GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK–One of the enduring characteristics of mountain folks, although it is not always an endearing trait, is that they speak their piece in no uncertain fashion. If they’ve got an ax to grind, it is applied to the verbal whetstone in no uncertain fashion.
On a personal basis, I must acknowledge I’ve never been one to keep my pie hole shut for the sake of propriety or to keep opinions away from print simply because they were controversial. With that product warning having been duly tendered, this is the first of a series of pieces looking at troubling issues related to wildlife, the environment, and the outdoors in the high country.
Bear hunting is a long-standing, treasured mountain tradition, one in which the state dog, the Plott hound, figures prominently and which has a tradition second to none in the annals of mountain sport. In fact, over the years I have known a few fellows, men who were otherwise hard-working and devoted to their family and home, who simply refused to hold a job during bear season. Such outlooks fascinate me, but the matter immediately at hand involving bears lies beyond the scope of action of even the most dedicated of bear hunters unless they also happen to be notorious scofflaws. Simply put, bears are becoming an ever-increasing nuisance in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Is this bear in need of a spanking? NPS photo
Before getting into what is going to be, in some senses, a scathing indictment of the Park and its dealings with bears (as a symptom of more general problems), let me place some personal cards on the table. I cherish the Park and it has been good to me in countless ways. My boyhood trout fishing buddy, Bill Rolen, was the son of a revered Park ranger of the same name. For the better Park of two decades I have been part of a wonderful cooperative effort between Park officials and the University of Tennessee in a non-credit education program known as the Smoky Mountain Field School.
I teach fly fishing and nature writing and have enjoyed annual access to a Park training room at the Sugarlands headquarters while doing so. I’m a member of one of the two groups supporting the Park and its programs, the Great Smoky Mountains association, and I’ve spend money at auctions sponsored by the other group, Friends of the Smokies. Many of the most meaningful hours of my life have been spent in the Park camping, fishing, hiking, or visiting the remains of my father’s boyhood home. But, and it’s a mighty big but, I have trouble with the Park’s approaches and policies in a variety of areas.
One of them is the way the Park is dealing, or more accurately, failing to deal, with problem bears.
Some bear-related problems have made regional headlines. A few years back, on the Tennessee side of the Park, a woman was killed and partially devoured by bears. Just this past summer, again on the Tennessee side, there was an incident where a bear was “put down” after doing a bit of chomping on the toes of a Park visitor. Yet those high-profile events are but the tip of a growing iceberg.
Anyone who spends much time in the Park backcountry will tell you that bear encounters, and with those encounters the potential for human vs. bear problems, have risen appreciably in recent years. There’s no better example of that than the way in which Park officials have been closing backcountry campsites, along with shelters along the Appalachian Trail, because of bear activity. Never mind that every designated campsite has wire and pulley arrangement which lets campers get all their food and anything else which might draw the attention of old bruin elevated and safely out of reach, bears have taken to interacting with campers in a most unpleasant and all too frequent fashion.
As these words are being written, all but one of the backcountry campsites on Hazel Creek, a favorite Swain County destination for fishermen, those enamored of the human past in the Park, wayfarers wishing to trace the early footsteps of Horace Kephart in the Smokies, natural historians, photographers, cemetery visitors, and others, are closed. The one campsite open is Calhoun, and it is so far up the stream, so truly “back of beyond,” as to be out of reach of any but the fittest of hikers. Admittedly, those closures probably don’t make too much difference in the depths of the winter, although I do know of some people whose plans have been altered or ruined because of the closures.
Moreover, you do have to wonder a bit about just how much roaming bears are wont to do this time of year. While southern Appalachian bears do not hibernate in the truest sense, opting instead to spend shorter “down” times in hollow trees or similar refuges, they aren’t especially active during the winter months. The continuing Park closures would suggest, and rather ridiculously, that bears are just as active now as they are in the early fall.
More to the point, perhaps, is that these Hazel Creek campsites, along with a bunch of others in the Park, were closed throughout the autumn months. That presented a real problem to fishermen wishing to take advantage of the “golden days” fall can offer, not to mention backpackers anxious to sample and savor the beauties of high country woodlands at the peak of leaf color. Mind you, I don’t doubt for a minute that bear problems existed then (though I do doubt they exist at the moment). The real question is: How do Park officials plan to address this?
There is a pronounced tendency among some pantywaist poltroons in the U. S. National Park Service, in the Smokies and elsewhere across the country, to fall back on the tired old nostrum which suggests that their mission exclusively involves the natural world, humans be damned. Up to a certain point, this protectiveness has validity, but it should never stand in the way of the undeniable and critically important fact that the Park belongs to the nation—and its people. In that regard, what seems to be an increasingly prevalent mindset, one of “we are Park rangers and officials and we know what is best,” never mind how it affects Park users, is troubling indeed.
