Coyotes are over protected, resulting in increased populations. Information being given to people about coyotes is bogus and state fish and game “experts” do little to correct the problem because often they are the perpetrator of bad information based on incorrect science.

Too many coyotes spell trouble. Too many hungry coyotes presents danger. We should all be aware of this. First, I will remind everyone to please read Dr. Valerius Geist’s, “When do Wolves [Coyotes]Become Dangerous to Humans“. This is vitally important that you read and understand this.

In addition, too often animal lovers, right along with wildlife “experts” tell people it is a rare event when coyotes or wolves attack humans or pets. While statistically true, they fail miserably in educating people that circumstances can change. These changes can force coyotes to do things they normally don’t do.

Here are some reports across the country of coyote attacks. The links were sent to me by reader, “Susan”.

Coyotes Attack and Kill Pet Great Dane in Connecticut

Coyotes Attack and Bite Three Children in Colorado on separate occasions.

16-Year Old from Broomfield, Colorado Attacked and Bitten by Coyote in Back Yard

Tom Remington

A sucker is born every second! That’s an old saying I remember as a kid growing up in rural Maine in reference to naive and gullible people who were apt at believing anything. Why? We may never know or fully understand.

We are being told that a lone, young male mountain lion wandered from South Dakota to the Greenwich, Connecticut and died by being hit by a car. According to the article, the trip of which cannot be tracked, was remarkable, unbelievable. Unbelievable and probably a crock of horse dung would more accurately describe what is attempting to be sold as “one of those amazing animal stories”.

There are more reasons than just a crazy story that make me doubt the authenticity of this story. Consider if you will the events that have occurred over the past couple of years and then you form your own conclusions.

The wolf wars have been going on for decades in the Northern Rocky Mountains region of the United States. The greedy environmentalists have bought and paid for their activist judges who will only rule in their favor in order to keep the gray wolf on the Endangered Species Act list of protected species.

The wolf wars seem to have moved to the Great Lakes region of the country with more and more people complaining about too many wolves, a destruction of game herds, i.e. deer and moose, and increased ravaging of livestock by an overblown gray wolf population.

Each time the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) would attempt to delist wolves, lawsuits would follow and activist judges would place the wolf back under protection. As frustration levels grew, efforts to get control of this vicious predator became more urgent.

I will tell you right up front that I do not believe for one second that the USFWS is truly interested in controlling the population of wolves or any other large predator, nor do they put much, if any, concern into protection game species, such as deer, elk, caribou and moose. This very fact plays an important role in my belief this mountain lion story is a farce.

As I said, patience has grown very thin for people and some local governments. The pressure was being mounted on members of the Federal Congress to do something about this problem of wolves in the Northern Rockies and the Great Lakes. The short of this story is a bill was proposed in Congress that would exempt gray wolves anywhere in the U.S. from the Endangered Species Act. The journey of that bill, most know about and I will not take the time to provide the details. All that information can be researched on this website.

The environmentalists became outraged that Congress would consider such an act as to hand pick a species and protect it from the abuses of the Endangered Species Act. Was it a mere coincidence that within weeks of the proposal of H.R. 349, an act to exempt gray wolves, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it had found a new species of gray wolf?

It should at least make you go, hmmmmmmmm!

The USFWS told the world that it was intending to remove the gray wolf in the Western Great Lakes Distinct Population Segment from federal protection but at the same time proclaimed they had discovered a new species of gray wolf sharing the same habitat with the wolf they intended to delist. Such a declaration would mean that even though the gray wolf might be delisted, this is no possible way to hunt, trap or in any way control this predator.

This, of course, is a sham. With a bill being considered in Congress to exempt gray wolves, the USFWS creates the eastern wolf. How convenient. And the story gets better.

The USFWS decides that it will get rid of any protections for the gray wolf in the Eastern United States because now they have determined that gray wolves never roamed the East. Instead it was this trumped up, newly-born eastern wolf.

