Bear whisperer voices need for public awareness
LYME, New Hampshire — Stripy and Jake are bear cubs fed by bottle, who play around happily. Other bear orphans perch in the trees when Ben Kilham ventures into their enclosure.
Kilham lives in the woods of New Hampshire in the United States and has made it his life’s work to understand black bears, winning him not just international stature but greater insight into humankind.
From the photos and paintings on the wall, to the three little wooden bears bidding visitors “welcome” at the entrance, everything in his renovated barn home exudes his passion.
So does the nearby 3-hectare enclosure, where he cares for orphan cubs entrusted to him each year by the New Hampshire fish and game department.
With their mothers perhaps shot dead or knocked down by a car, Kilham makes sure they grow up safe and well, before releasing them back into the wild aged 18 months.
In addition he observes adult bears in the wild, including Squirty, who is now 22 years old and has had 11 litters.
His dedication to black bears — the most common in North America with a population of around 750,000 — has made him such an expert that China asked for his help with the giant panda, a collaboration that inspired a recently released documentary.
After a quarter of a century of study, Kilham has no doubt that bears are as close to humans as great apes, even if, as he said, apes “were our closest genetic relative”.
He quickly realized that female bears were capable, like humans, of “reciprocal altruism” — or in other words, looking after each other for the greater good.
Squirty provided early proof of that. Shortly after releasing her into the wild, Kilham said another wild female false-charged him in a bid to protect Squirty and her cubs, despite never having seen them before.
“I was like, ‘Wow, what’s going on?’” the 65-year-old said. “She is unrelated. That’s pure altruism. She is taking a huge risk, encountering a human, which is her greatest
Unfortunately, educating the public is like herding cats. They don’t take in information very well.”
Ben Kilham, who cares for orphan bear cubs before releasing them back into the wild
foe, to defend unrelated cubs from me.”
Kilham grew up surrounded by animals collected by his virologist father. He studied birds and for a while the family even kept a baby crocodile, brought back from a year in Uganda, in a shower in the basement.
After working as a gunsmith, Kilham’s dream took off when the department of fish and game — tipped off to his interest by a biologist friend — entrusted him with the first bear cubs, opening the way to the first bear rehab center in New Hampshire.
Twenty-five years later, Kilham has released 165 bears back into the wild and documented more than 1,500 bear interactions in nature.
His work led recently to a PhD in environmental sciences, not bad for someone not great at school — he was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 40 — and whose work has been looked down on by the scientific community.
He has enjoyed quite the following nonetheless, thanks to articles in National Geographic and the popularity of his book, which came out in 2002.
His commitment is to raising awareness about bears, still feared and hunted in the United States. Around 10-15 percent of New Hampshire’s 5,000 to 6,000 bears are killed every year in hunting season.
“We can live very easily with bears, it’s a matter of educating the public,” said Kilham. “Unfortunately, educating the public is like herding cats. They don’t take in information very well.”