I live on a rural road next to a state forest and about 10 miles from the nearest liquor store. The roadsides here are loaded with nip bottles, and blue Busch beer cans. I've got 600' of frontage and I am picking this junk up almost daily. Lived here over 30 years. I know it's one guy doing most of this. I've tried to catch him but no joy.

He's my white whale.

In his case, "nature" likely means killing animals and logging.

Your reply is simplistic, but bear biology/life history is quite complex. Elder females not only regulate population, they teach their young the way of the bear. Kill the females and it's a bloody free for all with rogue animals having to fend for themselves and unregulated breeding. There are many instances of this in nature - bears, deer, coyote, elephants - where hunting causes increases in animal-human conflict and population size (the latter from compensatory reproduction). The only way hunting works is through eradication, and then you have removed all of the other functions of bear, deer, etc. from the forest - like plant/tree propagule dispersal, nutrient cycling, and more. As the animal control officer/LEO in the CT town with the biggest bear-human interaction problem told us, he doesn't have a bear problem, he has a people problem. NO REWARDS, NO BEARS. There's simple for you.

I've done 30+ years as a forest ecologist in CT and even longer as a student of the primary literature of behavioral and population ecology. I've seen this in play all across New England including on forestlands in Maine on properties of up to 10,000 acres.

DEEP is counting on you not knowing (or caring about) any of this. They are all about killing, logging, and destroying, the very antithesis of environmental protection.

No food, no bears. Pretty simple.

DEEP wants everyone to be afraid so that they can start killing them. Because DEEP is all about the killing.

Never claimed that. My mother died of COVID on May 30 after 13 weeks in ICU so I am kind of obsessed with learning everything I can about the disease. I am a scientist by training and profession, so I come at things via the peer-reviewed literature. I was merely offering what I have found in the dynamic world of COVID where the science and advisories change as fast as the virus mutates. It's hard to keep up with it.

I hope that you recover from whatever monster ails you.

You are correct on the long-haul issues, absolutely.

FYI, current COVID infections are more like upper respiratory colds than prior variants that attacked the lungs. This is why the current variants are much less lethal. Another measure is fatigue and length of symptom duration, much greater for both w/COVID vs. colds.

Also, the literature indicates that the rapid tests are unreliable w/only single test with the newer variants. There is a process to accurize them that includes repeating the test on a number of days since exposure and sampling from throat instead of nose. Check w/Dr. Google for details.

Wishing you a speedy recovery, Friend.

We made the mistake of visiting Acadia this weekend. What a nightmare for crowds. Never seen it like this before. Surely, the two cruise ships in the harbor didn't help, but the vehicle traffic was beyond absurd.