And to add what appeared to be insult to injury, the USFWS decided to declare the mountain lion an extinct species in the East and as a result removed the animal from ESA protection. This of course outraged the lion lovers and environmentalists who want control over your and my land and large predators killing and destroying our property and endangering our lives in every corner of this nation.

And now, lo and behold, a lone, male, cougar treks from South Dakota to Connecticut and is found dead alongside the Wilbur Cross Parkway near Milford, Connecticut. And we are supposed to believe this?

The repeated story has always been that when any mountain lion is spotted and confirmed in the East, “It must have been someone’s pet that escaped or was released into the woods”. Now, accommodatingly, a real and “native” mountain lion was found in Connecticut.

I certainly believe that a cougar could, in time, wend its way from South Dakota to Connecticut. The odds are quite slim that this would actually happen but the driving habits of animals such as this do make it possible. I am just of the belief that the odds of the USFWS and all involved environmental stakeholders lying and fabricating this utter nonsense, as they have shown us by inventing new wolf species, is far greater than a mountain lion successfully making the journey from South Dakota to Connecticut.

Now, if you want to believe all of this, I own a bridge in Brooklyn, New York that I am willing to sell.

Tom Remington

I arrived safely at my camp in Maine last evening around 7 p.m. Got lots of unpacking and camp set up and clean up to do so I’ll be scarce for a day or two but will not disappear. Weather is less than ideal and cold, with high temps today expected in the upper 50s and low 60s with occasional showers.

On my trip up I avoided Connecticut. I often do out of fear I might have to stop there and buy gas. Next to California, I think they are the highest. But the biggest reason I avoided it because I was afraid one of those terrorizing mountain lions would find me and eat me up.

Just kidding (for those who couldn’t figure it out), but did you see a mountain lion, seemingly the one people had been seeing, supposedly got hit by a car and killed.

Being that the USFWS removed the mountain lion from the Endangered Species Act list just last year, claiming the animal is extinct in the Eastern U.S., I just have to ask if anyone suspects this animal and the entire story a fabrication? Meaning that it’s possible someone’s pet mountain lion was used to run around the neighborhood so people would be sure to see it and then plant a dead one along side the road. Before you laugh and scoff, this wouldn’t be the first time something like this has been done.

This could be one for the record books; the first extinct species run over by a car…….in Connecticut no less.

Tom Remington

It is times like this that we all should recognize there is God. Many rural residents of the United States have always been willing to share those large predators that have seriously forced the alteration of their lifestyles, with the urban dwellers, many of whom are behind the actions to protect the very same large predators that end up preying on people and their property.

Time to share the wealth, it would seem, as a wild animal alert has been issued to residents just north of Greenwich, Connecticut. It has been officially confirmed with photographs and scat (feces).

Your welcome very much, and from all the rural residents of the United States, we hope you enjoy your mountain lion as much as the rest do. Now, to get that gray wolf into Central Park.

Tom Remington

David Streit has a mission — he wants to see the deer population reduced to the point where it will no longer sustain the ticks that carry Lyme and other tick-borne diseases.

Mr. Streit is wearing two hats these days. He is the new chair of the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance (deeralliance.com), which has 17 member towns including Redding. The alliance works to educate, inform and communicate with its member towns about the need for deer control management.

His other hat belongs to BeSafeRedding.org, which he helped organized, he said, to put land owners in contact with licensed hunters to affect deer reduction efforts.

Why the focus on deer density? According to a 2009 state Department of Environmental (DEP) deer density report, in Redding there are a minimum of 64 deer per square mile. The goal is to reduce deer density back to 10 to 12 per square mile. <<<Read the rest of the Story>>>

Fairfield, Connecticut has an overgrown deer population, with some estimates as high as 75 deer per square mile. The Fairfield Conservation Commission wants to begin allowing hunting on public lands to cull the herd. That doesn’t sit very well with those animal advocates who don’t believe in killing animals. No surprise there.

