The recent T&D article concerning the sighting of a black bear wandering about in the town of Branchville was of particular interest to me. This is because I find it quite fascinating that after so many years of obliteration and exile due to the massive encroachment of humans, many animals are now proliferating and making a comeback into territory from which they’ve been absent for generations.

Now – in spite of the fact that much of what used to be uninhabited forest, swamp, meadow and prairie is now covered with cities, towns, farms, industry and highways – beavers are damming up creeks, drainage ditches and pond spillways; mountain lions are moving into the fringes of booming cities; bears are visiting suburbia and coyotes are prowling and howling, “We’re baaack!”

I’m really glad to see that, despite the hundreds of years of heedless annihilation of wild creatures and their habitat, they’re making a comeback. However, I must say that the visiting bear story gave me a start!

The rural, mountainous area where I was born and partly raised was home for a large population of black bear, and though I wandered far and wide amid hill and dale, forest and stream, I was always a mite edgy about the presence of black bears.

But, back then there were a lot of folks who would shoot a bear on sight and also enjoyed eating them! So bears were very afraid of people, and the few that I did see were getting’ the heck out of there as fast as their big paws would take them. Still, there were the persistent and frightening tales of savage, rogue bears attacking people.

Wouldn’t you know it? As a young adult I got acquainted with the beautiful Smoky Mountain National Park and the rugged, scenic hiking trails therein. Of course, I couldn’t resist doing some backcountry hiking there. Problem was, there were, and are, a whole bunch of black bears living there. Worse: they are very familiar with people of whom they have little or no fear. There’s no hunting or firearms allowed there, so no one harms them in any way.

Well, the park rangers assured me, no one had ever been killed by a bear in the park and there had only been minor incidents caused by folks trying to feed the bears. So I had some splendid times backpacking, hiking, camping and fishing there and even took my wife and children hiking there on occasion.

Then, on May 21, 2000, about 15 years after my last hiking trip to that area, I heard the horrifying news that a 50-year-old woman had been killed by a bear on a trail I used to hike. The rangers located and killed a female and her 40-pound yearling. Examinations of the bears at the University of Tennessee confirmed that both bears the rangers killed had fed on the hapless victim and were most likely the bears that had killed her.

On April 13, 2006, a woman and two of her small children were attacked by a black bear while visiting the Cherokee National Forest in southeast Tennessee. Her six-year-old daughter was killed during the attack and both the mother and two-year-old son were seriously injured. I shudder to think that I had my family out there, with no means of protection!

Now, when I go canoeing, I see signs of beaver everywhere – both here and in the mountains. Folks are fussin’ about them building dams and flooding land. Coyotes are eating people’s cats, and now we have bears moving in. What the heck are we to do about these critters? Stay indoors and carry a gun outside?

Well, if times get hard enough, we can eat them like our ancestors used to. Bear steaks, anyone? How about filet of beaver tail? No coyote roast; thanks, anyway.

T&D Columnist Rush Button can be reached by e-mail at ButtonRL@aol.com.

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