There are bears moving into the suburbs of New Jersey, and raccoons making their homes in Los Angeles. Wild animals that once fled from humans now live in closer proximity than at any time in the United States’ history.
Mountain lions, coyotes, wolves, bears, deer, bobcats, raccoons and a whole array of other once-wild animals find that the suburban sprawl means ever-richer pickings. Many are now as likely to hunt in a rubbish bin as in the forest.
The phenomenon has become so widespread that environmentalists are examining the new relationship between animals and humans, and what needs to be done to hold the line.
”We are creating animals that aren’t wild any more, and it’s not good for them or for us,” said David Baron, the author of The Beast in the Garden, a book about the new relationship.
At one extreme is the killing of humans by wild animals. In 1991 a young athlete, Scott Lancaster, was killed in Colorado by a mountain lion. Baron points out that dogs, bees and snakes kill many more humans than mountain lions, but adds: ”Cats have killed more humans since 1991 than in the preceding half century.”
Baron says that not since the days of the explorers Lewis and Clark, at the beginning of the 19th century, have wild animals and humans been in such proximity. A prime reason is urban sprawl, with the suburbs moving into localities that were wilderness. For wild animals, the ready supply of leftovers in rubbish bins, discarded takeaway food — and even tasty pets — has proved irresistible.
There are other factors. Since 1990, in response to public pressure, state legislatures in California, Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan and Washington have passed laws to restrict the hunting or trapping of lynx, bobcats, bears, beavers, foxes, wolves and cougars. This has contributed to an 8% fall in hunting in the past decade.
A variety of wild creatures have become common sights in urban areas. Of the wild cats, the mountain lion is the largest, apart from the jaguars which occasionally cross the Mexican border. The cats can reach an impressive size: just over a century ago, Theodore Roosevelt killed a cougar weighing 103kg.
There are black bears in the suburbs of Boston for the first time for 200 years; and in New Jersey they have multiplied 20-fold in three decades to an estimated 3 300. This week, New Jersey held the state’s first authorised bear hunt in 33 years.
The hunt, which concludes today, saw 61 of the animals killed on Monday alone, and was strongly opposed by protesters.
Bears usually only kill humans that are in what they regard as their territory. A couple from Malibu died in Alaska this summer, but they were in a wilderness area studying and photographing the bears.
Coyotes are flourishing too, grabbing unwary pets and chickens. In 1997, one coyote ran into the federal building in Seattle, went through the reception, and entered the lift.
”Coyotes are routinely eating people’s cats and dogs,” Baron said. And in Florida, the alligator population is growing at an unprecedented rate.
Baron describes the US as ”a country where people build new homes on undeveloped land, pay to preserve the open space beside it, attract animals into their yards and — by embracing wilderness and wildlife — alter the very nature of what they presume nature to be”.
Baron suggests that the US is engaged in ”a grand and largely unintentional experiment”.
He argues that humans, ”the most pervasive species of all”, will have to modify their behaviour – which may include trying to scare wild animals away from the artificial habitat of the suburbs.
Experiments are under way. In Idaho and Montana, radio-controlled noisemakers and recorded sounds of gunfire and traffic are being used to stop bears and other wild animals intruding too much into residential areas. ”We must manage nature in order to leave it alone,” recommends Baron. ”A big part of it is educating people.”
For years the song Home on the Range, which wistfully recalled a time and a place where the deer and the antelope played, seemed like a sentimental homage to a past age.
Now the deer, if not the antelope, accompanied by bears and raccoons and coyotes and bobcats, have moved confidently from the range to the car park at the shopping mall — and, for the time being, show no sign of returning to the ever-decreasing range. – Guardian Unlimited Â