In an article in the Connecticut Post, from the animal lovers and protectors we can read all the same usual unsubstantiated horse manure about why hunting is not the answer to the problem – deer don’t cause Lyme disease, hunting deer causes the reproductive rate to increase resulting in even more deer, yada, yada, yada.

But this one person, Debbie Lake, a resident of Fairfield said this about hunters:

[hunters] “are going to wind up killing dogs or kids, or anything,”

I would comfortably say that this is a classic example of fear mongering. But what is just as maddening is that the reporter never once questions any of these bold statements, especially one that accuses hunters as being some kind of domestic terrorist, caring for nothing but a kill and willing to take out dogs, kids or “anything”, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Tom Remington

At the end of each blogging season, I like to go back and revisit all the stories and articles I wrote. Many of them are still etched deeply into my brain, while others have been mostly forgotten. While some of my picks may not be the most popular story of the year, I believe them to be relevant to me, the Black Bear Blog and my readers as they might impact us as American citizens.

Before I actually begin recapping the top 10 stories of 2008, I want to take a moment to remember a dear friend we all lost this past year. Sayward Lamb was a character, a character in the good sense of course. Always with a grin, a hearty laugh and never short of a story to tell, he lived a full and complete life and impacted everyone who ever had the pleasure of meeting him. We all miss you, Sayward.

I’ll begin with the number 10 story and progress to the top story of 2008. Before I do, I couldn’t help but mention the “Listerine” story. A story that, to me, has little if any significance to human life, the afterthought story I put up about using Listerine as an insect repellent garnered an unbelievable number of comments from readers.

Story #10 – North Dakota Hunters for Fair Chase’s attempt to outlaw elk ranches and fenced hunting.

A group calling themselves hunters felt compelled to force their ideals down the throats of others by proposing a citizen’s initiative that would for all intent and purposes outlaw farming of animals such as elk and deer. For some odd reason of which nobody would offer an explanation, the group steered clear of bison ranching. The initiative, if passed would also have outlawed “high fence” hunting. High fence hunting has always carried some degree of controversy but most feel a person’s choice to hunt (or whatever you choose to call it) on a hunting preserve should be an individual choice and not something that needs legislating.

NDHFC began a campaign that was lacking in support and controversial, calling on the Humane Society of the United States for help, both financially and in collecting signatures. Everyone knows the HSUS is the largest anti-hunting organization in America of which no bona fide hunting organization would ask for help.

When the dust had settled and signatures on the petition were counted, NDHFC fell short on the minimum number of required signatures to force a vote in the general election. Hopefully they will become nothing but a little dust in the wind.

Story #9 – World’s Tallest Snowwoman. My tiny hometown of Bethel, Maine was once again put on the map, if only the map of Guinness Book of World Records. From out of a pile of natural and man-made snow, volunteers contributed hours of hard work to create Olympia (named after Maine’s senior U.S. Senator, Olympia Snowe). Bethel was first added to the Guinness Book of World Records, when Angus, King of the Mountain was born. Olympia towered over the village having officially been recorded at 122′ 1″ tall.

I gave the story a fair amount of coverage and with the help of a live webcam located in a building across the street, people from all over the world could log in and check the progress as often as they wanted.

Here in Florida, my granddaughter in her third grade class, participated in a program called Flat Stanley. Flat Stanley is a paper-faced character the students are encouraged to send to different places around the world. Flat Stanley collects pictures, stories and information and returns to the school with the report. My granddaughter’s Flat Stanley traveled to Bethel, Maine and returned with exclusive photos and information few others were privy to, thanks to Great Grammie.

Story #8 – Lyme Disease – While most people don’t sit around talking about Lyme disease, it’s growing rapidly. The disease itself comes from the tick but that tick is transported by deer. Deer are overly abundant in some locals, Connecticut being one of them. With the close proximity of deer, carrying infected ticks, and humans, the risk of humans being bitten by an infected tick increases drastically. Lyme disease has no cure and can be debilitating.

