NEWPORT – It's been one year since a Lincoln County circuit court judge booted Karen Noyes from her Yachats home for feeding black bears. Today, Noyes , 62, has a new home, a court appeal and is due to appear on Animal Planet.
All in all, said Noyes, "I'm OK."
That's not to say the past year has been an easy one.
Noyes was convicted last summer on charges of harassing wildlife for feeding black bears at her house despite repeated warnings to stop. Judge Thomas Branford sentenced her in June, ordering her to vacate her home by Aug. 31.
At the invitation of bear expert Lynn Rogers, who testified on her behalf during her trail, Noyes headed to the North America Bear Center in Ely, Minn., where she helped out as a volunteer.
But then Animal Planet came calling, looking for Noyes to do a segment of their show. Rogers warned Noyes not to do it.
"I told her, 'Don't be part of that show; they will just make a monkey out of you,'" said Rogers. "If you know beforehand that the premise of the show is to show how stupid it is to feed animals and how stupid the people are who do that ... you just want nothing to do with that."
But Noyes did want something to do with that.
"I was hoping to get my story out," she said.
That story is one of a neighborhood overrun by black bears. Of bears trying to get into houses through dog doors, of bears annihilating a flock of 60 turkeys, of at least four bears shot dead in one summer. It is also the story of Noyes' utter certainty that the bears are her friends and that she harms no one in feeding them.
Even now, Noyes refuses to believe that her years of feeding the black bears caused her coastal neighborhood problems. She blames Oregon Fish & Wildlife agents for turning the neighborhood against her with what she says were lies.
"They made the neighbors think it was my fault, but in all the western states, there was a drought and a berry freeze," says Noyes. "It's important to talk about the berry freeze and drought. Everybody had problems. It was all the western states, not just Oregon."
That's the story Noyes wanted to tell on Animal Planet.
"But they didn't ask me much about it," she said. Now she wonders if Rogers maybe was right.
"They might make me out to be a monkey. Whatever happens, happens."
Only time will tell. A spokesman for Animal Planet didn't know if or when the segment would air.
In March, Portland attorney Geordie Duckler filed an appeal on Noyes' behalf. Noyes was originally charged with reckless endangerment and harassing wildlife, but convicted only on the harassment charges.
"She was convicted of the wrong thing," said Duckler. " If she had been convicted of reckless endangerment, it would have kind of made sense. There are bears around and the neighbors are afraid. Getting acquitted of that was remarkable."
Likewise, the conviction on the harassment charges is just wrong, said Duckler.
The statute outlining harassment of wildlife uses words such as harass, torment, vex, annoy or kill, said Duckler. But that isn't what Noyes did.
"The only evidence against Karen was that she fed them. If they had anything else, that she shoo'd them away or got a broom, that might have been sufficient to say harass, annoy, vex or torment. She was convicted of a crime in which she didn't meet the meaning of the crime. If to feed is to harass, then every bird and squirrel feeder is a criminal act."
Earlier this summer, the state asked for more time to respond to Duckler's appeal and was given until November. He expects the case won't be heard by the Court of Appeals until sometime next year.
Noyes is hopeful she'll win this time, and if she does, she wants the court to return the $5,000 she paid in fines.
"It was devastating to me," said Noyes. "They wiped me out financially."
She wants something for the bears, too.
"I want the bears to be righted, for people to be more tolerant of bears," Noyes said.
As for her old home in Yachats, now rented to tenants, "I don't care to live there anymore."
A photo submitted in the trial of Karen Noyes, who was found guilty of harassing wildlife, shows bears in the backyard of her home.