In one of the more bizarre analyses of the recent fatal bear attack near Yellowstone National Park, Bryan Fischer, the issue analyst for government and public policy at the American Family Association, blames the death on researchers ignoring the Bible. At the “Rightly Concerned” blog, Fischer writes:
The grizzly is a predator, a fierce, savage unstoppable killing machine. Lewis and Clark did not believe the stories they’d been told by Indian peoples about grizzlies until they started running into them. It was not long before their “curiosity” was “quite satisfied” about the grizzly.
Because these researchers were intent on studying the grizzly rather than killing him to protect innocent human life, a husband, father and grandfather is dead today. This was an utterly unnecessary death which could have happened only because our culture has jettisoned a biblical view of the relative value of human life compared to animal life.
Because this animal was given a nap instead of a bullet, a human being is dead, and a savage animal is alive, on the prowl, and ready to kill again.
Seventy-year-old Erwin Frank Evert, of Park Ridge, Ill., was killed just outside of Yellowstone last week by a grizzly bear that had been snared and tranquilized by researchers just hours earlier. Wildlife officials say Evert ignored warning signs that told hikers to stay out of the area. <a href="http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/article_bad1a710-7be6-11df-9932-001cc4c002e0.html" title="From the Missoulian:”>From the Missoulian:
Friends and wildlife officials have said that Evert, a botanist who owned a cabin at Kitty Creek, was well aware of the risks of entering the capture area, but that he was curious about work being done there, and ignored verbal and posted warnings.
The incident is the first fatal mauling by a grizzly bear in the area in 25 years, and the first such fatal attack to take place at a site where researchers had recently trapped and released a bear.
Earlier this year, Fischer advocated killing a SeaWorld whale after it drowned an Orlando trainer. He now compares that animal attack to this one, which is quite a stretch. The grizzly that killed Evert hadn’t previously attacked a human. Is he really advocating wiping out the entire Yellowstone National Park grizzly bear population?