The Connecticut Coalition to Eradicate Lyme Disease, dared to do what others didn’t. They suggested a drastic reduction of deer numbers, actually supporting the use of hunters and hunting to accomplish the task. This group dared show evidence that reducing deer numbers down to “normal” densities would not only reduce incidents of disease but could rid areas completely. Of course offering a sensible solution met with resistance from the preservationists.

Story #7 – Maine Moose Lottery Televised Coverage

Some would not consider this a top ten story but from my perspective it was simply because of the logistics to pull this off for a very first time going mobile with streaming video and audio for the Black Bear Blog. With the help of Bob Adams and Julie-Lynn Belon of the Kittery Trading Post, this event was huge for us.

I timed our arrival believing I had ample time to set up, test things out and then schedule interviews etc. but that didn’t work out as hoped. With Milt Inman, Chief Photographer for Skinny Moose Media and a trusty assistant, Gregg Inman, we got set up and managed to get in a couple of brief interviews before the actual show of the selection process.

The broadcast lasted nearly 6 hours with well over 6,000 viewers who logged on and at least viewed some portion of the show. We left with a wealth of knowledge, eager to try this again.

Story #6 – Winter of 2008

In parts of this United States, namely portions of the Rockies, Michigan and Northern New England, a winter like no other took its toll on some wildlife. In Maine it was estimated that the severe snow depths, reaching in excess of 250 inches in places, killed at least 50% of the whitetail deer herd.

Story #5 – New Jersey Bears

It seemed there was no end to the foolishness of managing, or lack thereof, of New Jersey’s black bears. First there was a bear hunt, then there wasn’t, then there was, then there wasn’t and now there’s not and bears are showing up everywhere. This year alone bear/human encounters/complaints skyrocketed, yet Governor Jon Corzine insisted his state did not have a bear problem. The problem, in his eyes, is people don’t know how to get along with bears.

New Jersey went several years without a bear hunting season. Eventually bear populations grew and the state, pre Corzine and the anti-hunting administration, had a bear hunt to thin the numbers. Animal rights and anti-hunting groups lined up to sue and hide behind lies of saving the bears. The bear hunt was canceled. A year went by and a bear hunt was held after the courts ruled the state had a legal bear management plan that included hunting as a viable part of that plan. That was 2005. No hunt for bear has happened since.

Gov. Corzine, crafted his own little anti-hunting puppet, Lisa Jackson to do his bidding and was put in charge of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The fish and game is a division of DEP. As a side note: President-elect Barack Obama has selected Lisa Jackson to be the head of his administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (doesn’t bode well for hunters).

When Jackson took office the first thing she did was toss the court-approved Bear Management Plan in the garbage and declared the days of hunting bears in New Jersey are over. Since that time, private property has been destroyed, people’s homes have been invaded and people put at risk from an overabundance of bears. All the while the governor and his regime insist there’s no problem.

Some within the New Jersey legislature are demanding that Corzine do something about this time bomb that will eventually explode when a bear decides to seriously harm or kill a human. And whose fault will that be.

The New Jersey bear situation is a problem and is ongoing with little hope that Corzine will change his mind. The question I suppose now becomes who will be the governor’s next puppet to head the DEP?

Story #4 – Global Warming

Have we turned a bit of a corner on this absurdity of man-made global warming?

While I didn’t write about man-made global warming as much as I talked about it on the radio and video broadcasts, it still got plenty of attention. It seemed that our media worldwide fell in love with Al Gore and his scam and con job of man-made climate change. And while polar bear loving Al Gore was sealing financial deals to line his bank accounts, going green took on multiple meaning.

It appears now with more and more real scientists speaking out against man-made global warming, some in the scientific community are insisting this nonsense cease immediately. But not our politicians. They, like most of what they do, haven’t a clue nor do they care but if enough of us can keep rattling cages, we can successfully get the process of scientific research into climate change back on track.

