Wizard's Second Rule

The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.

In Ouray Colorado a woman was killed and eaten by bears on the seventh of August. It turns out that she had been feeding the bears for at least ten years. This act of kindness resulted in the bears losing their natural fear of humans, and in fact made them very aggressive towards humans that were not feeding them.

A five year old bear was killed by sheriff's deputies at the scene after he aggressively approached the officers, and another was killed at the residence a week later by USDA officials working under the authority of the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

Because she was feeding them they stopped hunting for themselves. They just came to her house whenever they got hungry. The long standing effect is that more bears and humans are going to die, because the bears have forgotten how to hunt for themselves and they now equate humans with food. This woman's good intentions led directly to her death as well as the animals she was caring for, and will lead to more deaths before it's all done.

The old saying is that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Combine that with the story about giving a man a fish, and you can see where some of our current problems have come from.