Alaskan black bears don’t fit our image of Paddington or Winnie the Pooh, but they deserve just as much protection as our story book friends do. Recognizing that, the National Park Service is moving to prohibit hunters from luring bears out of their dens with doughnuts on some public lands.
In addition, hunters – that’s what these brutes call themselves – can no longer use spotlights to shoot bear cubs or wolf pups in their dens, or motorboats to shoot swimming caribou. The old rules, gutted by Trump, are now back in effect. One of the issues with doughnuts is that they use lured bears to human settlement areas.
Some hunting groups claim this is an encroachment on states’ rights, but the rules apply to federally owned public lands. Native Alaskans used animals for food, not just to expand the number of heads on a wall to satisfy the testosterone needs of trophy hunters.
Prayer for the Day
You have created us, O gracious God, in your image,
The image of love and concern for the world around us;
You have endowed us, O Source of being, with soul and mind,
The soul and mind to consider all that is around us in our world;
Energize us, as we continue on our journey to answer your call
By caring for the world you created and entrusted to us.
In the name of the One who cares for even the sparrows,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
This proposal would lower the risk that bears will associate food at bait stations with humans and become conditioned to eating human-produced foods, thereby creating a public safety concern.
- Statement of National Park Service
This is a victory for Alaska’s iconic species. Baiting bears just to blast them over a pile of doughnuts is just plain wrong.
- Sara Amundson, Human Society of the United States
Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre.
God covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth,
Makes grass to grow on the foothills.
God gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry.
Psalm 147: 7-9