home because the state does not have the money to pay for a probation supervisor for misdemeanor crimes such as harassing wildlife, and he felt she would just ignore an order to quit feeding the bears.

Another local article

First off, I'm hardly a city dweller when I'm in the states. Secondly it's sad that the gentleman was killed, but after how many years and how many bears he'd had close contact with? There are a lot of people who have contact with bears every year and very few are ever injured or killed. People get mugged, are all people going to be mugged?

And Bears are not stupid, they know and trust our scent. They aren't going to go up to a stranger and beg for food, they usually take off. They are leery of strangers even on our properties after many years and I'm glad they are. It keeps them from getting shot by some jerk that thinks they want to make a meal out of him.

I guess it's hard to understand if you haven't been there, and you only know what are you are told.

[edit on 26-6-2009 by Sundancer]

reply to post by Sundancer



You can try and convince us til you are blue in the face. It doesn't change the fact that it is wrong.

I'm sure that guy who got eaten thought exactly like you. Learn from other peoples mistakes, don't repeat them.

Posted this in the wrong thread...

[edit on 6/26/2009 by defcon5]

Originally posted by defcon5

Posted this in the wrong thread...

[edit on 6/26/2009 by defcon5]

Dude I was looking for for the post you was replying to. Wondering what the hell that has to do with bears.

its not like she was handing out hard candy.

that is a lot of food. part of harmonizing with nature is knowing when to back off and let it run the course.

wildlife needs to be self sufficient. if hand fed for generations they would no longer hunt, thus disrupting the natural order. instead of tracking down their prey they would just go to granny's house, further impacting the food chain. they are not smart enough to stay away from us. we destroy everything. so we must keep ourselves in check or there is no balance.

having wild animals at the dinner table is not harmonious unless they are being served as the main course.

there will be no more wildlife if we domesticate every creature under the sun. domestication is not harmony, it is subservience... being subject to our desires.

feeding bears domesticates them. it is how wolves became dogs.

Originally posted by Sundancer
Secondly it's sad that the gentleman was killed, but after how many years and how many bears he'd had close contact with?

He was doing exactly the same thing she was doing. He was using food to get many of his pictures around wildlife. There is even a very famous picture of him sitting with a fox, if you look closely you’ll see that the fox is eating something out of his hand.

Originally posted by Sundancer
There are a lot of people who have contact with bears every year and very few are ever injured or killed.

Exactly…
That is because the bears are naturally afraid of humans. Feeding them changes that. Most bears attack when they become aggressive due to the presence of food, defending young or territory, or when you turn your back on them (invoking the chase response).

Originally posted by Sundancer
And Bears are not stupid, they know and trust our scent.

Yeah, and I really want a bear to associate my scent with dinner time…
Duh!

Originally posted by Sundancer
They aren't going to go up to a stranger and beg for food, they usually take off.

No, once humans start feeding a wild animal the animal begins to associate humans in general with being fed. They have a higher probability of not being afraid of other humans, and approaching them for food. This is why its often necessary to destroy and animal which has made this connection between man and food.

Originally posted by Sundancer
I guess it's hard to understand if you haven't been there, and you only know what are you are told.

Oh, I’ve been there, its questionable whether you have been.
If you would have been, you would know the tremendous precautions taken by folks who go into bear territory to make sure that they do not even present the scent of food (especially near camp), let alone actually feeding them. Why do you think that hikers are often required to carry their food in bear canisters?

Bear canisters are seeing increased popularity in areas where bears have become habituated to human presence, and are required in some regions such as Yosemite National Park in the United States.

Well, you can try and deny this all you like, but it is a well proven fact. Feeding wildlife causes loss of fear, association between humans and food, increases the likelihood of encounters, and increases aggression (presence of food).

Originally posted by jd140
Dude I was looking for for the post you was replying to. Wondering what the hell that has to do with bears.

Yeah, I had that thread open in another tab on the browser…
Pretty darn funny mistake though.

Originally posted by gravykraken
domestication is not harmony, it is subservience... being subject to our desires.

I often wonder what a wild cow looked like and how it acted.



reply to post by defcon5




I can remember about 50 years ago camping at Yosemite with my parents and going over to visit the nightly "show" put on by the bears feeding at the garbage dump. What did visitors get in return?...cars broken into, resulting in damage outside and in, food containers destroyed, too close encounters resulting in serious injury.

While it's nice to want to save wildlife, and valid to do so, to do it because we want to be like Grizzly Adams or see Yogi Bear in action is not good. We can project onto wildlife our love and also longing for the wild, but the moment we start to take over what they would do for themselves, they are no longer "wild".

1. How does the entire state not have a probationary officer?

2. I grew up on the edge of a large wooded area. The plant growth wasn't mature enough for the area to be called a forest, but if you went into the woods it was miles upon miles upon miles before you came to the next town.

We had bears. Nobody fed them, and nobody ever got hurt or even hindered by them. They were black bears, so they bolted if people came anywhere near them. I lived in that place for 21 years and saw a bear twice. If some peahat was out feeding them though, they would have come around all the time. They wouldn't have ran from people, and I never would have had the chance to enjoy the beautiful woods near my house.

