Stranger Among Bears is a television documentary

Documentary

A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...

 about Charlie Vandergaw, an elderly man who has lived in Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

 for several decades and illegally fed grizzly

Grizzly Bear

The grizzly bear , also known as the silvertip bear, the grizzly, or the North American brown bear, is a subspecies of brown bear that generally lives in the uplands of western North America...

 and black bears on his property for many of those years. The documentary was popularly aired on the cable TV station Animal Planet

Animal Planet

Animal Planet is an American cable tv specialty channel that launched on October 1, 1996. It is distributed by Discovery Communications. A high-definition simulcast of the channel launched on September 1, 2007.-History:...

.

Contents

Bears normally fear humans, avoiding them whenever possible. However, close association like Vandergaw's, is believed to remove the bears' natural reluctance to approach humans, thus leading to potentially dangerous, and even fatal encounters.

Familiarization is a tool for allowing humans to spend time among bears, but when cameraman Richard Terry spent time at Vandergaw's self-proclaimed bear sanctuary to film the goings-on, his attempt to approach a female and her cub to gain their trust resulted in a severe laceration to his lower leg. Over the years that Vandergaw had been feeding the bears, he also sustained several bite wounds. Vandergaw, a former hunter, confesses he once killed many bears. In the show, Vandergaw would touch, pet, and even film the bears in a manner similar to the eco-warrior

Eco-warrior

The term eco-warrior is a self-description for an environmental activist that adopts a 'hands-on' effort to save or salvage a plot of land, or to advance some ecological ideology...

, Timothy Treadwell

Timothy Treadwell

Timothy Treadwell was an American bear enthusiast, environmentalist, amateur naturalist, eco-warrior and documentary film maker. He lived among the coastal grizzly bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska, USA, for approximately 13 summers...

, who was eventually killed and devoured by grizzlies.

In the documentary's conclusion, Vandergaw was charged and convicted of illegally feeding bears. He received a $20,000 fine and a suspended sentence

Suspended sentence

A suspended sentence is a legal term for a judge's delaying of a defendant's serving of a sentence after they have been found guilty, in order to allow the defendant to perform a period of probation...

. He placed an electric fence

Electric fence

An electric fence is a barrier that uses electric shocks to deter animals or people from crossing a boundary. The voltage of the shock may have effects ranging from uncomfortable, to painful or even lethal...

around his property to keep the bears away from the cabin located on Bear Haven grounds.

Each episode opened with the following disclaimer: The following program contains scenes of a man feeding wild bears. Such activity is dangerous and illegal.

External links

• Stranger Among Bears at Discovery.com