AmericanBlackBear_HillCountryProspects_DoanCrider_Diane_MedinaTX_24July2020_Reel4029.mp3

Diana Doan-Crider [00:00:00] Let's talk a little bit about where I live right now. I married a Texan, very handsome Texan cowboy. And we live in the Texas Hill Country. It's beautiful. It's got, it's probably some of the most wonderful bear habitat I've ever seen because of our large oak trees. We have rivers everywhere. It's just a bear paradise.

Diana Doan-Crider [00:00:19] Unfortunately, it's a paradise for humans as well. So, most of the ranches that we used to have out here are now very sub-divided, very small acreages. And you have houses everywhere, with garbage, and with bird feeders, and with deer feeders, and everything else.

Diana Doan-Crider [00:00:34] While bears would try to reestablish themselves in the Texas Hill Country, I find it very difficult to see that ever happening at substantial numbers because the public just are not going to tolerate these large animals that are like monkeys in bear suits.

Diana Doan-Crider [00:00:50] I mean, they get into everything. You know, they can break apart a deer feeder in 10 minutes. They can bust through a door. They can pull your windshield off of your car if they smell food in your car.

Diana Doan-Crider [00:01:03] So it's, those two things just don't mix very well.

Diana Doan-Crider [00:01:07] I think there are pockets where we'll see that, if we can get out there and really educate the public. There are places in the United States where communities are co-existing with black bears.

Diana Doan-Crider [00:01:17] However, those don't come without their conflicts. It's constant. We'll never see conflicts go away. You always have some human out there doing something stupid, or you always have some unknown source of food that a bear is acquiring that you never thought about. ...

Diana Doan-Crider [00:01:32] So with bear management, I had somebody ask me one time, when when will it ever go away? What, what has to happen to make this go away? I said it will never go away. It will never.

Diana Doan-Crider [00:01:41] It's like monitoring people and their habits driving in a city. They're never gonna behave themselves. They're never going to quit speeding. They're never going to quit going through stop signs.

Diana Doan-Crider [00:01:50] You constantly have to have some sort of a monitoring system to keep an eye on people. And the same thing with human-bear conflicts, it's just gonna be constant.

Diana Doan-Crider [00:01:58] And especially as human populations start to encroach in areas where bears once had these large wild expanses.