Story #3 – The Election: Obama’s Stance on Second Amendment and “The Bitter People”.

As we have wound down from one of the strangest elections in my lifetime, many can’t wait until January 20, 2009 to arrive to they can officially begin their worship of a man they know nothing about and don’t want to. They say love is blind and it must be true love for the millions of voters who turned out to vote. They voted because they wanted change.

One aspect of Barack Obama that I hammered on during the campaign was his history, stance and lies on the right to keep and bear arms. Every politician since Adam and Eve has lied during their campaigns and this campaign was no different. It mattered not what Obama said. It mattered not what he had done, what his voting history told us. It mattered not about his past and those he chose to associate with. The voters wanted change.

But what almost, not quite and actually now that I think about it, it didn’t amount to a hill of beans, was Obama’s elitist comments made behind what he thought were closed doors about people being bitter, clinging to their guns and religion. In case you missed my story on the bitter people, click here.

And we can never forget that for the first time that I can remember, we had a vice presidential candidate that actually did believe in the Second Amendment. She was far from being a bitter person. None of this mattered again because people wanted change. They haven’t any idea what kind of change so long as it’s change.

Story #2 – Wolves/Endangered Species Act/Polar Bears

I decided to lump these all together as one story because they belong all together as one story. First let’s recap the continuing saga of gray wolf reintroduction and the up and down court ride of listing and delisting.

It is my belief that wolves were illegally dumped on the doorsteps of citizens in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and used deliberated practices of deception to achieve this goal. Promises were made and probably during that time a bridge or two in New York City changed hands once of twice.

Those intent on bringing wolves back promised that once a prescribed number of wolves were recorded, protections would be ended and the states could manage the wolf and have the ability to stop wolves from destroying private property.

Once official wolf numbers exceeded the promised numbers by at least five-fold, the wolf is still protected by the federal government under the Endangered Species Act. Earlier in the year, the Department of the Interior announced it was removing the ESA listing of wolves. They had accepted the three states’ – Idaho, Wyoming and Montana – Wolf Management Plans. That lasted only a short amount of time as once again the preservationists/animal rights/anti-hunting groups lined up like sheeple to an Obama rally, suing the federal government to stop the needless slaughter of wolves.

Coming as no shock to anyone, an activist judge who knows as much about wolves as I do about thermonuclear energy, granted a temporary injunction that placed the wolf back under protection. This was soon followed by the USFWS asking Judge Donald Molloy to withdraw the original proposal to delist.

As you can imagine, this story has no ending. The USFWS is poised to make another announcement, perhaps only hours before George Bush leaves office and Barack Obama takes over, removing the wolf from protection again. We can only speculate (it’s a sure thing) that once this happens the gaggle of groupies will descend on Judge Molloy’s office crying for help for the poor soon to be slaughtered wolf.

In the meantime, properties are being destroyed and documentation is now pouring in of the decimation of elk herds in parts of Idaho, Montana and within Yellowstone National Park.

The second part of this broad story is the Endangered Species Act itself. Written in 1973 and amended in 1978, the Act’s intention was to prevent the “needless” extinction of species because of the actions of man. The Act has been twisted and turned and manipulated into a giant legal and political leverage tool used by special interest groups to promote their agendas at the expense of the animals we intend to protect.

Even though the Ninth Federal Court of Appeals unanimously voted to notify the courts that science will be used in passing judgment on endangered species cases, it surely had no affect on two judges who have managed to totally screw up the ESA.

When Judge Donald Molloy ruled to put the wolf back under federal protection, he created his own science in many ways. The Environmental Impact Statement that was written and approved before wolf reintroduction began, essentially said nothing about the need for wolves from the three areas where wolves were dropped, had to interbreed before a sustainable wolf population could happen. He called it genetic connectivity. This was at least one half of his basis for placing the wolf back under protection.

