Bears’ Taste for Chicken Sets Up Collision Course

Longing for fresh eggs, Levi and Nauni Griffith began raising chickens in their backyard. They started with a few, and eventually had 116. Until late last summer, that is, when a grizzly sow and her cub, filling the night with fearful growling, got in among the shrieking chickens and then lumbered off, leaving bits of 99 birds behind. “There were feathers all over the yard and deep into the forest,” Mr. Griffith said. “And legs,” said his 9-year-old daughter, Arriana, wrinkling her nose. The few survivors were found in the trees. In northwestern Montana, as in much of the country, more people are keeping chickens. And bears of all kinds are developing a taste for poultry that lures them into populated areas, presenting a dangerous situation for both people and, especially, for bears. “You have a clash of cultures where there are increasing numbers of bears and increasing numbers of people,” said Chris Servheen, the grizzly bear recovery coordinator in the Missoula office of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service. “Bears that are habituated and food-conditioned don’t have much of a future.” Wildlife managers say they must euthanize repeat offenders because once bears develop a taste for chicken, the habit cannot be kicked, making the bear a continual danger to people. But for managers like Dr. Servheen, who has worked for 20 years restoring grizzly bears to the northern Rockies, the new chicken-grizzly dynamic is infuriating. “Does it make sense to kill a grizzly because of a 25-cent chicken?” he asks...more

Let's see, the DC Deep Thinkers so screw up our economy that folks have to raise chickens just to make ends meet.  Then they criticize those folks for raising chickens because they end up being harmful to an endangered species.  Next thing you know there will be a chicken provision in the farm bill.  They pay farmers not to farm, so why not pay chicken growers to not raise chickens?