7
2.//)J
L-1 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - i
Mon-cbly
Planet April 1984
Volume 5 Number 4
A Publication of the Associated Students Environmental Center, Western Washington University
Encroaching Humans Enrage Grizzly i ./(
David Taylor
1,1r,
... -----..... .l
"11ie rugged peaks of southern .(~lacier Park rose high above
the sparse lodgepole pines growing among the lo~ brush of the isolated river valley. I stooped under a sapling that had fallen across the path and emerged to find my brother, Daniel, frozen in his tracks and funbling for his camera. He glanced back at me quickly and then peered straight ahead into the brush where sane creature moved about noisily. The animal grunted and then ambled parallel to us in a flash of silver brown, stopping in full view about thirty feet away. He turned and seemed to contemplate the spindly ing, twowide eyed legged, intruderspack intobearhis danain. A grizzly. Ursus arctos horribilis, fierce endangered king of the last of America's wildernesses, as rare and as beautiful as the untamed land he roams. His terrain once spread from the Artie tundra beyond the Brooks Range of Alaska to as far south as Mexico. They once wandered fran the Pacific coast to the buffalo plains that run fran Nebraska to Saskatchewan. Now, however, the estimated 500 grizzlies that remain in the lower 48 states are found mainly in Glacier and Yellowstone Parks in Montana, and in parts of Idaho and the northeastern tip of Washington State. Alaska and northern Canada contain the majority of the earth's grizzly p::,pulation and even there their nunbers alarmingly dwindle. "11ie grizzly did not .l. ~sitate to charge us as we stood helplessly in the open continued on 'ba.ck page
--
.....
... _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __.. a,_.;.....;_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.........,_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _._ _ ·__
Peacock Defends Threatened King Doug Price ~
e grizzly bear, largest predator in North America who once freely roamed over most of the western United States, now faces probable extinction in the lower 48 states. Doug Peacock, Viet Nam veteran and backcountry ranger, now dedicates his life to preserving the grizzly and the wilderness these bears live in. Although they have obvious differences, the grizzlies and Peacock have sanething in ccmnon: they are both misunderstood. Grizzly bears have been the topic of countless fables and folktales which depict the bear as a furosious, dangerous hell-bent killer. At the time when white
folks arrived in North America the grizzly was co-daninant with humans, both being at the top of the food chain. When Lewis and Clark were exploring the continent in 1805, there were fran 100,000 to 200,000 grizzlies south of Canada. However once the frontier opened up, the bears ' bane became exposed to manifest destiny and the grizzly lost its co-daninance to the ax, plow and the gun. In the years that followed, grizzly populations pluneted as settlers killed them, drove them off their land and into unnatural habitats where bears cannot live. By 1890 the last grizzly was killed on the plains. California, which once had the greatest p::>pulation of bears and who had adopted the grizzly as the state symbol, had no grizzlies left by 1922. continued on back -,xige