First of all, I feel for the families and communities affected by these incidents and understand how quickly a climate of fear can emerge, especially amongst sometimes isolated communities such as the second example posted by bb07.
The two examples differ greatly though, the first appearing to be a lumberjack or woodsman who was attacked when he surprised a mother and cubs, the second, an elderly lady who had previously complained of bears frequenting the area of her home. Both appear to be of First Nation origin and are probably accustomed to seeing bears and familiar with the lore. It's tragic when such things occur and even more so in a community where everyone knows everyone else.
I find the human reaction to such incidents to be invariably disproportionate though; the hunt for tigers which went on for months following an attack upon a woman in an Assam village, resulting in the first confirmed tiger sightings in the area for over 30 years coming in the form of 3 kills; a wolf pack wiped out in an American National Park after attacks on cattle:
It isn't too long ago that I read of concerns regarding a worrying decline in the numbers of black bears in British Columbia, and if disproportionate measures are taken upon an already declining population without proper research into why increasing numbers are being seen in suburban environments or rural communities, and we're informed in the second video that 1,000 intrusive bears are killed in BC every year -that's over 10,000 bears killed since the last fatal attack on a human in 2000, it massively increases the possibility of the decline going exponential.
I too have heard the anecdote that more people are killed in Britain by spooked cattle than are killed by bears in North America. Just how true that is, I'd be reluctant to comment, but I can see how a Toonie walking a dog through a field of stirks could be removed from the gene pool, so qualifying for entry to The Darwin Awards.
http://www.darwinawards.com/ I once escaped that distinction only due to running straight through a fairly healthy hawthorn hedge from a longhorn bull.
I find this post interesting with relevance to the arguments of some that bears (European Black Bears), not to mention wolves and lynx, should be reintroduced to Scotland. I would dearly love to see redress to the damage done over the last couple of centuries to the environment of my country, and the return of fauna eradicated by loss of habitat and persecution, but we haven't the biodiversity to support even marginal populations, so I'll leave to your imagination just what the outcome of such plans are likely to be, although a "Nature Bites Back" scenario might be a solution to our problem of idiots going out into the countryside and trashing everything in sight.
Great strides are being made in regeneration of natural woodlands and other habitats, but there are vast areas of Scotland where you can walk for a couple of days and count the trees without even having to take your shoes and socks off.
Maybe some day, but I don't expect to see it!
