Tom Remington

The New Jersey Fish and Game Commission is working on a black bear management plan that would include a hunt in the fall of 2010. According the the U.S. Sportsman’s Alliance, a meeting is scheduled for Feb. 9, 2010.

The new management plan is to be heard at the February 9 meeting of the FGC being held at the Central Region Office in the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area in Robbinsville. According to one of its main authors, Council Member Len Wolgast, the plan would allow for a bear hunt to take place this fall.

If passed, the plan must then go to the acting Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for final approval.

I reported a couple weeks ago about a new bill, Assembly Bill 181, which if passed, would take away the lone power of the director of the Environmental Protection Agency in New Jersey, to be able to cancel a hunt or plan approved of by the Fish and Game Commission. Previous EPA Director, Lisa Jackson, now head of Obama’s EPA, arbitrarily canceled all bear hunts and ignored a court-approved bear management plan.

New Jersey sportsmen are encouraged to attend this meeting if possible and show your support for the management plan and the Fish and Game Commission.

Tom Remington

Under the rule of Gov. Jon Corzine and his appointed director of the Department of Environmental Protection, Lisa Jackson (now with Barack Obama’s administration), bear hunting was canceled, along with the state’s court-approved bear management plan.

AB 181 would put control and authority of wildlife issues back in the hands of the wildlife commission. The bill would prohibit any authority the DEP head had to this point to stop or overturn any commission approved wildlife management plan, including hunting.

Sportsmen in New Jersey are strongly encouraged to contact your representative in support of this bill.

Tom Remington

Oh, for shame, that I must digress even if only momentarily to assure readers that only metaphorically is Gov. Jon Corzine blind. It was just over a year ago that I began referring to New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine as blind. As a matter of fact it was at that time I took a picture of him and added the dark glasses to make him look like he was blind. If he was going to act the part, he might as well dress the part.

The reason for his “blindness” began when all around his state, black bears were and still are presenting a serious problem. Public safety has become the issue and yet repeatedly Corzine has stated that he doesn’t see any bear problem.

His problem now is how to get reelected. His challenger, Chris Christie, at one time had a sizable lead in the polls over Corzine. I’m not sure who is advising Corzine in his campaign strategies but now we find out, through Hot Air, that Corzine has decided to make campaign commercials showing a fat Christie and making comments about his challenger “throwing his weight around”.

Abraham Lincoln was always on the butt end of jokes directed toward his physical features. Let’s face it, Lincoln certainly wouldn’t be a male model of today. God knows he wasn’t womanly enough to do that. Lincoln was tall, gangling, and oddly proportioned. He was a man of great strength. But what set Lincoln apart from his opponents and others who disagreed with his politics, was his refusal to engage in such sophomoric behavior with even the slightest acknowledgment. We know that Lincoln was the master of words, the legend of oration and perhaps the most sought after storyteller of his day but he refused to bring himself down to such a level.

I assume the biggest reason Lincoln wouldn’t play games with the boys was because he understood from a very early age that people who speak inappropriately of others will soon enough hang themselves with their own rope. Comeuppances are much sweeter that way.

Lincoln often spoke in anecdotes, which reminds of one that shows us what happens when you don’t pay close attention, are uncaring and end up having to stick you nose into places they shouldn’t have been in the first place.

Great Aunt Florena yelled at her husband of many years, Virgil, that he had to fix the seat on the outhouse. Virgil listened to Florena for days on end but paid little attention to what she was saying as he could see nothing wrong with the outhouse seat.

Finally one morning Florena had had enough and in a most firm manner instructed Virgil that before he got any breakfast, he was to fix the seat in the outhouse.

Virgil ventured out to the outhouse and looked briefly at the top of the toilet seat. He saw nothing. He yelled to Florena in the kitchen preparing breakfast and told her there was nothing wrong with the toilet seat. She yelled back that he had to look closer.

Virgil was a bearded man, having sported his relatively long facial hair for well over 15 years now. Virgil bent at the waist and took a closer look, yet he still saw nothing and relayed his findings to his bride.

