The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources released a presser yesterday announcing the death of what they want to claim as the world’s oldest black bear. The press release is a disgusting and perverted display of when people attempt to relate to other people, humanistic traits in wild animals. I will not glorify the perversion by posting any of it here but will provide a link for readers.
So far, Outdoor Life has opted to glorify the event and included comments repeated from the press release about how the bear passed away quietly and peacefully. What is a bit odd is that the first reading I had from the Outdoor Life site describing in part the bear’s death, read, “….the bear died a quiet death from natural causes.” This morning visiting the site again, I noticed that same sentence appears to have been edited and now reads, “…indications are that it died from natural causes.” Perhaps the editors at Outdoor Life thought attaching human expressions of “quiet death” was a bit over the top especially when nobody was there holding the bear’s paws watching it pass and administering last rites.
And also this morning, the Outdoor Wire decided to reprint the entire disgusting press release from the Minnesota DNR, qualifying their copy and pasting by saying, “Editor’s Note: Occasionally a story comes in to the newsroom that’s too-good not to share. For example, this story from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.”
I think outdoor writers and media outlets can do all of us a favor and stop perpetuating these fantasies of brainwashed animal worshipers. When we insist on attaching human characteristics to bears and the like, how objected can a scientist be?
This bear lived a long time and provided lots of scientific data for scientists(?). Time to move on and get more data so we humans know how best to manage bears for bears not for human interactions.
