If the victim and the owner truly loved animals, they would have channeled their efforts into working to save endangered ones in the wild and to make sure that domestic animals were not abused. It's sad.

My thoughts exactly. This is the sort of story that really angers me. Although my heart goes out to the family of the victim, all I feel for the victim and the so-called "owner" of these animals is contempt.

Wild animals belong in the wild, not behind a fence on private property or in a traveling zoo

Please keep in mind that until fairly recently the pet gerbils you probably played with as a kid were "wild animals" too. So were ALL animals including dogs until they were domesticated, and the fact that it happened thousands of years ago doesn't change that fact. What about Pippi Longstockings, that adorable half zebra, half donkey recently in the news? Obviously, there is a fine line between a "wild animal" and a pet.

The criterion should really be "no DANGEROUS animals" unless you have a license to handle them. And the problem is, this clown apparently DID have such a license. Maybe they ought to be looking at the people who issue those licenses. Are they all on the take, or just incompetent?

Frankly, I am more worried about my neighbors who let their pit bulls run loose, even though I live in the middle of a big city where there are supposedly leash laws. This guy may have gotten what he deserved; the postal carriers, small children, and innocent pedestrians of all ages who have been mauled and even killed by dangerous dogs did not. Let's worry about immediate, every day, genuine dangers, not remote freak dangers that have nothing to do with ordinary life.

And the licensed wildlife org. will just keep them in the exact same type of enclosure,once bears lose their fear of humans,they can not be returned to the wild,this has been proven over and over.

Same with wolves,coyotes,and the tame lions,they can never be released.

The man had the proper permits,and took care of the animals,I had seen Cesar the wrestling bear perform and the bear was well trained,and well cared for,if animals are raised from birth,or very young with no adult animals,only humans,they learn to relate to the humans,just like ducklings,and goslings will imprint the human as their mother.

Maybe the man had rescued some of the wolves,and the tigers and lions from people who could no longer take care of them.

You do not know the man,yet you assume he is a bad guy,and mistreats animals,and does not care for them.

Not all animal rescue,or animal rights groups are good,PETA is an example,they are far too radical,HSUS does misleading ads on TV,and the pres. said his goal is for everyone to become vegan.That is a radical appraoch.Not everyone wants to be vegan.PETA wants to rename fish "sea kittens".

Are these mainstream ideas? NO.

Do not just assume the man does not help animals.

It sounds like this guy has all the required permits and takes very good care of the animals. This was just a very unfortunate incident. What tends to happen is that people who work around these animals all the time will sometimes forget they are dealing with a wild animal that can be unpredictable. The handlers get complacent from being around them all the time and that complacency leads to carelessness. When you get careless around wild animals, every once in a while one will do something unexpected and the handler will pay for it, sometimes with their lives. It does not matter how much experience the handler has or how long they have been around that animal, the animal can still surprise them. Just look at what happened to Ray Horn of Siegfried & Roy fame. He had tens of thousands of hours working with white tigers and many thousands of hours with the one that attacked him. Sometimes very unfortunate things happen. The rush to judgement against the owner of the animals is unfounded, this was just one of those unfortunate accidents.

Very well said CatTrax.

My concern with this is that judging by the description of the neighborhood, the owner doesn't have a large amount of property. Therefore, the animals are likely kept in very small enclosures.

As for all of those saying "animals belong in the wild" - in theory, that's true. HOWEVER - the reality is that because of the encroachment of humans onto their habitat, many species of animals are nearing extinction. Keeping specimens of these animals in well-regulated zoos, and conducting a sensible breeding program, may be the only way to preserve the animals. In fact, there is at least one species of animal - the Pere David deer - that already exists ONLY in captivity.

PS - am I the only one wondering why this is considered a "sports" story?

Maybe the man had rescued some of the wolves,and the tigers and lions from people who could no longer take care of them. You do not know the man,yet you assume he is a bad guy,and mistreats animals,and does not care for them.

Point made. I apologize for making the ASSumption that he was a poor caretaker. Even professional zoo employees sometimes get killed by animals they trusted. A few years ago a zookeeper was killed while walking an elephant at the Pittsburgh Zoo. The consensus was that he got careless, not that the animal was vicious.

OTOH, when there are mulitiple complaints by neighbors, you do have to investigate.

Eight US presidents came from Ohio.

No,you need intervention for making assumptions about the man.

The guy who died while doing what he loved?

You mean the moron who thought the grizzlies were tame,and his family,and he could live with them? Grizzlies were his family? Shows an extreme lack of knowledge about grizzlies,and their behavior.

That is far more than a lack of common sense,it is blatant stupidity.

And you have sympathy for the one far more reckless,and the one with the least common sense of the two.

Like those self-serving underachievers who claimed the teen-aged jogger killed by the mountain lion in Colorado "Died in a way he wanted to!!", every animal-adoring rationalizing sycophant is chiming in with their 2 cents. Isn't one of the definitions of the mentally ill someone whose lost their sense of proportion?"

Like those self-serving underachievers who claimed the teen-aged jogger killed by the mountain lion in Colorado "Died in a way he wanted to!!", every animal-adoring rationalizing sycophant is chiming in with their 2 cents.

Gee, maybe people who go hiking or jogging in cougar country should take certain precautions rather than imagine they are jogging in a city park. I'm sure that person didn't actually WANT to be eaten by a cougar, but he's still partially to blame, as are the authorities for failing to warn people. Too many people saw "Born Free" or "Never Cry Wolf" and assume all large carnivores are harmless, "more afraid of us than we are of them".

Good point. But of course the neighbors had a legitimate grievance, too. Hearing a wild animal in nature is thrilling. For most people, living next door to a makeshift zoo is not.

Wild animals can and will turn on their caregivers.

As do domesticated animals. In fact there are far more people killed by dogs each year than by wild animals. Often it's their own family pet. People would be well advised to show common sense and best practices when dealing with ANY animal that is big enough to be potentially dangerous. (That's just about anything bigger than a guinea pig, and even they can bite.) For example, you shouldn't allow your Rottweiler up on the furniture; it takes away from your "alpha dog" status. That said, I totally agree that you especially shouldn't treat a bear or a wolf as if it were a dog.

Gerbils ARE wild animals, or at least they were until perhaps the 1950s, when people in Africa and Asia discovered they could be tamed. That means that within living memory there were species that were purely wild but are now safe with small children. Some species can be easily domesticated; others cannot be. There's no good reason to assume we have already domesticated every species that can be. Some species can be maintained in zoos, will breed readily in good zoos, and even depend on zoos for their very existence. Like it or don't, zoos do a lot in the effort to conserve and save threatened and endangered species.

A keeper at the National Zoo told me of efforts to domesticate wild species such as capybaras in order to use them as farm animals. Unlike the farm animals we already have, they are actually adapted to their environment and therefore far less likely to be destructive to it. They may also be less susceptible to disease. Are you really such an animal rights purist that you would rather the people of South America go hungry or have cattle that increase global warming, rather than confine a few animals whose ancestors used to be wild?

BTW, it is just as bad to keep a domesticated animal on a chain or otherwise confined in such a manner that it cannot satisfy its natural instincts, which domestication does not remove. Keeping huge numbers together is at least as stressful to them as it would be to zoo animals. This is exactly how factory farmed animals are raised during their short, miserable lives.

Enjoy your dinner.