For as long as I’ve been paying close attention to such things – and that means since the mid-1980s, when I became the Anchorage Times outdoors writer – I’ve always considered our city’s residents to be admirably tolerant of bears, including the brown bears that occasionally wander into Anchorage’s more developed areas. Sure, there are people who still believe “the only good bear is a dead bear.” And too many people behave ignorantly or obstinately, leading to bear-human conflicts. But many more people have seemed willing to share the local landscape with bears. But it hasn’t been simply my perception. In a survey conducted in the late 1990s, some seventy percent of local respondents indicated that Anchorage had “just the right amount” or even “too few” brown bears. That’s right, those big and fierce bears that are the coastal cousins of grizzlies. As Rick Sinnott has noted on more than one occasion, “No other large city in the world is inhabited by grizzlies or brown bears. Most cities wouldn’t stand for it, but here they’re accepted. We brag about our bears.”

Among those to applaud Anchorage’s tolerance of bears is Canadian bear researcher Stephen Herrero, author of the acclaimed book “Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance.” Herrero has described Anchorage’s embrace of bears as “world class and certainly unique. It’s something to be proud of.”

I think we tolerate bears as a community because most of us are fascinated by them and we have come to accept that they are complex animals that rarely threaten people, rather than the blood-thirsty killers they were once made out to be. The evidence is overwhelming that black and brown/grizzly bears are innately shy of people and prefer to avoid us humans whenever possible. We’re not among their natural foods and most bears attack only when they feel threatened (or when protecting young or food caches). This has certainly proved to be the case in the Anchorage area. Though we have our share of “problem bears” – that is, bears that learn to associate people with food and consequently lose much of their innate wariness because of the rewards they get when people leave out garbage or other food – bears rarely have presented even the hint of a threat to people in our city. And far fewer bears have actually attacked some one, either in Anchorage proper or adjacent Chugach State Park.

Still, for all our community’s long-standing acceptance of bears and their mostly “good” behavior around us, a shift seemed to occur in 2008, after brown bears mauled three people in the Anchorage-Eagle River area and a sow with cubs chased other residents. No matter that reckless human behavior contributed to at least two of the attacks and several other close encounters. A wave of bearanoia swept through the city and increasing numbers of people expressed a fear of bears and a desire for their extirpation within the city. Though it was hard to measure community-wide attitudes, a smattering of loudly protesting voices got the attention of some local politicians. First, Assemblyman Bill Starr pushed for a “bear cop,” an effort that didn’t go far (I’m happy to report). More recently, Rep. Charisse Millett proposed state legislation to make public safety Fish and Game’s top priority in Anchorage (see my last blog entry for a commentary on that).

Given all of this, it seemed reasonable to wonder if Anchorage, as a community, was indeed becoming less tolerant of bears (and moose). Rick Sinnott and his bosses at Fish and Game were apparently wondering exactly that, because the department arranged for a new attitudes-toward-wildlife survey to be conducted.

Sunday, when I opened up the Anchorage Daily News, I was delighted – and, yes, a little surprised – to learn that our city’s residents continue to embrace wildlife in general (90 percent of respondents agreed that wildlife is “an important part of my community”) and moose and bears in particular. I won’t get into all the specifics here. If you somehow missed Sunday’s story (“Poll finds Anchorage likes wildlife roaming city”) you can check out the article on the newspaper’s website.

Here I simply want to applaud local residents for their continued tolerance of bears and moose and their more general embrace of wild animals. I’m especially heartened that 85 percent of the respondents support a rule requiring people who live in neighborhoods frequented by bears to use bear-proof bear containers; and 84 percent support levying fines on those who fail to properly store garbage in such parts of town. Perhaps even more significantly, about 60 percent opposed the idea of “bear-free zones” where bears would be killed if they happened to simply show up. All of this suggests a large portion of us residents are in fact getting the message that state, federal, and local officials and several local groups have been trying to spread for several years: if we want to share the landscape with bears (as most apparently do) we need to act responsibly. And not over-react to their mere presence.

I hope our mayor, assembly, and those representing Anchorage in the legislature pay close attention to this latest survey. The people have spoken (again). By substantial margins, we wish to share the local landscape with bears and moose, not kill them off.