Bears in Alaska...

Check out the story, here.

Outraged, I am. But at bears? Anchorage is a sprawling city in the middle of a wilderness, and growing every year. City dwellers are swiftly moving into the areas once left to grizzly bears—or brown bears, as Alaskans modestly call them—taking up prime foraging (and yes, hunting) areas. In a move I would have once assumed belonged in Washington, DC or (gasp!) Denver, CO, “locals” (I use the term loosely to refer to people who live in Anchorage, as most were not born there nor have lived there for any significant amount of time) have decided that the bear population in the city, and the problems that come with it, are the bears’ fault.

Brilliant.

In the article above, it discusses the bear issues: a growing number of attacks within city borders (and forgets to mention the growing number of idiots in Alaksa). The people they interviewed for the article are, by and large, people who genuinely believe that bear-proof trash cans are a waste of time and that it would simply be easier to just shoot all the bears. One woman, a native of Washington State—where there are no grizzly bears—complained that she moved to Alaska and now she’s afraid of the bears! My solution: GO HOME.

If you can’t live in Alaska, don’t move to Alaska. Don’t try to turn Alaska into Seattle, just because you decide you life is too boring for coastal Washington. Therein lays the problem: the growing number of people who move to remote areas but don’t actually want to LIVE in remote areas. They want to bring the cities with them, which (in my humble opinion) completely destroys the point. People from New York, DC, Seattle, Portland keep moving to Alaska, building homes on the outskirts of town, buying small yappy dogs (which are wonderful, easy-to-access bear food), and refusing to follow (logical and simple) bear safety policies (such as don’t throw your garbage on the street, don’t wander in the woods alone, carry bear spray, etc.) and then blame the bears. Buying a bear-proof garbage can isn’t silly, it’s for your own good; but those who move to the area from outside Alaska find it to be a hassle, and would much rather argue that it’s the bears who should die for their laziness. The article above even mentions that generally, people in Anchorage don’t use bear-proof storage containers. I dunno, in Gardiner, MT, they’ll arrest you for that.

I will never be one of those people with a “Native” bumper sticker on my car, and I believe that if you want to live in a small rural town, you should. But if you can’t handle the wild, don’t move to it. Don’t kill wildlife because you can’t take a few small steps to avoid violent confrontation. Don’t blame the bears because of the growing number of morons in Alaska.