Shortly after this happened, in a lawsuit taking place in the District of Columbia, judge Paul Friedman decided to put the wolves in the Western Great Lakes back on federal protection as well. His reasons were very odd, to say the least.

He said in his own ruling that he didn’t have to put the wolf back on the Endangered list but he was going to because he thought it would be “easier”. Now that’s scientific. Worse yet, he created the biggest quagmire about Distinct Population Segments.

It has been the practice for some time for the USFWS to create segments where certain species live and areas where efforts are needed to recover or protect species. The feds have routinely created boarders to define these areas and as such call them Distinct Population Segments. This is what happened in the Western Great Lakes. The feds created a DPS, with boundaries, in order to remove gray wolves from protection in that area because they deemed, according to the policies specified in the ESA, the wolf “recovered”.

But Judge Friedman ruled that the ESA does not provide a definition of a DPS, therefore the USFWS had no legal authority to create a DPS. Little did he know with his own ruling that he just rendered all previous Distinct Population Segments of all species that are created, null and void. Essentially this makes the ESA and all that it controls a useless document. Isn’t science wonderful?

The Act needs serious amending if not a complete overhaul. It needs definitions, restrictions and allowances so that our scientists can actually work at recovering and protecting species. But each and every time there is any effort at all to change the ESA, it meets with great resistance from the lobbyists of the special interest groups who don’t want their sugar daddy taken away.

And finally the third part of this story is about the polar bear. This year the polar bear was listed as threatened by the Department of Interior because of melting sea ice. This became a no-win situation for everyone, including the polar bear.

The Bush administration got suckered into believing that climate change was permanently destroying polar bear habitat – ice. Not wanting to anger too many people, they thought listing the bear as threatened would pacify the environmentalists and not anger those of us who really wanted to protect the bear. Lawsuits have followed.

Then, like they had some kind of magic wand, the DOI, led by Dirk Kempthorne, declared that nobody was going to use the threatened status of polar bears as a political manipulation tool to regulate global warming.

Now that real science is coming around to shoot down the scare mongers of global warming, the way the ESA has been interpreted, the bear will never be removed from the ESA list, even though the ice is growing again and the population of polar bears is the highest its been in decades.

Story #1 – District of Columbia vs. Heller

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution proclaims: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” People have argued for decades about the meaning of this Amendment, even to the point of how capitalized words are used.

What began as a lawsuit against the District of Columbia by a security guard, Richard Heller, to restore his constitutional right to “keep and bear arms”, ended up in the United States Supreme Court in what is perhaps the greatest ruling since Roe vs. Wade or Brown vs. Board of Education.

The Second Amendment has taken more abuse than perhaps any other Amendment we have, often energized out of fear and emotion because this right involved guns.

One of the arguments involving the Second Amendment is whether a “militia” means that only state sanctioned militias or guards have a legal right to possess a gun. Some argue that only the states have a right to regulate firearms. As a result of the many years of unsettled legal discussions, it was now going to be left up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Going into the oral arguments of the case, broad agreement seemed to be that SCOTUS would rule one way or the other as to whether the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual right or a collective right as such the militias. Most thought the Court would vote in favor of an individual right and we were not disappointed.

What we all mostly wondered was whether or not the Court would take it upon themselves to define, “reasonable gun regulations”. We may never have a definition of that and case upon case will be heard in the lower courts within many states of the Union.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion of a 5-4 vote. Justice Scalia, in presenting years of historic evidence as to the “intentions” of the framers of the Constitution, declared the Second Amendment as a right of individuals to keep and bear arms. What was left quite foggy was what kind of arms can individuals possess and what are “reasonable” gun control laws.

In the District of Columbia, a person virtually was barred by D.C. laws from owning a gun of any kind and in particular a handgun. D.C. law also provided that for those who were properly licensed to own a “hunting” gun, that gun had to be inoperable in the residence of the owner. The Supreme Court also ruled that law was unconstitutional because it robbed a person of their God-given right to self protection.

