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By its very essence, the American West requires a jeweler’s touch.
I know. Over three decades, I was a town wildlife officer, leading Mammoth Lakes’ effort to find balance with its coyotes, bears, mountain lions and more.
I crawled into bear dens, I managed their population surge, I led programs to educate the public and police.
Through enlightened leadership, and my own trial and error, Mammoth Lakes managed to create a sense of stewardship for the town’s wild kingdom.
As I always explain, I didn’t so much help people with their wildlife problems. I helped wildlife with their people problems.
We’d hit that wilderness sweet spot: co-existence.
In the past few years, that beautiful balance has tipped back toward fear and misunderstanding.
Witness the ongoing reaction to the most recent bear encounter, a bloody showdown that swept across TV, newspapers and social media.
To recap: On a summer morning, a longtime Mammoth resident opens the front door to find her dog in a life-or-death struggle with a young bear.
A second dog slips out of the house, escalating the front yard battle. Her boyfriend races out of the shower to help. Naked and afraid, he grabs a hatchet and wades into the bloody brawl.
The next minutes are a blur of snarling teeth, thrashing claws and deadly hatchet blows.
The toll: one dead 70-pound cub, barely 17 months old, plus two humans shredded and bleeding and headed for the ER.
The town is now a cauldron of vitriol and blame. Some residents are furious at the couple, saying they should’ve handled their dogs better. Others are using the incident to suggest that the bears should be eliminated, extending the current trend to overstep, by relocating or even euthanizing troublesome bears.
Again, fear and misunderstanding are taking over.
In the couple’s defense, they have always been strong advocates for the town’s wild bears. They are devastated over what happened and now face huge medical bills. Their lives are upside down.
The lashings they are taking on social media are over the top. I say that as someone who appreciates bears more than almost anyone.
The not-so-obvious irony is that some 20,000 years ago, humans domesticated the wolf as protection from bears and lions. Dogs became the hard wall between soft huts and the wilderness.
The dogs in the latest bear fight were doing exactly what they were programmed to do — protect their owners. And then the two owners were laying their lives on the line for their beloved dogs. That’s a full-circle moment that is lost on many critics.
There’s another tragedy playing out here in the West that shows the backsliding of recent enlightenment: the plight of the wild mustangs at nearby Mono Lake.
As with the bears 30 years ago, the mustangs’ population has grown to unsustainable levels, becoming a threat to the desert and the lake itself, at least according to the Bureau of Land Management.
On July 8, contract workers will use helicopters to round up 500 of the horses and cart them away to holding pens. This is rugged and expensive work, with strong and skittish horses that can be spooked by a butterfly.
Good luck to the men and women tasked with this.
Yet I have to wonder, again how necessary such a heavy-handed response might be. I think of the foals separated from their mothers. I think of the injuries and the trauma involved in forcing wild animals into pens and trucks.
Wild mustangs are among the most beautiful creatures of the American West. Their spirit is our spirit. The local Paiute tribes, expert with horses, have offered their services but were turned down.
Once again, the approach to a situation seems stuck on “stupid.” Case after case, we see humans treading where they need not be, moving wildlife and harming the very thing they claim to love.
I rely on my gut rather than textbooks. I rely on all the lessons learned from decades of chasing bears out of cabins and cars, never suffering so much as a single scratch.
And you’re worried about that bear in your apple tree?
Far more than bears, this is what I fear: The current situations are a byproduct of the American mood, in which we don’t listen. Instead, we lash out at our opponents, missing a chance to work together.
Stubbornly, in the way of cowboys and bureaucrats, we march ahead.
So long, solutions. Farewell, co-existence.
Steve Searles is the former wildlife officer in Mammoth Lakes and the co-author, with Chris Erskine, of “What the Bears Know.”
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article argues that the American West demands a delicate “jeweler’s touch” in managing wildlife, drawing on decades of work in Mammoth Lakes to show that careful, patient stewardship can achieve a practical balance between humans and animals.
It contends that, through trial and error and public education, Mammoth Lakes once reached a “wilderness sweet spot” of co-existence, where policies and attitudes focused on solving “wildlife’s people problems” rather than treating animals themselves as the core problem.
The piece suggests that the recent bear attack outside an Old Mammoth home — in which a 17‑month‑old, 70‑pound black bear fought with two dogs and injured two residents before being critically injured with a hatchet and later euthanized as a public safety threat — has shattered that fragile balance and reignited fear and anger in the community.[4][6]
In describing the incident, the column emphasizes the “full-circle” irony that dogs were historically domesticated from wolves to protect humans from predators; here, the dogs were protecting their owners from a bear, and in turn the couple risked their lives to protect the dogs, a point the article believes many critics are missing.
