 |
TODAY Tuesday 29 April 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
newsroom
|
TODAY Tuesday 29 April 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Grizzlies off Battry Park
Grizzly bears each year are responsible for the death of men and women at a rate that almost approximates the corner of Broadway and 34th Street. This carnage has helped generations of backpackers to have something to talk about as they head into wilderness areas of the Northern Rockies. Bear bells? Loud conversations? Garlic? Just what are the best ways to avoid grizzly attacks? My own ratio of minutes of grizzly bear obsessing to minutes of grizzly bear sightings now stands at 5000:1, and it might have been an enormous porcupine.
Still, grizzly mania isn't susceptible to bloodless risk management. Maybe they fascinate us because they're close to us, but bigger, tougher, more essential. And maybe it's just that every once in a while they rip open a human being with a single swipe. They have a badness we find compelling. They turn ferocious when hungry or on childcare duty, and we identify.
According to a report in the Sunday New York Times, grizzlies will soon be reintroduced to certain federal wilderness areas of western Montana / eastern Idaho. What's newsworthy is that the plan has the approval of a broad stretch of local opinion, enviros and loggers included. The core of the deal is that the locals admit that the grizzlies must return and that the feds admit that the locals get a big say in where, how many, and when.
There are holdouts, of course. The Governor of Idaho is against the grizzly reintroduction, and one Montana state senator made the Quote of the Day in The Times: "It's absolutely ludicrous," said Senator Steve Benedict. "those bears were eradicated for a reason. It's like saying there's a nice big park in the middle of New York City: let's put bears there."
This seemed like an interesting proposal -- grizzlies in Central Park -- and so I telephoned Professor Barrie Gilbert to see how the bears would do in mid-Manhattan. (Professor Gilbert is a highly-regarded grizzly expert who has studied his subjects up close throughout Alaska and the Northwest. He is also famous for having survived a disfiguring, on-death's-door attack by a grizzly and then going back to spend twenty more years in the business).
How many grizzlies could survive on about 900 acres of mixed Northern hardwoods and open softball fields?, I asked Professor Gilbert. He said that acres were less important than food supply; one of his favorite Alaskan haunts -- by a bend in a salmon-rich river -- attracted 155 permanent grizzly residents in an area about the size of Central Park. I told him that there weren't any memorable fish runs in the park, but Professor Gilbert was way ahead of me. "Bears feed on mudflats, of course," he said. "You have some rich estuaries there, don't you?"
Well, we did, once. The shallows around New York Harbor were a teeming source of seafood right through the end of the 19th Century. Great varieties and numbers of fish and the most productive oyster beds in the world. The reason it got so crowded around here, after all, is that this is such a fabulous natural place.
Professor Gilbert woke me from a daydream about a pack of grizzlies scarfing Yellownecks and terrorizing tourists in the shoals by Liberty Island. "You know, there are not a lot of cattle in the area where they're going to reintroduce the bears," he said. "And the new plan will protect people by stopping road construction." Taxpayer-subsidized logging roads, he explained, are the means by which most people ever come within hailing distance of a grizzly. In the West, at least, where one person's corporate welfare is another person's support of traditional land use patterns, federal policies and federal money are never far from the heart of the matter.
TODAY ON THE SITE
The arresting picture of Al Gore on the contents page is by New York artist John Leamy. John produced almost 90% of the graphics on the site, in fact, and if we have a distinctive look, it's thanks to him. The Liberty Tree regulars all have personal favorites among the Leamy images: the morphing Explore With Fred; the somber Great War look of In The Trenches; the crackling radio towers of Dialogs. I'm partial to the Campus graphic myself, with the State U identification card for undergrad activist Suzy Earthlover. I think I knew her sister.
4/28: Mighty Monsanto
4/25: Growth
4/24: Refrigerator Wars
4/23: The Day the Earth Day Stood Still
4/22: Doorman Ecology
4/21: Toyota Steps Out
4/18: Victims of Extremism
4/17: Our White Guy Problem
4/16: Coca-Cola and the Merrit Parkway