Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

by Mary Roach

Bear biologist Dave Garshelis has been spending time on the Tibetan plateau, where brown bears routinely break into the homes of herders who have left for the summer to graze their stock. “They’d come back and the house would be a wreck, completely demolished. But these people are strict Buddhists and they don’t want any retribution.” Garshelis told me about a conversation he had with the local officer who responds in cases of animal attacks. “I asked him, ‘What if you were called to a situation where you saw a bear on top of a person, mauling a person? Would you shoot the bear?’ And he said, ‘I don’t have the right to decide whose life is more important, the person or the bear.’ ” In India, around five hundred people are killed every year in encounters with wild elephants. Government policy is to compensate the families but not, with few exceptions, to destroy the elephant. The state with the highest numbers—403 deaths in the past five years—is West Bengal.