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Delightful review by @PatBlanchfield, but I want to push back on the idea that we need any special explanation for why the bears of Grafton are breaking into people's houses. Everything we know about bear behavior predicts this outcome. https://twitter.com/newrepublic/status/1316053651757117440
The bears around Grafton may be extra-stressed by climate change but the underlying problem can be explained by the work of bear ethologist Ben Kilham.
Black bears are both social and territorial. They live in a world where they may have a super-abundance of natural foods in their territory in one part of the year, and then nothing.
So, black bears have to come to understandings with each other about feeding in neighboring territories. They understand and enforce reciprocity: You can eat in my territory if I can eat in yours.
So, if you let a bear eat your garbage, the bear views this not only as an opportunity, but as a promise let them keep doing it. So, if you let bears get at your garbage on the regular and then drive them out, you're likely to get physical retaliation.
It's not because bears are inherently vicious or bloodthirsty, they're just relating to humans the way they relate to other bears.
The other issue is habituation. Bears are naturally wary of people, but they're also intelligent. If bears are allowed to live too close to people, figure out pretty quickly that humans aren't as scary as we seem. Then they start breaking into houses. It happens all over.
