Nature Isn’t Gentle: Why Managed Bear Hunting is Beneficial for Ecosystems

Image of grizzly bear  by Troy Nemitz, used with permission. 

While studying the reality of people protecting themselves from increasing populations of bears, it is impossible to ignore the emotional arguments of those who oppose human killing of bears.

It is as if the opponents of human management believe bears to be immortal, never to die except at the hands of human hunters.  This is a false, emotional, irrational belief structure. All predators die. Death by human hunter is overwhelmingly less painful than death without human intervention.

Without human intervention, most bears die in one of three ways:

The most common is being killed and eaten by another bear. Mature males are overwhelmingly the greatest cause of mortality in bear cubs. Many boars learn to actively hunt denning females with cubs. Sometimes they only kill and eat the cubs. Often they kill and eat the female as well.  When hunters reduce the numbers of mature males, the number of cubs which survive to become adults increase. Death by predation from a bear is not quick and painless. Bears kill by tearing at and biting their prey to immobilize it. Bears often start eating before the prey is dead.

The second most common death is by starvation. Food available to bears is limited in any area. When food is plentiful, the bear population booms. When the food supply becomes restricted, for any number of reasons, such as weather, fire, insect infestation, excessive predation, or cyclical reduction of production of nuts and berries, the maximum population cannot be supported. The weakest, because of age, injury, or size, die by starvation. It is a slow, painful death. The weakest are also killed and eaten by other bears.

The third most common is by accident.  Animals are not immune to accident. There is no department of animal accidents, so most animal accidents occur unnoticed, without numeration. Nature is not safe. Animals drown, fall off cliffs, freeze to death, are struck by lightning, fall into natural traps, are hit by human vehicles and are injured in fights so they cannot feed themselves.  Virtually no bears die of old age. As they get older, they lose the ability to defend themselves from other bears, lose the ability to defend food sources, and die by starvation or predation.

Managed human hunting has evolved an ethos where a prime value is the “clean kill” which minimizes the suffering of the animal. Compared to being torn apart by a bear, starvation, or lingering death by accident, death by bullet is quick and painless.

“Natural” is not synonymous with “good”. Humans have been demonized for far too long. Humans can manage wildlife populations better than nature. Humans can produce far more biomass per area than nature.

There is no “balance” in nature. Natural “balance” has always been a myth. 

Ecosystems are not machines, but dynamic mixes of ever changing processes. Only 12,000 years ago, there were no bears, or any other animals in most of Canada and as far south as Iowa, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio. Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine were completely covered with ice thousands of feet thick. There were probably polar bears living on the edges of the permanent ice which extended to large areas of the ocean.

South of the ice in North America there were dire wolves, sabre-toothed tigers, short faced bears, the scimitar cat (about the size of an African lion), the North American lion (larger than African lions). All are extinct as the climate, landscape and species mix changed to include humans, grizzly bears, moose and grey wolves. Humans were the first to make it south of the Canadian border, followed by moose, grey wolves and then grizzly bears.

Humans can manage wildlife populations for greater productivity than when wildlife populations are not managed. Non-management results in horrific swings between environment destroying maximum populations and ghastly minimum population deserts devoid of most large mammals. Most of North America was managed by humans with varying degrees of success long before Europeans were able to establish and maintain a presence.  Human management aims for high, but not destructive, productivity.

Human management is better for the ecosystems and the animals involved. 

The more power humans have the better they can manage animal populations. Humans have more power now than at any other time. Humans are the only ones who can establish measurements and determine if a policy is increasing productivity or decreasing it, and then make adjustments. Conversely, humans have so much power they can destroy ecosystems. Fortunately, increasing awareness is making such destruction less likely.

Rich civilizations have the resources to afford the management of ecosystems. Good management is popular. No management is bad management. Predators are not immortal. Human management is beneficial for animals and humans.

The myth of immortal predators is part of the growing neo-paganism in the West. It is undermining Western Civilization.

©2026 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch 

Source: http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2026/02/nature-isnt-gentle-why-managed-bear.html