There is a pronounced tendency among some pantywaist poltroons in the U. S. National Park Service, in the Smokies and elsewhere across the country, to fall back on the tired old nostrum which suggests that their mission exclusively involves the natural world, humans be damned. Up to a certain point, this protectiveness has validity, but it should never stand in the way of the undeniable and critically important fact that the Park belongs to the nation—and its people. In that regard, what seems to be an increasingly prevalent mindset, one of “we are Park rangers and officials and we know what is best,” never mind how it affects Park users, is troubling indeed.
Any individual with much connection to Park affairs or who uses it a lot—fishing guides and outfitters, serious backcountry campers, and indeed anyone whose activities depends in appreciable measure on the use of designated campsites—will candidly tell you they are concerned. I’ve talked to some of these folks whose livelihood depends on use of Park campsites. Although they are understandably reluctant to say too much because being quoted could result in capricious or vindictive Park officials withdrawing permits or make life miserable for them, they are seriously frustrated. From my perspective, and it is one which dates back to a time when there was a decidedly different bureaucratic mindset, something has to give.
In truth, a lot of the new generation of Park rangers, and maybe some of the “higher ups” as well, have a proprietary perspective nicely encapsulated in their common usage of the possessive “our” when referring to the Park. What they forget is that “our” extends to all of us, not just those drawing taxpayer dollars to pay their salary while working for the Park Service. Some also have a bit of a tendency toward laziness, and if backcountry sites are all closed, as they have been on Hazel Creek for months, the need to do some real leg work and active patrolling is minimized.
On a personal level, and as evidence of such slackness, it has been almost three decades since a Park ranger checked my fishing license. I spend a lot of time on Park streams in the backcountry, but it seems that part of the Park is almost terra incognita to today’s rangers. Any mindset of this sort—officiousness, laziness, arrogance, or lack of respect for established ways of dealing with issues and local residents–is good. What it suggests, and suggests quite strongly, is that bears are but a symptom, rather than the real root, of a growing problem.
The heart of the matter goes to a new generation of Park employees who have allowed a certain degree of self-ordained superiority to get in the way of common sense and dealing with locals in a reasonable, understanding fashion. Too often, although by no means universally, their outlooks and attitudes are a far cry from those of yesteryear. A generation or two back Park rangers for the most part either had local roots or, if they didn’t, wisely made every effort to become an integral part of the community they served. I have to wonder where the Mark Hannahs, Bill Rolens, Joe Ashleys, Buford Messers, and others of their ilk (all were stellar examples of first-rate Park rangers) are in the ranks of today’s National Park Service personnel?
For now, the bear problem is real, it’s growing, and it must be addressed. With that in mind, and heedful of the fact that anyone who criticizes should also offer possible solutions, let’s conclude with some suggestions of what might be done to correct an increasingly vexatious problem.
It’s actually pretty simple. Rather than closing numerous campsites and doing it for extended, unreasonable periods of time, the Park could take some steps which will protect bears while also allowing human use of the Park.
All that is required is taking any of many actions which traumatize bears in the sense that they restore a healthy dose of fear of humans. There was a time, although the Park doesn’t like to talk about it, when bears which repeatedly caused “bear jams” (stopped traffic on Highway 441) got a serious dose of corporal punishment in the form of a spanking. Yes, that’s right—a good old-fashioned dose of hickory tea. The bear would be shot with a tranquilizing dart and then, usually after being transported, get a good whipping as it began to awaken. Almost invariably one spanking did the job.
Another possibility is simple, straightforward trapping. Its efficacy isn’t quite as predictable, but usually a few hours in a cage along with being transported a good many miles, gives a bear a healthy dislike for interaction with humans. Pepper spray, administered by officials who know what they are doing, is yet another option. Doubtless experienced wildlife biologists could offer others, but something needs to be done, and it needs to be done now.
Come springtime, if a lot of prime backcountry campsites which have been utilized by three generations of anglers are closed, and if licensed and properly permitted outfitters have to cancel trips, there will sure enough be problems in paradise.
I appreciate Bob Plott's comments and addition of the word "ethical" to his comment about hunters. It is the unethical hunter who has created PR problems with the non-hunting public. I would also like to add that the source of most the problems that exist on our planet today is, in my opinion, an overpopulation of HUMANS. We seem to have managed to be too successful a species for our own good.
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