It has been nearly seven months since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for an individual right and that a ban on owning a gun and having it in your home was unconstitutional, and still the District of Columbia has yet to comply with the court ruling as they stall laying claim they are trying to work out an agreeable gun control bill. That in itself tells us that the District of Columbia has no intention of adhering to the law and will come up with their version of what the Second Amendment should be and let it be fought in the courts again as to what “reasonable” gun laws are.

Although District of Columbia vs. Heller was not a ruling that restored 100% our right to keep and bear arms, it was a major victory that gave us a starting point and a legal platform to work from. Let’s hope this new administration, along with a strong democratic hold on both Houses, will not head us in the opposite direction.

Tom Remington

The debate rages on in towns and communities all across Connecticut on what to do about Lyme disease. So far, nothing has really been done while the disease runs rampant in many places. One group, the Connecticut Coalition to Eradicate Lyme Disease, is calling for a reduction in deer population saying that overinflated numbers of deer, which carry the tick, is the major cause. Some individuals and groups who oppose the killing of animals say this would be inhumane and would have little or no effect on the disease.

Most states have good wildlife biologist and fish and game departments that make every attempt to manage wildlife based on science. We know that all too often science is shoved in the back seat and replaced with politics and special interests. For these reasons Connecticut is one state that has a Lyme disease problem.

There are areas where deer populations have exceeded carrying capacity of the land. When animals like the whitetail deer are allowed to go basically unmanaged, oftentimes population densities become so large that they destroy the ecosystem and in this case promote disease.

Why is this considered humane? Those fighting efforts to reduce deer populations because they consider it inhumane are quite hypocritical to put on blinders to the inhumane treatment of animals that are left to starve or suffer and die from disease.

Whether you want to believe or not that reducing deer numbers will have an affect on Lyme disease will remain part of the debate. The sensible thing to do, which is continuously being blocked by animal rights activists and anti hunting groups, is to allow the state of Connecticut to institute its deer management plan in all parts of the state.

This would involve finding ways to reduce and better manage those populations that cause problems and exceed the capacity that the lands can sustain a healthy herd. Contrary to what is often being spread through the media, there are success stories everywhere where communities have worked together with fish and game and hunting groups to work toward deer population reductions with little or no negative impact on the citizens and landowners.

It seems that no matter what is presented as steps to take to address disease, there is always irrational and radical groups that fight against and stop what the majority of us know is the right thing to be doing. There seems to always be some foolish excuse and therefore nothing gets done.

As a hunter, of course I want hunting opportunity. There is nothing more frustrating to a deer hunter than to spend a lot of time in the woods and not see the game we went out to get. But more important than simply having a lot of deer to hunt, we must have a healthy herd. Without such all other species will suffer. Again I ask, how is this humane?

The solution to Connecticut’s Lyme disease seems quite simple to me. Allow the fish and game department to take control over the state’s deer herd. Let them manage them in all locations. Good sound science, which is what the state’s deer management plan should be based on, will provide for deer numbers that are healthy. This, of course, will take into consideration the existence of Lyme disease. It may be necessary to reduce the population in those trouble areas below carrying capacity in order to reduce or eliminate the disease and then bring the numbers back up.

If the state is allowed to properly manage deer and all other species based on science, deer numbers will be reduced. Isn’t it a reasonable conclusion that once this is done, we can then better tell if the overall impact of Lyme disease has been reduced? This can’t be done in pockets. It has to be a statewide effort to be able to realize and understand the total impact. Why is this wrong? Isn’t this the only humane way to manage our wildlife?

The time for continued excuses needs to end. From state to state we witness each and everyday what happens when our fish and game biologists are not allowed to properly manage the wildlife. Animals suffer and die needlessly.

It baffles my mind that foolish thinking continues to allow for needless suffering of humans and our wildlife.

