Talk:Katmai National Park and Preserve/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Katmai National Park and Preserve. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

• Alaska Peninsula Trek

my link, add if appropriate AlaskaTrekker 18:50, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

• Katmai - Coasts/Shorelines at National Park Service discusses the population densities of bears based on coastal geography and availability of food sources. Not sure if the reference is necessary. I also tried to include an internal reference to the sedge, but it is a disambiguation. If nothing else, I think sedge should redirect to the Cyperaceae page, but I'm not sure how to go about this. --Derek G.

This is the reason why I am changing brown bear to grizzly bear in Katmai articles.

The National Park Service and the Alaska Dept of Fish and Game refer to the coastal subspecies of Ursus arctos as brown bears and the inland subspecies as grizzlies. They are referring to bears of the North American continent; they make no reference to Ursus arctos in Eurasia.

However, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of articles about animals from around the world, with sites about national parks and reserves in Eurasia as well as in North America. In Europe and Russia, all members of Ursus arctos are called brown bears, regardless of whether they are coastal or non-coastal. All of the encyclopedias I have read have listed all Eurasian Ursus arctos subspecies as browns and all North American subspecies as grizzlies. This not only reduces confusion, but is considered correct by biologists such as Gary Brown and Robert H. Busch. I have not read any world-bear encyclopedia that called all Eurasian bears and coastal North American bears as browns, yet only the inland bears of North America grizzlies.

Please see Gary Brown's The Bear Almanac, ISBN 978-1-59921-331-6, Robert H. Busch's The Grizzly Almanac, ISBN 1-59228-9, or The Encyclopedia of Mammals, David Macdonald, ed., ISBN 0-87196-871-1, for more detailed information. These biologists state that it is correct to call all North American Ursus arctos grizzlies and the Eurasian subspecies browns. Veteran bear biologist Douglas H. Chadwick and bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell also consider, based on studies, that all North American Ursus arctos should be referred to as grizzlies. In addition, brown bears along the Alaskan coast are considered to be the same subspecies as the inland grizzlies, Ursus arctos horriblis, so calling them by different names is not really correct. However, the bears of Kodiak and surrounding islands, Alaska, are a different subspecies, Ursus arctos middendorffi and are referred to as Kodiak brown bears, or Kodiak bears.

I was trying to change "brown bear" to grizzly bear on the Katmai Wikipedia page only to help avoid confusion. I respect those in the NPS who continue to refer to Ursus arctos subspecies as brown bears, but feel it would be more helpful to the typical Wikipedia user to simplify the common naming system for this bear species.

Perhaps my best course of action would be to create a Wikipedia page discussing this issue and my support of a more simpler/clearer common naming system for the grizzly bear, Ursus arctos horriblis.

Thank you. From User:Anderswarr — Preceding undated comment added 02:54, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up on a talkpage. Don't you think that this is a subject that should be discussed in articles on bears, rather than in articles on locations that happen to be populated by bears? Please remember that Wikipedia reflects common usage (see WP:COMMONNAME, and while your desire for a more consistent common usage is reasonable, you've got the cart before the horse. Wikipedia reflects common usage, it's not a place for users to propose their preferred naming systems or to propose simplifications not in common use. Please remember to distinguish between the opinions of individual researchers and writers and commonly accepted and used terminology. In any case, you can use a piped link ([[Grizzly bear|Alaskan brown bear]] to target the right link and still stick (per Wikipedia naming policy) to the common name.

"So calling them by different names is not really correct" is irrelevant: that is what they are called in reliable sources, and what Wikipedia should do is to note that authorities have been known to differ on what to call them, but that the majority of reliable sources distinguish between coastal and inland populations, even though they're the same species. I note that Grizzly bear doesn't really cover this. Brown bear, by contrast, does note the distinction in common usage. Remember that common-language taxonomy is far messier than you may realize, and bears aren't the worst offenders. Leopards and black panthers, for instance. Cougars are also called mountain lions (and panthers), but they're not even in the same genus as lions. When you look across different languages it gets even worse. That's why Latin taxonomy is preferred when discussing subjects where clear distinction is needed.

