[pct-l] Re: Bears in general, (not canisters):)

[elee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Eric Lee (GAMES))]

Sly wrote:
>
They seem to scare the hell out of a lot of people.  We saw a few people
packing .45's in the wilderness areas and a couple in my group had bear
spray.
>

Out of curiosity, I went trolling the web for statistics.  It's difficult t=
o find numbers that are directly comparable, but I was able to determine th=
at in all of North America, there are somewhere around 800,000 black bears =
and around 60,000 grizzlies (of those, only 1,100 are in the continental US=
, the rest are in Canada and Alaska).  Estimates are that bears kill an ave=
rage of 3 and seriously injure between 5 and 15 people annually.  No matter=
 how you look at it, that's a very, very low objective risk.  For compariso=
n, dogs kill an average of 20 people annually, but people are are usually m=
uch more afraid of bears than dogs.

It's much more difficult to determine the relative responsibility for attac=
ks between black bears and grizzly bears across all of North America.  I di=
d find numbers for Alaska alone which indicate that the bear population is =
roughly 25% grizzly and 75% black bear, and grizzlies caused 13 deaths and =
75 injuries in the last 20 years, while black bears caused only 2 deaths an=
d 3 injuries.  Obviously, grizzlies are _far_ more dangerous than black bea=
rs.  But again, the objective risk is very low in either case.

Eric