Bears Shot After Attacks

* I am writing in reference to “Trackers Kill 2 Bears After More Campers Are Mauled,” Aug. 7.

I am a 15-year-old who enjoys spending many hours weekly in these same local mountains. I am totally appalled and horrified at the needless death of two bears in the Barton Flats area. We are invading the bears’ habitat, they are not invading ours. If we want to use the same area, we can by using basic common sense. Having sunflower seeds with you in your tent, leaving candy wrappers around your campsite (as in the Camp Wasewagan attack), and having a cooler chest within 20 feet of your tent is not acting responsibly or intelligently.

Do not blame the bears because they can’t be told not to go after food. Do not blame the children who were scared and hurt. Blame the Fish and Game Department for not educating the people about bear and food safety and for acting too quickly and not thinking who was really to blame (the bears or themselves), and our local news/newspapers. There is always plenty of room to report the sensational and shocking news of the day. How about routine seasonal announcements reminding everyone of wilderness rules?

MIKE GHARABIKLOU

Glendora

* Careless food storage and disposal spell death for bears. These intelligent animals learn quickly. When a bear repeatedly obtains human food and garbage, it becomes destructive and dangerous, and sadly has to be destroyed. The camps where the bear attacks took place have sloppy food practices and should receive a hefty fine. But more important the camps have a moral responsibility to educate the boys to respect the wilderness. We enter the bears’ territory and our carelessness and stupidity destroy them in their own homes.

DONNA SPECHT

Huntington Beach

* “Cougars’ Worst Foe is Found to Be Cars” (Aug. 9), together with earlier articles with regard to cases of youngsters being mauled, indicates to me that campers today do not exercise sound judgment with regard to the storage of food and respect for creatures of the wild, bears in particular.

Having roamed the Angeles National Forest as a very young boy, and spending the first four years of my career with the U.S. Forest Service on the Angeles, I was never approached or threatened in any way by bears or cougars.

Many nights, as man and boy, I have traveled the trails alone, and on looking back down the trail observed pairs of amber eyes, in proper pecking order, cougar, badger, coyote, fox, following me at a respectful distance. The greatest threat to my well-being under those circumstances would be the rattlesnakes on the prowl for food, either lying on the still-warm trail or coiled immediately adjacent thereto.

If people would only acknowledge and respect the fact that they are in the habitat of these creatures, observe proper disposition of food articles and never feed any of these creatures, man could exist with them in better harmony. And to shoot such a wild creature without even knowing if indeed it was a rogue, is a crime in itself.

JAMES R. PRATLEY

U.S. Forest Service (retired)

San Diego