It doesn't seem appropriate to create a content fork (see WP:CFORK for why this is discouraged): the appropriate place to discuss this is in the main article, supported by sources to substantive discussion in scholarly sources (as opposed to general-audience publications or almanacs, which are more akin to encyclopedias and therefore of lesser weight). Acroterion (talk) 03:24, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I object to this change, based on the clear preference of reliable scientific sources for the "brown bear" construction. A JSTOR journal search reveals nearly 15,000 articles discussing Alaska brown bears. A similar search reveals only 2,500 articles discussing Alaska grizzly bears. This is a coarse search, but it clearly shows that scholarly sources adhere to the use of "brown bear" in academic work. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 03:32, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

(In reply to User:Acroterion)

-So the majority call them brown bears: that's correct locally, but when you're dealing with stuff from around the world people will get confused when they see "brown bear" in all Eurasian articles and in coastal Alaskan articles. It will also be confusing to see "grizzly bear" in non-coastal North American articles. The sources are reliable indeed and say brown bears, but it will be okay to call them grizzly bears in Wikipedia. Numerous sources around the Internet say that it is okay to call them whatever name you want; people who say they are brown bears will know what I am talking about when I put grizzly bear in coastal Alaska articles. Along the BC coast, they are still called grizzly bears; do note that it is confusing to say that if a BC grizzly crosses the border it will be called a brown bear.

You misunderstood what I said about "So calling them by different names is not really correct." If I had said "So calling them by different names is incorrect," that would have meant that I thought everyone who called them brown bears was wrong and those who said grizzlies were right. That would be irrelevant and disrespectful to the brown bear people. However, what I really meant was this: When I said "not really correct" instead of "not correct" that meant if a person called them a brown bear and put this on their page, as the NPS does, this would be fine; however, it would also cite that it would be more easy to understand and less confusing if grizzly bear was used for all members of the subspecies.

I will take your advice and put on the brown bear page a section that describes the usage of "brown" and "grizzly" bear. Thanks for reminding me, Acroterion.

From Anderswarr

(In reply to User:NorthBySouthBaranof)

-So you think that all these experienced and veteran bear biologists are wrong about what they say? So you think that all people who call them grizzly bears are wrong? I understand that you prefer to call them brown bears, but it hurts my feelings that you consider my way of saying it wrong. It will really help you to check out these books: I don't intend for you to think that grizzly is right, but I think that you should take a more in depth-look about why some people call them grizzly bear. However, the search results you gave to me did show that six times as many people call them brown bear in Alaska than grizzly bear, so that is why they are usually referred to by the former name.

Please respect my rights to continue calling them grizzly bear; it will prevent me from feeling wrong about the way I say it.

From Anderswarr

The majority of the bear biologists and researchers whose academic studies are archived on JSTOR - an academic journal repository and search engine - call them brown bears. So yes, they're not wrong when they call them brown bears.

The fact that you don't know about JSTOR suggests that you haven't gotten to know academic research. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 03:17, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

A couple of comments:

• • "it is confusing to say that if a BC grizzly crosses the border it will be called a brown bear" indicates that you may be confused about habitats, geography and animal behavior. In BC all of the bears are called grizzlies, including those near the coast. The Alaska brown bear population is hundreds of miles to the west on the other side of the Saint Elias and Wrangell ranges and the Cook Inlet in peninsular Alaska. Even in Alaska, grizzlies are found on the north side of the formidable Alaska Range and brown bears on the south, coastal side. While bears do move around, the coastal population is distinct from the inland population by range, diet and behavior.
  • " people who say they are brown bears will know what I am talking about when I put grizzly bear in coastal Alaska articles" No, then you are purposely placing erroneous terminology into Wikipedia to satisfy your personal sense of correct naming. You may not do that.
  • "these experienced and veteran bear biologists are wrong about what they say" No, they have opinions, and since we can't see their statements in context, we can't tell if you're interpreting them the way they were meant. You're taking general-readership books, written at approximately high-school level and greatly simplified, and placing them on equal status with post-graduate academic research.
  • "Please respect my rights to continue calling them grizzly bear" You can call them whatever you want. You just can't change Wikipedia to align with your personal preference. You have no "right" to do so in an encyclopedia. Acroterion (talk) 11:32, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

(In reply to User:Acroterion

This final note is about what has been going on recently.

