Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

You are the "Bear Expert " who tried to present a skeleton of a legally-harvested brown bear as a bear killed by a poacher in your last article to the local newspaper. I would recommend that you educate yourself on the subject before you write something in the newspaper.

I did have high respect for the work of the Fish & Game game biologists in the past. In the last 25 years I have worked with many great biologists who I respected and who respected me. We worked together to ensure that we have a healthy and sustainable population of brown bears.

Yes, in my opinion, biologists Carl and Anthony mismanaged the brown bear, moose and goat population in unit 1-D, and they are faking numbers in their reports. I will give you a couple of examples:

A. “Guides are responsible for the Mortality of four Collared Brown Bears in 1-D during 2018 - 2020.” That is a lie. My clients have never in 25 years harvested a collared bear, and the second outfitter/guide didn't harvest four collared bears either.

B. I believe that Carl lied about having a harvest guideline of five brown bears total with no more than two females in the calendar year of 2021. The truth is, the guideline was seven brown bears total with no more than two females.

The season was closed by an emergency closure after a total mortality of six bears, including one female without justification.

I always follow Fish & Game’s rules and regulations, but Fish & Game broke their own rules. This made my last brown bear client very unhappy.

In my article, I never mentioned killing more bears in town. I’ve never killed a bear in defense of life or property, I did have a big food garden on my property, and I was bluff-charged by bears plenty of times.

Your kind did attack HBPD in nasty articles for doing their job protecting people in Haines. Police officers don't like to kill bears, but because Fish & Game biologists failed in their job, they did not have too many options. In the article, I did not mention only my opinions and my concerns, but the opinions and concerns of many Haines and Mosquito Lake residents who have come to me for help with garbage bears. Because I am a bear guide, people were trying to hire me to take care of their problems. I declined, and offered no lethal solutions. I believe I did save the lives of a couple garbage bears.

If someone thinks you can learn something about bears by flying in a helicopter or airplane, they are naive. You can waste $ 600,000 on trying to count bears in the Southeast Alaska rain jungle, but it's impossible to come up with true numbers. Brown bear counting started a couple years ago, and Haines was already terrorised by garbage bears. You could read the police log, or ask locals, and you would know that we don't have a shortage of brown bears.

Tom, if you think kids and all other Haines residents don't have the right to be safe in their town, you don’t know what you are talking about. If you think we can live in harmony with the bears in town, ask Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend. They were thinking the same as you.

I don't want the bear crisis of 2020 happening again in a couple of years, where 30 females, cubs and young bears are killed because Fish & Game did not properly manage the bear population, and "GREEN" Chilkoot River bear viewing activities convert wild, healthy brown bears into garbage bears.

We professional hunters and sport hunters care about the health of our game animals more than you and your kind.

And I believe you and your kind are the special interest group Carl and Anthony are working for.

Sincerely

Larry Benda Master Guide /Owner

Alaska fair chase guiding

Commentary paid for by Larry Benda.