REWILDING BRITAIN - Black Bears to the UK?

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[ferarry]

Brown bears are already living in Europe and when was the last time a lethal attack happened? There are 20 to 30 brown bears living in Latvia alone and latvians are still enjoying their forests. European brown bears age generally smaller than their cousins in Asia/North America and they are generally quite shy. If anything is stopping their reintroduction into the UK it is lack of space. Is there enough of it to support a self sustaining population?

[tchoupy]

as someone that i have encounter black bears at least 10 times a year, i really dont get why people are so scared of them in urban areas

[thomashaapalainen]

I'm from New England and black bears are less likely to attack me than my neighbors dogs statistically speaking. Unless it has cubs a black bear will cheese it at the slightest hunt of human presence.

[cutwithaknife]

I think introducing an apex predator from another continent is slightly more dangerous in general than a native predator.
Even if black bears are less defensive, they are more likely to eat a human than brown bears are

[troyclayton]

We live with black bears here in New England. Sure, it means taking in bird feeders at times- but that's life. They're less of a 'pest' than skunks, IMO.
edit: Granted our human population is less dense than than much of the UK. Last I looked, like 2 people die per year from black bears in the US- compared with about 43, 000 traffic casualties. Know what to fear. That's 4 orders of magnitude, making domestic dogs more of a danger- and cars near suicide (statistically).

[eliletts]

The Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) was native to the UK during the pleistocene epoch though! It would be a reintroduction of a species that did live in the UK in the not too distant geological past as well as a win for conservation as this species of bear is classed as a "Vulnerable" species by the IUCN RED LIST!

[thatonedog]

Fun fact, I grew up with black bears. Moved a little south. Started hiking and acted like there were bears in the area.

Only found out they weren't active in this range when a SINGLE black bear started wandering through the state and made the news daily about his progress.

[joelbaxter]

I visit Malawi in a regular basis and what you describing is pretty much exactly what they have done at a park I visit. It's called Majete and is possibly the best conservation success story on the continent. African parks took management of the site in I think 2006 when it was devoid of almost all wildlife. They immediately ring fenced the 700km2 site, removed the snares and have started bringing in new species, elephants, rhino, giraffe, wild dogs, cheetah, lions. They have had zero cases of elephant and rhino poaching since taking management and the park is going from strength to strength.

[tadblackington]

Coming from an area that has a robust population of black bears I can say they do enter your mind and make you more aware of your surroundings, with your place at the top of the foodchain not absolutely secure. Being able as a society to deal with that is at the core of human rewilding. And in the British Isles hasn't been a thing for centuries its no small thing.
That said vears do fullfill important roles as predators of deer fawns and rodents. They are important for moving nutrients from migratory fish into the broader landscape. And they are important seed dispersers. Beyond that they really are mainly oversized raccoons as far as danger to people goes. The state of New Jersey has an area (19, 047 km2) and a population density (488 people/km2) similar to the english counties of Hampshire, Sussex and Kent combined. New Jersey has a population of about 3100 black bears spread throughout the state, and life goes on with bears being less dangerous than house slippers or bathtubs.
Its understandable if Britain wants see how it can cope with beavers and pine martens before it thinks too seriously about bears. But just to make another comparison, Great Britain has an area of 209, 331km with a population density of 302 people/km. Bangladesh has an area of 148, 460 km with a population density of 1, 106 people/km. Bangladesh also has bears, dholes, leopards, crocodiles, gaurs, elephants and tigers roaming wild (which would scare the wits out of me too, but...).

[jackcocker]

A very interesting concept but I disagree, black bears would probably pose more of a threat to humans due to their adaptability to urban environments. I also doubt they would fit into our landscape as they are extremely different from our native brown bears

[deinsilverdrac]

Ok so the best option is to

1 tell the people about what wildlife really is, show thel what should be in UK.

2 reintroduce lynxes, they are elusive, avoid humans and the least problematic specie for the farmers, making it a good first contact and introduction do large predator to the public and farmers so they can adapt more easily and see the benefit of the wild animals (tourism, nature, forest)

This will make them learn about nature and predators etc, and they will tolerate to go further

2, reintroduce wolves in remote area and wait for thel to spread, help farmers with dogs and fences and other techniques to coesxist with wolves

And then 15-20 years after reintroduce brown bears,
This is the last step because while wolves have bad reputation and can kill livestock they pose no real threath to human while bears...not so much.

But people had seen forest regrow and species came back thanks to predators.
They already learn to live with lynxes and wolves.
They learnt about what was lost due to humans presence.
So bear wouldn't seem an odd and dangerous inclusion and there will be more support and less opposition to his legitime comeback.

But introduce a non native specie that de know can thrive in this type of environnment is not a good idea
Yes it will be helpfull for the ecosystem but people won't like it
It's a dangerous animal that should not be here so there won't have support from public and most ecologist

[ericchristen]

Bring them back. Humans are the biggest danger...especially the fanatical religious type.

[jonathanroberts]

Black bears never lived here. Cave bears, Brown bears, and polar bears lived here.

[Gnarmarmilla]

Thank you for examining this. In my home state of California USA, some are throwing around the idea of reintroducing the animal that is on our state flag, the Grizzly Bear, a poor awesome beast that stupid people hunted to extinction. Some people have this knee jerk reaction where their fear rules their decision making and we need to fight against that within our selves. You know? I appreciate how you considered that your fear was overblown.
Truly, if the whole public is properly educated and trained how to live along side these animals and if we use our awesome technology to keep people away from nursing mothers and proud fearful males, then we will never have attacks and the advantage of having them in the UK will be terrific.
I hope this does happen for you guys, and I hope the wise people in the United Kingdom will tule the day so that her glorious pastures, forest and coast lines will be glorious evermore.

[mountainman]

I've had many positive encounters with black bear here in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. The only negative encounter was 2 cubs and a mama bear who bluff charged me and my nephew on a secluded creek near Lake Tahoe. It was scary as hell but we slowly backed up and got out of there peacefully.

[MossyEarth]

This is a really interesting concept! Well done Rob! I feel there are many steps to go (probably the lynx first) but this is a very interesting idea :)

[paleo-zoo-keeper-association]

This is one of the things that I like about this guy, he digs in deep with his research and he's not afraid to point out the cons and he doesn't shy away from the potential human-wildlife conflict that would occur and he definitely sees it as a huge risk. Any of those hypothetical, his proposal makes a lot of logical sense.

[jimepp]

A bit of a caution for you. The design challenge of Bearproof trash bins is there is a considerable overlap in the intellects of an average Bear & an average Tourist!

[ajaxtelamonian]

Would be very cool to see bears. Have you heard of I think it's called, bear wood down in Bristol? Where they brought in some in an enclosed ish large space to see how they change the landscape. On holiday at the moment in Wyoming the bins in the parks are designed to be unopenable by bears and bearspray is in most shops. Had a Really close encounter with a Black bear a few days ago just walked across the path past us and went for a scratch on some tree. But yeah I think one would have to do some of the other rewilding stuff first to make it suitable so that there are enough plant based resources like wild bilberry, Lingonberries, Cloudberries etc on the forest floors and again like bear proofing bins and making sure people are aware. In British Columbia you could be fined for not picking your fruit after it fell as it encourages them into human settlements and then they get used to people and its just bad news for both parties. That's when you start getting attacks when they associate people with food.

[EnglishOrthodox]

Not worth it, do these people realise that 90% of us are going to get drunk and fight a bear