It's been a few weeks now since I created a conflict by changing brown bear to grizzly bear in coastal Alaska articles. I do admit that calling coastal ones "brown bears" is correct. However, do note that even people like you and NBSB do not know everything about brown/grizzly bears. I may be young, but I know a hell of a lot about bears - more than the average kid in 8th grade.

I recognized that you made a mistake about bears during the edit conflict. When you were in a similar conflict with User 98.246.222.227, you said in one of your messages, "Coastal subspecies are brown bears." It is true that coastal ones are brown bears (even I finally admit to this, check out the Peninsular brown bear page I created), but it is NOT true that coastal brown bears are a different subspecies from inland grizzlies. Kodiak brown bears are a different subspecies on the Kodiak Archipelago because they have been isolated for thousands of years, but all mainland Ursus arctos, coastal or non-coastal, are in the subspecies Ursus arctos horribilis. The majority of reliable sources, including bear biologists Douglas Chadwick, Robert H. Busch, David MacDonald, Gary Brown, and bear biologists at the North American Bear Center all agree that there are only two subspecies of the North American brown bear. Sources vary, but the overwhelming majority consider there to be two instead of three subspecies. Coastal browns and inland grizzlies are distinguished by size, weight, and some behavior habits.

Even the NPS does not know everything, as I could see. They (on their Brown Bear Frequently Asked Questions page) state that brown and grizzlies are a separate subspecies. However, they don't even say what subspecies the coastal brown bear is, so how can they be sure that what they said is true? To make confusion worse, they state on their Bear Safety Alagnak and Bear Safety Aniakchak pages that it is correct to place brown bears in the same subspecies as grizzlies. This indicates that they don't know as much about brown bear subspecies as they think they do.

Also, you said in one of your notes that the works of Brown and Busch are general-readership books written at high-school level. No, they are not written at that level, and no, they do not know less about bears than you do just because they call the bears grizzlies. You have no right to say that about them; this makes them feel like all their years and hark work of bear biology was for nothing or was all wrong. And yes, they can be compared with post-graduation academic research because their work is, for a fact, post-graduation academic research itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anderswarr (talk • contribs) 14:13, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I am not trying to say that I know more about bears than you do - I am just stating that everyone sometimes makes mistakes about biology and animal naming and classification when a singular species has more than one name or more than one subspecies. I am also stating that just because I'm young it doesn't mean I don't know much. From User:Anderswarr Posted on May 14, 2014 — Preceding undated comment added 00:55, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

It's not what you know or I know, or what an individual book says, it's what the preponderance of reliable sources say. You're still trying to change common usage to something that fits your personal preference or preconception. That's not acceptable or appropriate. I'm not criticizing the authors of those books, I'm criticizing your reliance on those books to the exclusion of all else. Acroterion (talk) 02:32, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not changing brown bear to grizzly bear anymore. I am not using the sources of these books and not even using anything else. I'm not trying to offend you anymore by doing unacceptable stuff such as changing brown bear to grizzly bear. I was just trying to remind you that the coastal brown bear and inland grizzly are the same subspecies. The majority of reliable sources say coastal ones are brown bears. I respect that and am mot changing brown bear to grizzly anymore. Respectively, the majority of reliable sources put both in the same subspecies.

I'm upset that me just trying to remind you of something is annoying or offending you. From User:Anderswarr Posted on May 16, 2014 — Preceding undated comment added 13:37, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not "upset," "annoyed" or "offended," I'm pointing out to you that you continue to misunderstand how sources are used in academic writing, and that you misunderstand how they're employed on Wikipedia. As I noted earlier, what you're used to in the eighth grade is not how academic research is done, which you'll learn later in your academic career. You should not be "upset" that you're receiving advice from people who do have extensive experience in secondary and tertiary education: learning to accept and use constructive criticism is another thing that you'll learn about in coming years. Understanding that is one aspect of maturity, as is an accurate understanding of the limits to one's knowledge and skills. Acroterion (talk) 15:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)