Griz Reintroduction 1

Griz Reintroduction 1

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Gregg Bafundo lives in Tonasket, WA which is in very rural Okanogan County. He says he’s an avid hunter and also raises some livestock. Gregg claims to be very much in favor of reintroducing grizzly bears to the North Cascades and surrounding wilderness. "I am in the region where they are proposing to reintroduce these bears and I am actually in favor of it. I raise some chickens and stuff like that to feed myself. One of the things I always long for is that time, 200 years ago. I'm the kind of guy who wishes he was running around in the Rocky Mountains in the 1820s and I suspect that there are a lot of people who live in Okanogan County who feel the same way. Along with that yearning for a simpler time comes animals like grizzly bears. To be able to see one in the wild is something really special and it means that places where we are going are healthy. I have lived in Alaska before and have been in close proximity to grizzly bears and they are not the man eating machines that people make them out to be. A lot of these bears are lucky to top 400 to 500 pounds so we are looking at just an average size bear. The North Cascades are a pretty remote region and I don't think that the fear that cattlemen maybe have is justified because these animals don’t travel and hunt in packs like wolves do. They are very solitary animals.

 

This is a topic with lots of pros and cons. I know a lot of cattlemen who are not so sure. But everybody is entitled to their own opinion.

 

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