She yelled back, “You have to stick your head down the hole before you can see what’s wrong with the seat!”

Virgil sprung to life and stood straight up vowing he wasn’t sticking his head down the hole of an outhouse – even his own. But he stood there for a moment and getting very hungry he examined the size of the hole for a moment and figured he could hold his breath long enough to take a look.

He shoved his head into the hole and almost instantly the hairs of his beard got stuck in a crack at the edge of the toilet seat. He couldn’t get out. Each time he tried to move or escape, his beard hair would hurt unmercifully.

Virgil began to yell, “Florena! Help! My beard is stuck in a crack in the toilet seat of the outhouse!”

With a broad grin on her face, Florena sauntered to the kitchen door and yelled back, “NOW, you know what’s wrong with the toilet seat!”

Tom Remington

On August 14, 2009, Senator Steven Oroho, Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose, and Assemblyman Gary Chiusano sent out a press release urging the blind man, Gov. Jon Corzine, to stop “playing politics with the public’s safety and let wildlife experts decide the best method for handling the issue.” They say New Jersey’s “alternate bear management policies” are not working. Nothing will happen.

Bud Pidgeon, U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance president and CEO, says that Corzine refuses to look at the problem. Seriously?

“For years, there has been a steadfast refusal to look at numbers produced by the professionals in the DFW.

As I gaze into my crystal ball, I see it is April 2010. New Jersey’s Senator Steven Oroho, Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose, and Assemblyman Gary Chiusano are sending out a press release urging the blind man, Gov. Jon Corzine, to please take off his dark glasses and see that it’s about time he did something about this bear problem.

It’s a bit hazy right now but I think I see Corzine losing his bid for reelection and his replacement thinks New Jersey just needs some better bear-proof garbage cans. Promises to appropriate $6.8 million dollars and buy $1,000 new garbage cans to be issued by a state run lottery costing $10 a chance. Susan Kehoe, not being able to comprehend what’s going on, buys all the chances. The bears win!

Tom Remington

One poll shows his challenger, former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, a republican, beating Corzine 51-39.

One of Corzine’s first acts as governor was to hire now head of Obama’s EPA, Lisa Jackson, to run New Jersey’s EPA. Between the two of them they shut down the bear hunt and have now left some New Jersey residents struggling with an overgrown black bear population and nothing they can do about it. Some people have been attacked by the bears and the blind and belligerent Corzine, in his ignorance and arrogance, continues to state there is no bear problem.

But what would Christie do? To date I am unaware of him making any specific statements of how he would handle the bear issue. On his web site he lists 88 ways he will “fix” New Jersey. In that list he has the following:

I will review all current regulations and rescind rules that do not have a sound scientific or other technical basis, are not consistent with other state policy goals or legislative intent, or don’t effectively protect and promote the public interest…………………………

I will ensure rules and regulations are scientifically sound by establishing rule-making scientific advisory committees (where appropriate) to evaluate the underlying science in DEP or other departmental rule proposals.

We have recently heard President Obama declare that he would “restore science to its rightful place” and as was expected that meant his science that fits his agenda and not necessarily considering the entire scientific community. At this point, it is going to have to be a wait and see approach unless someone can get Christie to publicly announce his position on a bear hunt.

Tom Remington

George Kately of Sparta, NJ, operates the historic Delaware View House on leased property inside the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. He was subsequently arrested and charged with maintaining a hazardous device on federal land and disorderly conduct.

I certainly wish the best and a speedy recovery for the young girl.

An Additional Note:

Upon investing into this story of a young girl somehow coming in contact with a electrified device used to ward off black bears, I visited the web site of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. I found a page about black bears.

It offers much of the same information generally found about steering clear of bears and what to do to help prevent bears from bothering you. However, there is a section that I found that I don’t recall having seen in other places regarding bears. Here’s what it said:

Don’t Kill a Bear!

