Bear in GarbageWhether Lisa Jackson, New Jersey’s head of the Department of Environmental Protection, wants to admit it or not, New Jersey may be on the verge of a serious black bear problem. If you will recall, shortly after Jon Corzine, anti-hunter extraordinaire, was elected to the governorship of New Jersey, he appointed his puppet Lisa Jackson to take over the DEP and as a result she promptly canceled a court-approved black bear management plan and effectively told the Division of Fish and Wildlife they were no longer needed to manage wildlife and took over making all the decisions.

By tossing the bear plan in the garbage can, along with it went plans for a bear hunt in 2006. The last time New Jersey had a hunt for bear was in 2005. Jackson and Corzine say wildlife needs to be managed non-lethally by implementing things like bear proof garbage cans, use of contraceptives, wildlife harassment and public education. The Division of Fish and Wildlife says hunting is the only way to control wildlife populations and in this case bears.

Since the cancellation of the bear hunt in New Jersey, officials (I hope it’s not just the DEP)(Hat tip to the NewsHound) are keeping a close watch on the number of reported bear and human encounters. According to an article in Newsday by Associated Press writer, Rebecca Santana, reported incidents are up BUT and according to Lisa Jackson, the BUT is a very big one, appearing more to disregard all other information and focusing on the statistic that says the worst kind of bear encounters are down.

What are the worst kind of bear encounters? That’s a good question and one this article doesn’t adequately describe.

Bears in the most serious category are considered to have lost their fear of humans and can be euthanized, Jackson said, including bears who attack bee hives and rabbits.

With Jackson and other non-lethal advocates focusing on this one statistic, one in which we really don’t know how it was calculated, they say this is proof their management methods are working.

I’d like to take a moment and look, well let’s call it “differently”, at the bear numbers.

First of all, I once was a math major and now I’m getting older and my math is quite rusty. Thanks to the opportunity to pick up my 8-year old granddaughter each day, I get to take her home and help her with her homework, sometimes involving that “new math”. There is one place in the article that begins using percentage to describe differences in bear encounter numbers from one year to the next whereas before, she was using numbers.

We all, except for those occasional math nerds, hate percentages and fractions but still, I struggled with this calculation.

The most serious bear-related problems dropped 13.8 percent from 2006 numbers. There were 32 reported incidents of bears breaking into homes in 2007 compared to 40 the previous year.

I’ll admit it if I’m so rusty in my math that I’m wrong here, but if there were 40 “serious” bear incidents in 2006 and only 32 in 2007, isn’t that a drop of 8 reported incidents? 8 now should become a fraction of the original number, which is 40 because that’s what we are comparing this too. So, a reduction of 8 events from the high of 40 then becomes a 20% reduction not 13.8 as is written. Am I wrong?

Not to be led off track here. I’m not picking on the writer because I don’t know if she was handed these numbers or took it upon herself to do her own calculations, but there are two big reasons I want to bring this to your attention. The first is to give readers a chance to compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges.

Unless I am purposely trying to lead readers astray (not that I would do such a thing), I think it only right when comparing changes in events to make the comparisons using the same criteria. In other words, if I am showing strictly numbers, as is the case in this article, then I’ll stick with making comparisons all the way through my article with numbers. (Sometimes percentages or a change from one to the other might be used to inflate or reduce impacts.)

For whatever the reasons, Santana opts to change in mid-stream and use a percentage comparison and one that appears in my old math calculations to be incorrect.

So, because the writer opted to use the percentage comparison for the more “serious” bear encounters, I’ll go back and convert the other incidents to percentages for you.

As I showed, “serious” incidents, according to Jackson’s figures, dropped 20% from 2006 to 2007. Total bear bear-related incidents rose by 8.148% from 2006 to 2007. Bear sightings increased by 7.826% from 2006 to 2007 and I’ve saved the best for last, “nuisance” bear incidents rose quite significantly by 14.931% from 2006 to 2007.

I also think using percentages gives readers a clearer picture as to what is going on with increases and decreases. In other words, I’ve done the math for you.

In fairness, my old math should help play into the hands of the bear protectors because instead of an increase of 13.8% as reported, it’s actually 20% which is a huge increase, well, 8 fewer than a year ago. And is that decrease the result of bear education, etc.? I’m guessing at least some of it is but I’m a bit skeptical that it dropped by 20% when that number stands out quite a bit from others, particularly “nuisance” bears. I wonder if criteria to determine what a “serious” bear encounter was changed mid-stream. I would like to look at that data.

But let’s forget that for now and focus on something that, if I were the one responsible for public safety and wildlife management, would be taking a close look at.

The article states that nuisance reports rose almost 15% in one year. What do they describe as a nuisance bear?

when a bear repeatedly comes back to the same area

This event is one that needs to be watched closely as those bears that are getting quite comfortable with people will not suddenly opt to stay away. When spring arrives in New Jersey, and the bears come out of hibernation, all hell is about to break loose and I predict bear and human encounters will sky rocket. Officials and residents of New Jersey need to be prepared.

Tom Remington

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