One of the benefits of North America is that up here, you can pretty much let nature be nature. As long as you take common sense approaches, it's relatively safe up in these parts. But when you start mixing nature with the human world, well... let's just say we make a mess of everything we get our hands on, so maybe it's better if we just keep our hands off of nature.

reply to post by _Phoenix_


Here's the photo of my brother in law that I was talking about. I wasn't going to post it, but I already said I would before a couple of bear experts that have so much more life experience with bears than I, (NOT) joined the thread and started flaming me.

I'm not going to waste my time with any more.

...

reply to post by Sundancer


I'm not a bear expert.

Thats why I posted a link with information presented by bear experts.

Take a peek.

reply to post by Sundancer

Your picture proves nothing other then your brother-in-law broke the law (as a matter of fact I would remove that photo from the net). Just because he got away with doing it a few times does not make it safe. Treadwell got away with feeding them for 13 years, but it only took one bear attack, and he got the message loud and clear. Experts repeatedly warned him, and even banned him from parks, but like you, he would not hear about how wrong/dangerous this was. The bear in your photo is a black bear, and if it decided to go postal there would have been no way to make it stop other then to fight it off. Black bears are usually more skittish around humans, but when one decides to attack, they are actually harder to get off of you then a brown bear (Grizzly). For example, a black bear has no objection with eating something that it thinks is dead.

reply to post by Sundancer


Great photo. I know all kinds of people who feed and care for wildlife, that's a good thing when you know what you're doing (through experience).

I wouldn't let them bother you. Most Americans get what very little life experience they have from a book or a so called expert, they never live it themselves but will jump to condemn those that do. You'll notice for every expert that will tell you something is bad, there's another that'll tell you it's good.

Keep experiencing life, let them keep their books. People fear what they don't understand.

This is why you don't feed bears.....

The state maintained that when Noyes went on vacation last July, the bears – accustomed to being fed – began aggressively raiding her neighbors’ property looking for food.

When she wasn't there to feed them they became aggressive, as they no longer knew how to forage for food.

During a three-week period last August, neighbors and state officials shot dead four bears.

Because of her carelessness four bears were killed any many more will be probably have to be killed. or relocated.

Other neighbors testified that in the 20 to 30 years they had lived in the Yachats Valley they had never experienced problems with bears until two years ago.

Last summer bears were bypassing the Princes’ apple orchard and berry patch and tearing open the side of the barn to get to the poultry feed inside. The Princes lost 60 turkeys to a bear. Like many of their neighbors, they said the bears were not frightened by humans and would slowly amble off even when guns were being fired near them.

If she were living in harmony with the bears they would have still been foraging for food the way nature intended. They would have went to the berry patch and orchard looking for food, not ripping open a barn (killing 60 turkeys in the precess) looking for food.

Perhaps the most damming piece of evidence against Noyes was a photograph showing more than a dozen bears laying in her yard, each on top a large pile of food.

By her own account, Noyes spent over $100,000 feeding bears.

This woman wasn't just feeding the bears as in throwing them some scraps. She layed out large individual piles of food for over a dozen bears, $20,000 a year for food for bears. She made herself their only source of food, they no longer knew how to obtain food without her. It's the bears that will suffer now, i feel sorry for the bears. This woman's actions were wrong. And she didn't do it out of the kindness of her heart either....

ODFW biologist Tamara Wagner said when Noyes called her several years ago asking what to do about a bear on her porch that she warned her about the dangers of feeding bears.

Wagner testified that Noyes called her again in July 2008 distraught because of the property damage bears were doing.

“She (Noyes) said it was cheaper to feed the bears than repair the damage,” Wagner said, adding that Noyes told her she had hoped to sell her house the previous winter before the bears returned in the spring.

Wagner contacted OSP Senior Trooper Greg Torland who investigated and cited Noyes. Torland said Noyes had surrounded her home with an electric fence, but one bear had managed to chew on her stair banisters and break a garage window. According to Torland’s testimony, Noyes said she wouldn’t mind having that bear killed.

It's a shame that bears had to die, and more will suffer and perhaps die because this woman couldn't see fit to coexist with them without disrupting them.

www.newportnewstimes.com...

www.southlincolncountynews.com...

Originally posted by mattifikation
1. How does the entire state not have a probationary officer?

I don’t think that is the problem, the problem would be catching her in the act of doing it. She is obviously the same personality type who collects hundreds of cats, and two or three times a year animal control has to show up to clear the cats she collects out. No matter how many times these type of people are warned they continue with the activity because they see nothing wrong with it.

The other problem, as JD140 mentioned, is that now that the bears are accustomed to her feeding them, there is higher possibility of them attacking her if she stops. In that instance all they can do is clear the area so that the bears learn there is nothing of interest there, and they go away on their own.

