Is Bear Hunting Back On Track?

Is bear hunting back? This appears to be the case now that the state Fish and Game Council this week unanimously endorsed the first black-bear hunt in New Jersey in  five years, leaving the six-day December hunt only one minor challenge to clear before becoming official.

Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin must still sign off on the state's new black bear management policy, which includes the scheduling of the hunt. But Martin already agreed with a draft of the policy in March.

The Fish and Game Council put the finishing touches on its bear management plan in recent weeks, which calls for a hunt in December. But the New Jersey Sierra Club is highly critical of the plan.

"With the budget cuts there is no funding to implement the management plan, there is only the hunt," New Jersey Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel said. "New Jersey has cut all funds for bear management and alternatives to hunts. The state has eliminated funds for education, programs that deal with garbage, bear aversion therapy, bear wardens, conservation officers, and other non-lethal methods of management."

The Sierra Club opposes the bear hunt and will continue to fight for a strong bear management plan that actually works. The club argues that the public is in agreeement. It says that the public comments against the hunt were overwhelmingly against it.

Gov. Chris Christie promised Republican voters in Sussex County that there would be a hunt and after that promise, he was endorsed by prohunting groups. "This is not about sound science or a way of managing bears, it's about politics," Tittel said.

He said that, since 1988, the Fish and Game Council has been trying to push a bear hunt, even when New Jersey only had 150 bears. In 2004, the state Supreme Court stopped the Division from trying to have a hunt. 

Tittel said that the hunt will not stop the problem of nuisance bears. Human-bear interactions and bear-related complaints can often be attributed to a singular nuisance bear within a region.

This is a recreational hunt, he said. Most of the hunting will occur in public lands in the middle of the forests, not in the areas where Category II, or nuisance bears, are living, Tittel said.

But others argue that the bear population in New Jersey has grown dramatically. Last year, the population of black bears living north of Route 80 and west of Route 287 — the area where the December hunt will be held — topped 3,400, according to an estimate from East Stroudsburg University researchers.

And, indeed, many comments on the Web have argued in favor of reducing a growing and dangerous population of bears.