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In Bear Country: A Global Journey in Vanishing Wilderness
In Bear A Global Journey in Vanishing Wilderness Brian Payton
- GenresNatureNonfiction
Mass Market Paperback
First published May 22, 2007
39 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 4, 2018
I found a copy of In Bear Country in a neighbour’s discarded box of old books and, mildly curious, started reading with no real expectations.
I was quickly hooked by Brian Payton’s fascinating journey around the world to learn about the eight main species of bears and the circumstances facing their survival on a planet increasingly ravaged by humans.
This book is as much about humans as bears and the relationship between the two species. We learn how different peoples and cultural groups consider bears, how they respect them or abuse them, revere them or exploit them.
Payton reports on Indian villagers who, while often suffering savage maulings, don’t question the sloth bears’ right to live alongside them. He also encounters the horrific Chinese bear-bile-farming industry and those fighting to end it. Cambodian anti-poaching rangers, Peruvian mystics, polar bear tourism in Canada, and the ancient presence of brown bears in Italy and France.
In Bear Country culminates with a gut-wrenching finale, where Payton juxtaposes the Navajo’s wary respect of bears with modern America’s brutal hunting culture.
Payton writes throughout as a true professional journalist, dispassionately presenting the facts and people he experiences and letting the stories tell themselves.
It’s hard not to feel a newfound respect for these impressive, resilient creatures. It’s hard not to care a bit more about the negative effects human expansion and superstition has on them.
Overall In Bear Country is an enthralling, emotional and educational book. For anyone interested in travel, human culture, or wildlife, it’s a bear minimum.
I was quickly hooked by Brian Payton’s fascinating journey around the world to learn about the eight main species of bears and the circumstances facing their survival on a planet increasingly ravaged by humans.
This book is as much about humans as bears and the relationship between the two species. We learn how different peoples and cultural groups consider bears, how they respect them or abuse them, revere them or exploit them.
Payton reports on Indian villagers who, while often suffering savage maulings, don’t question the sloth bears’ right to live alongside them. He also encounters the horrific Chinese bear-bile-farming industry and those fighting to end it. Cambodian anti-poaching rangers, Peruvian mystics, polar bear tourism in Canada, and the ancient presence of brown bears in Italy and France.
In Bear Country culminates with a gut-wrenching finale, where Payton juxtaposes the Navajo’s wary respect of bears with modern America’s brutal hunting culture.
Payton writes throughout as a true professional journalist, dispassionately presenting the facts and people he experiences and letting the stories tell themselves.
It’s hard not to feel a newfound respect for these impressive, resilient creatures. It’s hard not to care a bit more about the negative effects human expansion and superstition has on them.
Overall In Bear Country is an enthralling, emotional and educational book. For anyone interested in travel, human culture, or wildlife, it’s a bear minimum.
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July 9, 2024I’m not really sure what to rate this one. While the writing is good and the point of the book is important, it’s a hard read. At points a very hard read. Especially because the author is an author, a journalist. He writes without sharing his opinion and I’m not really used to that. He’s not a conservationist so he’s not doing anything to change the horrendous things that you’re reading about, usually when I read books like this, the author is trying to help, trying to change things and I couldn’t really get used to feeling he wasn’t against what was happening to the bears.
there was some harrowing stories in the book, a scene in the last chapter (as did many others) broke my heart. I think I struggled with it slightly more because I didn’t feel there was anyone there disgusted by the behaviour of these people and no one to stop it happening where as in many other places, there was a lot of introductions to people who were on the side of the bears.
I would only recommend if you’re a keen animal lover that wants to learn about the animals & how they are affected by humans and not just enjoy nice stories about them.
there was some harrowing stories in the book, a scene in the last chapter (as did many others) broke my heart. I think I struggled with it slightly more because I didn’t feel there was anyone there disgusted by the behaviour of these people and no one to stop it happening where as in many other places, there was a lot of introductions to people who were on the side of the bears.
I would only recommend if you’re a keen animal lover that wants to learn about the animals & how they are affected by humans and not just enjoy nice stories about them.
August 3, 2025
The author visits bears around the world. He starts by telling us briefly about grizzly bears in North America, but moves on to a much longer piece on sloth bears in India. Then pandas, then it's the spectacled bear in South America. In this case, he recounts a local legend of a bear marrying a girl. He doesn't tell us that every culture around the world had the equivalent; the woman who married a lion or bear, or the seal wife or deer wife. She always goes back to her people / animal family, and she always takes the children, and sometimes the children kill the father to make good their escape.
Sun bears in southeast Asia, polar bears in Canada, brown bears in Italy. Here we see how the locals co-exist with large predators. Then a look at extinct cave bears. Chauvet Cave contains many cave bear skulls and artworks.
Finally, the American black bear. Viewed in the Navajo Nation. This is very unpleasant. The Navajo people revere the bear and tell morbid stories of skinwalkers. But other people just want to track down and shoot bears, any big predator will do really. Just because.
I read a paperback. It could have done with photos.
This is an unbiased review.
Sun bears in southeast Asia, polar bears in Canada, brown bears in Italy. Here we see how the locals co-exist with large predators. Then a look at extinct cave bears. Chauvet Cave contains many cave bear skulls and artworks.
Finally, the American black bear. Viewed in the Navajo Nation. This is very unpleasant. The Navajo people revere the bear and tell morbid stories of skinwalkers. But other people just want to track down and shoot bears, any big predator will do really. Just because.
I read a paperback. It could have done with photos.
This is an unbiased review.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews