Thursday, November 18, 2010

Using political framing to understand something (symbolically related) about conservation

Andrew Sullivan shares an anecdote about shutting off the trash-food supply for grizzly bears in Yellowstone Park (as another example of how grizzly bears are not as "self-sufficient" as Sarah Palin makes them out to be):
Forty years ago, grizzly bears in Yellowstone were dependent on garbage intentionally fed to them in Yellowstone Park. When the Park Service abruptly closed these garbage dumps, some thought this would cause the extinction of grizzly bears in Yellowstone because the bears had become dependent on garbage. While grizzly populations declined following dump closure, the end result was a growing population (4 percent to 7 percent a year for the last 15 years) that has grown and now survives entirely on natural foods.

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