Archives for February 19th, 2007

Will somebody please kill this beast? (source)

Kevin kindly sent along this AFP story about Slovenia’s plans to terminate 100 brown bears this year with extreme prejudice.

This isn’t the first time Slovenia has culled its bear population. And it always manages to anger plenty of people: From the International Bear Association to the European Commission, which rightly pointed out that:

“…Slovenia’s estimate of its brown bear population at between 400 and 700 is so vague that it suggests the welfare of the species is not being properly monitored.”

I’m also among the angry, but for an entirely different reason: I’m wondering why the government isn’t doing more to profit from this. There are web sites, for example, like this one, which offer bear hunts in the backwoods of Russia. Prices start at over $4,000. Surely the Slovenian government should be trying to get a piece of this action. And yet, a Google search reveals nothing.

Selected Google Searches and Their Results

1) “Hunt Bears in Slovenia” : Only turns up this forum discussion, where someone mentions that you can hunt bears in Slovenia. Interestingly, later one member mentions this blog. My linking back to that forum is proof that life, and everything in it, is circular.

2) “I want to travel to Slovenia and kill bears” : The first result is for Spanish brown bears.

3) “hunting” AND “bears” AND “Slovenia” AND “bazooka” : 433 results, believe it or not. But not one of them telling you how to actually go about doing it.

4) “Due to deep-rooted insecurities about my own masculinity, I would like to travel to Slovenia and have a guide take me to where a bear is, and I mean, literally take me to a field and point to it so that all I have to do is push a button and it dies, and then I want to have it stuffed so that it looks ferocious standing in the study of my villa in Germany and for this service I’m willing to pay serious money.” : No results. Can you believe it? That search string has probably been put into Google a thousand times by now.

5) “Shoot something that can’t shoot back” AND “Slovenia” : Even a general search comes up empty. The first result is for this: the lyrics to Love Shot by Mandy Moore.

There’s clearly a lot of unexplored economic potential here, my friends. A lot. Someone just has to step in and seize it with their bare (stupid pun intended) hands.

(Thanks Kevin!)