Yup I'm back.
Fuzzy films on Web hurt our cause
Bigfoot researcher
CanWest News Service
Saturday, March 24, 2007
The creature known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch is now covering a whole new territory - the Internet - after a Texas man, a self-styled Bigfoot researcher, posted a video he claims to have taken near Tofino, B.C., in July 2006.
But John Bindernagel, a biologist and the author of the book North America's Great Ape: the Sasquatch, is concerned that the ability to post videos by anyone claiming to have footage of a Sasquatch will damage efforts to do genuine scientific research into the phenomenon.
"For me the Internet is a mixed bag - it's easier to report a sighting, but it's not vetted very well," he said.
Reported sightings of the creature on Vancouver Island go back many years. Bindernagel, from Comox Valley, B.C., claims to have found footprints in Strathcona Park near Mount Washington.
In 2005, he told the Nanaimo Daily News there have been about 100 sightings on the island since 1850. Over the same time period, there have been about 400 sightings in B.C., a number he thinks is low because of people's fear of being mocked.
Though evidence has yet to surface proving Bindernagel's claim the Sasquatch is real, he thinks a scientific approach could prove its existence. He is now working on a second book about the phenomenon, arguing why scientists should give it serious consideration.
Bindernagel said fuzzy films on the Internet do not help him in making that argument.
"The evidence doesn't get scrutinized objectively," he said. "We can't bring the evidence to our colleagues because it's perceived as tabloid."
