On bear control

To the Editor: I just can’t understand why certain people keep insisting that bear invasions into populated areas can be eliminated by the use of bear-proof garbage cans. If this were true, why have these raids on our garbage cans only occurred during the last few years? Why did they not occur with the same frequency prior to the year 2000? Could it be that the bears, up to that time, had enough food available in their unpopulated wild areas that they didn’t have to resort to raiding our garbage cans to survive? Or could it be that during the years between 1970 and 2000, when bear hunting was prohibited, that the amount of open space in which the bears had to live became overdeveloped while the bear population increased proportionately to the point where the bears had to look elsewhere to supplement their food to survive. Most of the raids on our garbage cans are done by a mother bear that has the same instinct for feeding and protecting her young as humans. Taking away the garbage is not going to prevent the bear invasions. It will only force them to find other food such as our small animal pets and maybe even put our small children in harms way. Let us not wait until this happens. It seems to me that the Division of Fish and Game did a pretty good job of handling the bear situation for those years between 1970 and 2000 with few if no complaints from either the hunters or those apposed to bear hunting. So, why not leave the matter in the hands of the experts who have proven for years that they know what they are doing. Leonard R. Peck Sparta