About this item
Today bears have a growing people-problem: their "backyards" are full of humans and people-provided food is everywhere. Discover practical solutions and real-world examples of how to prevent conflicts at home and at play so we can do a better job of sharing space with these intelligent, adaptable animals. CONTENTS - Understanding Bears and Bear Behavior - Bear-Proofing Your Home - Being Bear-Smart in the Outdoors - Attractant Management: Garbage, Bird Feeders, Fruit Trees, Chicken Coops, Gardens and more - Creating Bear-Smart Communities - Preventing Conflicts - Responding to Encounters and Attacks - A Bear Manager's World - Case Studies from the U.S. & Canada - North American Bear Populations - Lexicon of Terminology & Extensive Resources.
About the Author
I came very close to going into higher education; I guess I have an irrepressible urge to find ways to make someone's internal light bulb go off. My intrepid publisher says I like to fix things. I know I believe that good people really can change the world for the better. It's Ms. Fix-it who's behind my latest two books, Living with Bears Handbook, and Surviving Wildfire.
I wrote the first edition of Living with Bears: A Practical Guide to Bear Country back in 2006. (livingwithbears.com) . I'm really proud that over the past decade it became the unofficial bible of living responsibly with wildlife. I know the expanded and updated second edition, Living with Bears Handbook, published in 2016, is going to be even more useful. It was supposed to come out in 2012. But a whole lot of life got in the way.
While I was buried in what I thought would be a year-long project my house in Colorado burned down in a horrific wildfire, with all my research and notes, along with everything else we owned. After discovering what it took to rebuild our lives, and learning first hand how many people were totally unprepared to start over, I was overcome by fix-it disease. I took a two-year detour from bears and wrote Surviving Wildfire. Get Prepared. Stay Alive. Rebuild Your Life. (survivingwildfire.com)
I like to think I emerged from the ashes a better person and a better writer, more easily able to dig down and bare the truths that are often hard to face. But it's not an experience I would wish on anyone, even the fourth grade teacher who used to rap my knuckles with a ruler to get me to stop scribbling and pay attention to memorizing something or other.
Losing everything you own is a profoundly life-altering experience. Forever after life will be divided into BF and AF. Being forced to let go of long-held dreams and discover how to move on and find new ones is something that changes you - either for the better or for the worse. A dozen neighbors also lost their homes that night. Some of them are dreaming new dreams. Others are lost and bitter, stuck in a past they can't seem to escape from.
I wrote Surviving Wildfire: Get Prepared, Stay Alive, Rebuild Your Life because there's nothing worse than standing in your rubble thinking about all the things you could and should have done differently. So I filled Surviving Wildfire with all the latest preparedness and recovery research, along with real-life ah-hahs and oh-nos you won't find anywhere else.
It's not a big book; you can read it cover to cover in a couple of hours. I know it's a couple of hours that will open your eyes and could save your home or even your life. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars and uncountable hours of heartache. (survivingwildfire.com) Then I wrote a handy pocket guide to stick on your refrigerator.
But the whole time the bears were nagging at me. Th
