In another forum, someone looked into the bear attack a little more based on info in the USA TODAY, and found that the bear that attacked and was killed was not hunted by Joe and Jim Hunter, but by contract employees of lumber interests.
Every spring bears come out hungry and eat whatever they can. If the area has been logged and reseeded, the bears tend to eat the young seedlings. Unacceptable to the lumber companies, and they pay people to hunt them.
I have no way to determine if this is true or not, maybe someone who lives in Washington might know more.
I'm not opposed to killing animals per se. Like most of us, I eat lots of dead animals myself, and use their hides to hold up my pants and cover my feet. I just returned from the supermarket where I bought, among other things, a few packages of dead animal parts in the meat department. But though I take advantage of an animal's ability to provide me with burgers and ribs, and leather shoes and belts, I tend to think that killing bears because they eat a few seedling tress is even worse than killing them to display their heads on a wall.