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I don't understand now that when ever anyone reports a bear or mountain lion sighting in the mountains fish and game closes off the area and trys to kill it. Why would they do that? Sooner or later we are going to have no more of those creatures.

The Forest Service has been known in the past to relocate bears to areas where they then cause even more problems, although that is no longer the practice, supposedly.

In the Catalinas, summer of 1996, I think it was, or '97, two bears attacked two young girls in separate incidents. Both of these bears were relocated bears. One girl, 16-year-old Anna Knockel was at Camp Lawton, the Boy Scout Camp, which was being rented by the 4H Club. I know about this. My daughter was actually there. The bear attacked Anna in her tent although she had no food in her tent. It is possible she was wearing a highly scented lotion, according to what her sister told my daughter at the time. This never came out in the newspaper. At the Scout camp, firearms are not allowed. One adult volunteer had one in his vehicle, which was quite some distance away. After several people tried to remove the bear from chewing on Anna, and it wouldn't stop chewing on her, he ran up to his car and got the gun and came back and shot the bear. They had already tried everything else, hitting the bear with heavy objects, banging on pans, yelling, kicking it, and it would not stop attacking her, it just ignored them. It is an absolute miracle that she survived.

One contributing factor to these bear attacks was the woman who lived in a cabin in Carter Canyon, Summerhaven area, who used to drive down to Tucson and buy 5 gallon containers of ice cream and put them on her porch for the bears. She told our doctor, who had a neighboring cabin, that she "felt sorry for the bears, they are so hungry." At the time, Arizona didn't have very good laws about feeding wildlife. After the two attacks on that summer, they passed a stronger law very quickly. It is possible that this one woman was the major contributing cause of all the problems on Mt. Lemmon that year.

The family of Anna Knockel was able to file suit against the Forest Service because that was a known problem bear, which had been relocated from elsewhere. Not sure the outcome of that lawsuit. The other bear attack occurred earlier in the summer at the Girl Scout camp, with minor injuries to the girl involved.

It's a wonder my daughter was not more traumatized by the event at Camp Lawton. We took her and went family camping on Mt. Graham the very next week, and she was okay with it.

ssk44 is exactly right. Bears and mountain lions are in no danger of being extirpated in this state. And if you think about it, why would someone report to G&F just because they saw a bear or mountain lion, unless they thought it was posing a danger, or was causing damage?

An 80 lb Bear found in Peoria Neighborhood. This was by Westwing mountain.
Just a couple of miles from my house. And one of my in town, go to hikes.

http://www.kpho.com/news/27754551/detail.html

Saw a big mtn. lion on Sunday in Open Draw, a gully leading to East Fork of the Black River near Three Forks.

I remember when my father-in-law called me to tell me that Game and Fish had just shot a bear down his street in Gold Canyon. That was acouple for years ago or so. This bear had been a "problem" bear in the past and had been tagged and relocated to the Mnt. Lemmon area. He made his way to Gold Canyon. I'm not sure what the average distance a bear normally travels, but that is quite a ways.

rk_az wrote:ssk44 is exactly right. Bears and mountain lions are in no danger of being extirpated in this state. And if you think about it, why would someone report to G&F just because they saw a bear or mountain lion, unless they thought it was posing a danger, or was causing damage?

Because a lot of people fear things they should not.