Encroachment

Adria: So you said you're kind of a wilderness boy. What are your thoughts on encroachment? Is it a problem where you live?

Shiloh: Yeah, I live up in the mountains, Adria. My home is above 3,000 meters, so I live at a very high altitude. It's--I live in the Rocky Mountains, so it's very rugged. There aren't very many people. There's still tons of animals. And wild animal encroachment is a big problem, especially in my area of the Rocky Mountains, because we have many black bears. Black bears aren't as dangerous as brown bears, like there are at north. They're not aggressive, but they're a huge nuisance, and they cause a lot of damage.

For instance, I've spent a lot of time in a cabin up in the mountains. This particular cabin has been broken into by bears. Last year, in about six months, we had four different bears come in through the cabin, and they'll knock down the front door, they'll destroy the inside of the house. The refrigerator's knocked over, food everywhere. They'll break through windows. They stink; they go to the bathroom. It's a terrible mess that I had to clean up, and I had to do this.

And it's interesting because in these situations, we didn't do anything to attract the bear. We live in a very rural area. There's nobody around for kilometers. This was up, you know, remote cabin. There's no reason for the bear to be there, other than curiosity. There was no food in the cabin at the time. I think that bears' encroaching on civilian, on more urban populations, is becoming increasingly a problem, partly because they're losing their territory. People are encroaching--people are actually encroaching upon the bears. The bears aren't encroaching upon the people. It's the other way around. And we have to expect that they are going to be curious and be hungry, because they have no food. So we can't really blame them when it happens. But we have to figure out a way to fix it, because it is a problem and people still do get hurt, especially with mountain lions, which is a big deal.

Adria: So, have you had any personal experience, or anybody you know that's been like physically harmed by one of these animals?

Shiloh: Well, mountain lions, not, no, because although we have a lot of mountain lions, they are cats and you never see them. They kill a lot of animals. Mountain lions, especially, will kill a lot of sheep and baby calves, which we have many where I live, so in that sense, it's a problem. They cause a lot of monetary damage, because a cow costs $500, and they're killing cows. But as far as people go, cats don't really hurt people.

Bears, on the other hand, do. Up in the northern states of United States, brown bears are very dangerous. They're aggressive. They'll actually come after humans. Where I live, we have brown bears, and they're a little less aggressive. But I still am familiar with one of my friends (he's not really a friend but an acquaintance) who was camping, and it was partly his mistake because he had food inside his tent with him, instead of like in an ice chest outside close. The bear came through the tent and, while trying to grab the food, accidentally grabbed my friend's arm, and he had a huge gash on his arm. He had to have two surgeries to fix it, lots of stitches. It was a mess.