If you feed a bear, or leave food around for the bear to find, you “teach” the bear to approach people. Bears that approach people can be easily hit by cars or shot by poachers. “Problem bears” that annoy or threaten people must be trapped and removed from the park, or even destroyed.

People feeding bears is also a serious safety problem! If you feed a bear, you can be fined up to $5,000 and jailed for up to 6 months.

While the notion that a poacher can, for all intent, kill a bear anytime they want to, (isn’t that what poaching is?) I have never seen an official declaration that puts the blame of poaching partly back on the shoulders of someone who feeds bears.

A question I have is whether there is a problem with poaching bears inside the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area? I assume there must be otherwise why does it become necessary to warn users of the park that if they feed or cause to be fed, bears, they are partly responsible for a bear to be poached?

Tom Remington

The Daily Record has more.

Tom Remington

Fred Aun of the New Jersey Star Ledger tells us that the Corzine Administration of New Jersey, one that is anti-hunting has decided to rename “Bear Hunting Areas” with “Bear Management Areas” because they think this somehow better represents what goes on in these areas.

But Aun says:

If hunting is just another word for management, then banning a hunt is the same as failing to manage. And failing to manage is a nice way of saying “being irresponsible.”

So, this is pretty cool! We started out with “Bear Hunting Areas” and Corzine has morphed them into “Bear Management Areas”. Aun says that if hunting is just another word for management and banning a hunt is “failing to manage”, then shouldn’t we then rename these areas “Bear Mismanagement Areas” or “Bear Management Failure Zones”?

Perhaps we should also take this another step and make some adjustments to Corzine’s administration. Saying that Corzine “administers” is not really telling people what goes on in that area, so maybe we should try “Corzine Management Area”, which is really “Corzine Hunting Area”. But we know Corzine doesn’t hunt, therefore we should also call this the “Corzine Mismanagement Area” or the “Corzine Management Failure Zone”.

Isn’t it fun to play with words? After all, this is a far more important thing to do in a “Mismanagement Area” than actually doing your job.

By the way, the number of complaints lodged by the people of New Jersey about black bears has grown from 128 in 2008 to 508 this year. I think we need to go back to the “Bear Hunting Areas” and kill bears, then we could return also to the “Corzine Administration”.

Tom Remington

According to the Times Herald-Record, Henry Rouwendeal, 51, was packing his car for a business trip, when a 300-400 pound bear knocked him to the ground to get after a sandwich he evidently had packed in his car. After some time, he was able to get himself into the house to wake his wife, a registered nurse, who treated his wounds.

As long as those in charge in New Jersey continue to bury their heads in the sand over this issue, the shorter the fuse on the time bomb becomes that will result in someone getting seriously injured. But we continue to hear ridiculous rhetoric from bear lovers similar to the one the Black Bear Blog received from a bear lover yesterday.

People are 247 times more likely to be killed by lightning and 60,000 times more likely to be murdered by another human being than to be killed by a black bear.

I am far more afraid of being hurt by a human than by a bear. But I would never suggest that we kill humans just to prevent them from possibly hurting someone, and we should not kill bears either.

Personally, I could care less about what my odds are in getting killed by a bear. That’s not the issue nor is it an issue of getting injured from a bear attack as has happened with Mr. Rouwendeal. The issue is why do we have to be subjected to living a lifestyle that some bear lover deems necessary, living in fear of our kids and property, because someone wants to protect bears? Can a man now not go from his house to his car without fear of being attacked by a black bear because a handful of perverted minded people say so?

The person who made the above comments also made several comments which shows us clearly that she hates human beings and has little use for them. She blames man for everything. What a shame. The combine hatred of mankind along with an abnormal desire to protect animals, is sick behavior, yet it is being supported in far too many places.

There are proven means to deal with overgrown populations of wild animals, yet this continued perverted behavior is ruling the day. Hopefully enough people will wake up to the fact that their right to own property and to be able to protect themselves and that property is being taken away by those who are more fond of animals than humans. Let’s just hope this happens before another is attacked by a bear.

Tom Remington