Governor Corzine caved to anti pressure and disallowed bear hunting to continue, while cutting the budget for non-lethal bear management activities! New Jersey Senator Steven Oroho stated, “The Department of Environmental Protection is pursuing contradictory policies on bear management. On the one hand, they have spent considerable sums of taxpayer money by going to court to stop a bear hunt, while at the same time cutting funds in the State Budget for non-lethal methods of bear control . . . The DEP cannot have it both ways. You cannot argue that non-lethal bear control is essential to a comprehensive bear management policy, and then agree to cut the funding for those methods. It is obvious the bear population has grown in northwestern New Jersey, and it must be brought under control before someone is injured or killed.”
Now there is a bear overpopulation problem that he refuses to face. When all of the problems arose that led to the first hunt, the groups opposed to it disputed the population numbers saying that the population was too small and a hunt would destroy the bear numbers. Now the numbers have increased and the animal rights groups along with Corzine say the problem is not an increase in the population but that people are not securing their garbage correctly! Corzine told a New Jersey Herald reporter earlier this year that the number of black bears in the state was only a problem “if you want to call it that.” His solution? The State Deptartment of Environmental Protection’s position that the improved waste and garbage management will take care of the contact between humans and bears. Corzine told the paper that “A lot of the problem is perception.” He says most complaints are simply sightings and those are only in a small portion of the state.
Yeah that is a problem when you are the one perceiving to see a bear in your kitchen! It may be small to the governor but it isn’t to the person who is face to face with the bear! Securing garbage cans and a little pepper spray isn’t going to take care of the human bear incidents. According to the Daily Journal’s website as of September 20 of this year in New Jersey there were 2155 bear complaints up 84% from just a year ago. Category 1 complaints where bears threaten humans or property had risen more than 100%, with 203 incidents up from only 83 a year ago. Bears entering a home has also more than doubled with 65 incidents up until September.
Larry Herrighty of the New Jersey State Fish and Wildlife Division said, there are more bears now and less food in the forests. This is what Susan Hagood of the Humane Society of the United States needs to learn. She said in a National Geographic News article this week, “The problem with the hunt is that they are not targeting the bears who cause the problems,” (like she would agree to hunting the problem bears) said Susan Hagood, Wildlife Issues Specialist for the Humane Society of the United States in Washington, D.C. “The bears who happen to have a home range next to places where people live are the most likely to get into trouble. But hunters go out into the woods, a long way from people and towns, so they are killing the bears least likely to cause conflicts.” Before it was the fact that the population couldn’t sustain a hunt, now they shouldn’t hunt because they can’t target the problem animals. What she hasn’t understood or fails to understand is that if hunters target the animals in the wilderness, the populations will drop thus allowing the bears to move back into the wilderness since there will not be as much competition for the food source. This has been proven time and time again with science that there is only so much carrying capacity a forest can sustain. Once the population expands beyond that capacity those animals will either starve, move into a new area, or be riddled with disease. These bears are moving into the areas where food is available, where people live! Hunters are not allowed to hunt near residences or occupied buildings.
Since September the complaints are growing even more with the onset of the winter season and bear feeding activity growing. Governor Corzine can keep sticking his head in the sand, but he is being called to the mat by fellow legislators in his home state. In a post on the Senate New Jersey’s website, Senator Steven Oroho, Assemblywoman Allison McHose, and Assemblyman Gary Chiusano stated their case:
“The Governor’s bear management policies are based on little more than a reflexive opposition to hunting, disregard of science and a dose of wishful thinking,” said Oroho. “The numbers compiled by the Division of Fish and Wildlife demonstrate a different approach is adamantly necessary.”
Calls to the DEP about bears are up 96.7 percent from January 1, 2008 to October 22, 2008, when compared with the same time period in 2007. Damage and nuisance complaints have risen from 896 in 2007 to 1845 in 2008.
Perhaps most ominously, ‘Category I’ complaints involving a serious risk to public safety or property damage in excess of $500 have risen over 155 percent.
“Our farmers are being subjected to rising rates of crop damage and livestock slaughter,” stated McHose. “The prospects for a human tragedy have never been greater, as aggressive bears break into homes and garages, yet the response from this administration has been to issue 48 depredation permits and hope for the best.”
“While it is clear that the Governor does not like implementing a controlled hunting season that is based upon scientific data, it is also equally clear that his current policies are an abject failure,” said Chiusano. “Since he has rejected our attempts to implement a reasonable and science-based policy to deal with the escalating bear crisis, it is time for the Governor to announce what he intends to do to protect the safety of the people of northwestern New Jersey, because we are now well past the point of telling people to sprinkle ammonia in their trash cans.”
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