There is nothing wrong with barring a person from their own property, its done daily in courts, and is called an Injunction. People get Domestic Violence Injunctions every day in this country, and are banned from their own property to protect other residents. In this instance the Injunction is to protect both this women and the bears.

Noyes’ yard is not visible from the road, a fact Branford confirmed for himself by driving by her property.

“You could be feeding 100 bears on your property and no one off your property could witness such an event,” Branford told Noyes.

www.newportnewstimes.com...


She was still feeding the bears while the trial was going on, so how could the judge believe that she would ever stop.

Rogers surprised many in the courtroom when he testified that while staying with Noyes during the trial, they had been feeding bears on her property.

www.southlincolncountynews.com...

Edit to remove points already made by defcon5

[edit on 6/27/2009 by chise61]

Originally posted by wyleecoyote
Great photo. I know all kinds of people who feed and care for wildlife, that's a good thing when you know what you're doing (through experience).

If its such a good thing, why is it against the law in every state?
Obviously everyone, including the experts, disagree with your assessment…

Eight Good Reasons
...why you shouldn't feed wildlife
1. Providing an artificial food source causes adults to produce large families which the natural food supply can't support.
2. It is illegal to feed wildlife.
3. Wild animals have specialized diets and can die from the wrong foods.
4. Feeding causes wildlife to lose their natural fear of humans.
5. You always risk injury when you do not keep a respectful distance from wild animals who may misinterpret your actions.
6. Providing food in residential areas often leads to property damage and unwelcome wild “houseguests.”
7. Feeding changes behavior patterns, sometimes with catastrophic results.
8. Feeding causes injuries and harmful interactions between wildlife species.

Q: I am worried about my children; do predators such as bobcats, coyotes, foxes, and mountain lions attack, injure or kill people?
A: Can it happen? Yes. What are the chances? Wild animal attacks on people are extremely rare. There is an estimate from the Department of Fish and Game that 1 to 2 people per year are injured due to a coyote. In Southern California from 1978 to 2003, it is estimated from reports that there has been 89 coyote attacks on people, with 56 of these coyote attacks resulting in injury. Many of have been linked to feeding, defending a family pet, or attempting to touch a coyote. There is 1 human fatality caused by a coyote in Glendale, occurring in 1981, which was linked to direct feeding of the animal.

Most attacks occur when wild animals lose their fear of humans, often because people are feeding or encouraging them.

Q: I know someone that puts out food for wildlife, is that all right?
A: No, as a matter of fact it is against the law. Deliberately feeding wild predators puts you, your pets, and your neighbors at risk. Observing wild animals is one of the many benefits of living in or near wildlife habitat. The experience can turn unpleasant or even dangerous, however, when well-meaning people feed wildlife. When people feed predatory animals, they can become unnaturally bold, and this usually results in conflict that often ends in serious harm, or even death to the animal or in some rare cases to a person. One example is people that throw food to wild animals from their automobiles. This trains the animals to stay close to the road where the wildlife is often killed or seriously wounded. There are coyotes that have been observed begging for food in some areas as a result of feeding too. In cases where a person holds out the food to a coyote then withholds it in order to draw them closer or tries to play keep away, the wild animal often becomes “Food Aggressive” and nips at the person to get them to release the food item. Coyotes for example, may dance about and look playful prior to this happening, giving the impression that it is friendly. However, it is only a matter of time before feeding them does more harm than good. Wild animals that associate people as a provider of food invariably end up having to be destroyed for displaying aggressive behavior.

Epic Fail...

This lady is an idiot.

She's endangering the lives of her neighbors, herself, and the bears. She's been warned time and time again. She's obviously totally out of control.

Kick the idiot of her own property for 3 years? Hell yes. Maybe then she'll learn not to be an idiot.

Ok I know that feeding wild animals seems to be cute and all. But it is extremely detrimental to the animal in the long run.

This is something that I actually hold a degree in. Forestry Wildlife and Natural Resources.

When you feed wild animals they become dependent on that food source. They expect it and being wild they will do anything they can to get it. When they become dependent on humans the interactions can quickly become life threatening. Often ending in the unfortunate destruction of the animal by park officials. Even if no injury happens, and all is well and good, when that food supply (YOU) is gone the animal can starve to death because they no longer will search out their natural food sources.



Let us look at what happens when animals get used to humans providing their food.







Bears are not stupid. They are quite intelligent. And let's look at a little clip of what happens when wildlife officers are forced to react, it can turn ugly fast.



And what about people that think these animals are freaking pets? THEY AREN'T!



DO NOT FEED WILD ANIMALS! It's stupid, it's dangerous, its reckless and it's highly irresponsible.

These are wild animals, and they do not make good pets. I have personally witnessed a particularly idiotic man who thought that it was a good idea to grab a fully grown bull elk by the antlers. After the elk got through stomping and gorging him into pulp he was airlifted to Greeley for emergency medical treatment. Long story short, if this man survived he might be fed with a tube.

again and I don't say this lightly

DO NOT FEED WILD ANIMALS!




[edit on 6/27/2009 by whatukno]