Tom Remington

A Simsbury, Connecticut man shot and killed a bear in his yard that had been eating from his bird feeder, according to the Hartford Courant. He now faces up to a $200 fine and 60 days in jail. He is being charged with unlawful bear hunting and unlawful destruction of a black bear and was issued an infraction ticket for discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a building that doesn’t belong to him. That’ll cost him $90.

From what I’ve read, it doesn’t appear the man was in danger from the bear, although something may have happened that we don’t know about yet. But I find a comment made by Police Capt. Matthew Catania interesting.

If residents feel they are in danger, they can call the police department and an animal control officer or police will remove the bear.

I assume the officer meant that while sitting in the comfort of your home, you somehow feel threatened, give him a call. He can’t mean you don’t have the right to protect yourself, your family and your property. Can he?

And once again, let’s end the article the same way all newspapers do when it comes to bears.

If people see a bear, “observe its presence but never attempt to feed or attract a bear. Shout, wave arms, make your presence known. Black bears are docile until they feel threatened,”

If that doesn’t work, take the bear into your bedroom and cuddle up with it. The cute little darn thing.

Tom Remington

I’ve talked some about his subject from a couple different perspectives. In Pennsylvania, the state is in the middle of a major deer population reduction in order to regrow the forests. According to reports from studies and officials, there are areas where too many deer have destroyed the natural under story of the forest allowing for growth of invasive plant species.

In Connecticut, some areas are battling Lyme disease brought on by too many deer that carry the tick that causes the disease. In both these cases, the solution seems to be to reduce the deer population in order to accomplish one or both, of two tasks.

Dr. Emile DeVito, a conservation ecologist and Manager of Science and Stewardship for the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, has an article in the New York Times about similar forest destruction problems in New York and New Jersey by deer. He offers solutions to the problem, one of which being a drastic reduction of the deer population and utilizing the efforts of hunters.

DeVito says that there are too many deer to count and nothing left of plants to survey, so any money to study and count would be a waste. He calls for population numbers to be dropped to around 5 deer per square mile, claiming this number is necessary in order to allow for the forests to regenerate.

These are very low numbers when you begin presenting them to deer biologists, depending on region and carrying capacities, and you’re sure to get some heated responses from deer hunters, as we have witnessed in Pennsylvania.

Last week I wrote an article about how it appeared that Pennsylvania was tearing down its deer herd in order to build it back up again. In that article, I asked the following question.

I don’t have all the details obviously but if the 10-year effort was to reduce the deer population to 15 per square mile, a number that many wildlife biologists would consider reasonable, in order to regrow the forest and sustain a healthier deer population, why are they looking to rebuild it?

Reader Willard responded to my question about why the state would first advocate for knocking deer population numbers down to around 15 per square mile, only to bump them back up to 20 per square mile once the forests have regenerated.

…..he means that once the habitat has recovered from the severe over browsing that it should then be capable of supporting a larger number of deer than 15 per square mile.

According to DeVito’s article, it sounds as though reader Willard is exactly right.

All nonprofit environmental groups, government agencies, sportsman clubs, farmers, professional foresters and community groups need to work together to reduce the regional deer population to a biodiversity-based carrying capacity, which must initially be significantly lower than 10 deer per square mile, but could be boosted to about 20 per square mile when the forest is once again filled with tree seedlings and saplings, a dense shrub layer, and a forest floor carpeted with wildflowers!

This sounds as though it could be a great opportunity for hunters and hunting clubs, to work more closely with farmers, landowners, community and state governments to provide more hunting opportunities now and into the future to help restore damaged forests and to help stop the spread of diseases such as Lyme.

But here’s the million dollar question. Mr. DeVito advocates for the use of hunting in places where feasible to achieve the reduction of the deer population. Being that he is a member of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, which basically buys up land to preserve and limits it to mostly hiking and bird watching, would the NJCF advocate for the use of hunting on their “preserves” when certain game species become too abundant?

Tom Remington