A Formosan black bear re-emerged in Hualien County last month, breaking into a chicken coop, eating 12 chickens and damaging a fence before being captured.
The bear was tagged, which showed that it was the same one that was captured in the same place, Jhuosi Township’s (卓溪) Cingshuei village (清水), last year and released back into the wild elsewhere. The incident indicates that there is a cycle of capture, release and recapture.
Fully mature at 15 years old, the bear should be roaming Taiwan’s mountainous forests, but weighing only 70kg, its lifestyle seems to be closer to that of a malnourished vagrant, wandering the border zones of forests and human settlements — and their hen houses.
After capture, the bear was taken to an emergency center for observation, where experts could assess whether it was fit for release. That sounds perfectly rational — civilized, even.
However, a broad view shows an absurd sequence of events.
The bear is captured because it encroaches on human territory, then it is released back into the forest, but it returns, because its forest habitat has been fragmented and is under pressure.
Reporting on human-bear conflict frames it as if it were the meeting of two equal species on a level playing field, but in reality the “conflicts” have always been about space. Mountain forests are carved up with highways, encroached on by farmland expansion and criss-crossed with hiking trails, which pushes viable bear habitats back to furthest fringes of the map.
Black bears in human settlements is no invasion: They are simply roaming where they always have, but now they find villages and chicken coops.
The government’s “bear-friendly partners” plan is designed to help residents in rural areas install electric fences and monitoring cameras, and to manage potential food attractants. Those measures are reasonable and necessary. They make it possible to avoid the use of poisons and guns, so that getting close to where people live is not a death sentence.
However, the word “friendly” should give people some pause.
For farmers, it represents another fence, some more equipment and a deeper requirement to understand wild animals.
Meanwhile, for the bears, it means permission to exist — conditionally, at that.
This has led to a remarkable model of modern governance of bear management and education of the public. Conflicts and interactions between the two are institutionalized, and even repurposed for brand-building.
Taitung County’s Chihshang Township (池上) is home to a chicken farm that has embraced the policy. It has a “bear-friendly partner” tag on its products to encourage consumers to support the initiative. This has made the black bear’s image an ethical tag.
The real issue is both simpler and more difficult to solve than managing farm visits. If black bears are continuing to show up in human areas, the question is not why, but where do they have left to go?
Since the days of black bears being seen as “spirits of the mountain” and up until becoming the target species for conservation, people have known that bears belong in the mountains.
The issue is how much mountainous forest habitat remains? Ecological fragmentation has made bear encounters not exceptional occurrences, but the norm, while “capture, release and recapture” is set to become standard.
If people fail to act, these stories of returning bears, missing chickens and evaluations for release will become more common.
Meanwhile, the bears caught in the middle of this management cycle are becoming weaker with each iteration.
Liu Che-ting is a writer.
Translated by Gilda Knox Streader
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