What’s turning the “kings of the forest into beggars on the street,” as state biologist Randy Cross told The Boston Globe? Human junk food.
Maine allows the dumping of 7 million pounds of stale doughnuts, rotting meat and old fryolator grease into our woods every year.
Majestic black bears are gorging themselves on this food waste, getting fatter and producing more cubs. We’ve had over 600 nuisance bear complaints this year already.
Perhaps that’s because we’ve been training our bears for several decades to frequent 55-gallon drums of food waste, which, to a bear, look and smell virtually indiscernible from those large, cylindrical bins we set by our garage each week – the ones filled with our personal food waste.
Baiting is turning the kings of the forest into beggars on the street.
I’ll vote “yes” on 1 to staunch the flow of junk food into our woods and our bears.
Stuart Cushman
Bath
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