The article argues that the couple involved, long-time locals and vocal bear advocates, are being unfairly vilified on social media, even as they cope with serious injuries and medical bills, and it maintains that their response in a chaotic, life‑threatening situation is being judged harshly in hindsight.
At the same time, the piece criticizes residents who use this encounter to call for eliminating or aggressively relocating bears, portraying that impulse as a regression from more enlightened coexistence policies and as driven by fear and misunderstanding rather than data or experience.
Extending beyond bears, the article links the controversy to the planned July 8 roundup of hundreds of wild horses near Mono Lake, where federal agencies intend to use helicopters and trucks to corral roughly 450 horses and move them to off‑range holding facilities, citing damage to wetlands and highway safety concerns.[1][2][9]
The column questions the necessity and humanity of that mustang roundup, stressing the trauma of foals being separated from mares and of forcing nervous, powerful animals into pens and trailers, and it portrays the operation as an overly heavy‑handed response that risks harming creatures emblematic of Western freedom.[2][5]
Moreover, it highlights that local Paiute tribes, described as expert horse handlers, have offered to help manage the mustang herd but were rebuffed by federal officials, which the article frames as another example of bureaucratic rigidity and a missed opportunity for collaborative, Indigenous-led solutions.[5][10]
Throughout, the piece criticizes what it calls a broader American mood of refusing to listen, lashing out at opponents, and defaulting to “cowboy and bureaucrat” instincts that favor forceful interventions over compromise, ultimately lamenting that such attitudes are driving the West away from genuine solutions and away from the hard-won ideal of coexistence.
Different views on the topic
In contrast, official statements from Mammoth Lakes authorities and state wildlife officers emphasize that, while bear sightings are common, aggressive attacks on people are rare, and they portray the June encounter as highly unusual behavior from a young bear that justified its euthanization as a public safety threat.[4][6]
These agencies stress practical risk‑reduction measures — such as never approaching or feeding bears, securing trash in bear‑proof containers, keeping pet food indoors, making noise in bear country, and leashing and supervising dogs — suggesting that adherence to such protocols can prevent conflicts without fundamentally undermining coexistence.[3][6][7]
Additionally, some wildlife officials underscore that when a bear becomes habituated to people or shows repeated aggression, removal or euthanasia may be necessary to protect residents, pointing to the first known fatal black bear attack in California in 2023 as evidence that, in rare cases, bears can pose lethal danger that must be managed decisively.[4]
While the article defends the injured couple, public and online commentary includes criticism that their dogs were not adequately controlled and that stepping into an active bear–dog fight was risky, with some voices suggesting that human behavior and poor preparation contribute to such dangerous encounters and must be scrutinized alongside wildlife management decisions.[4][8]
Turning to the mustang issue, federal officials with the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management argue that the Montgomery Pass herd near Mono Lake has exceeded the land’s capacity, with horses roaming well beyond their designated territory, trampling fragile wetlands and vegetation, and increasing hazards along Highway 395 for motorists.[1][2][9]
These agencies maintain that the July 8 roundup is required to protect Mono Lake’s distinctive limestone formations, surrounding desert habitat, and public safety, and they portray helicopter gathers and transport to off‑range corrals as difficult but necessary tools under the Wild Free‑Roaming Horses and Burros Act to keep populations within sustainable limits.[1][2][9]
Moreover, federal plans emphasize that the captured horses will be offered for adoption or placed in long‑term holding rather than slaughter, which supporters describe as a humane compromise between preserving iconic wild herds and safeguarding ecosystems and communities from overgrazing, water stress, and traffic risks.[1][2][9]
Some conservation biologists and land managers, echoing agency concerns, argue that unmanaged horse populations can degrade riparian areas, crowd out native wildlife, and worsen drought impacts, and they contend that failing to act could result in mass starvation and suffering among the horses themselves, making proactive removals a lesser harm compared with allowing ecological collapse.[1][2][5]
Finally, within this framework, proponents of the roundup and of firm bear control policies tend to view “minimal interference” approaches as unrealistic in today’s West, where growing human populations, climate stress, and shrinking habitat increase the frequency and stakes of human–wildlife conflicts, and they argue that timely, sometimes forceful interventions are a difficult but responsible part of modern stewardship.
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