NEW JERSEY'S latest bear-management plan is a well-researched and reasoned document. It has the right primary goal: maintaining a robust, healthy black bear population.
But we disagree with its conclusion, which state environmental officials formalized last week: to hold a six-day hunt this December.
The 45-page document lays out a variety of bear-management approaches, including trash management and sterilization. Some of the latest population statistics — which always seem to buttress the policy preference of whoever is in charge of state environmental policy — estimate the number of black bears in New Jersey at 3,400. That is triple the estimate in 2006, when then-Gov. Jon Corzine canceled a hunt and demanded that the state draft a new management plan. The plan by the state's Fish and Game Council now recommends regular hunts — no surprise, since the council is sympathetic to hunters.
In approving the hunt, DEP Commissioner Bob Martin said last week that it is the most efficient and cost-effective way to thin the population. He acknowledged its controversy but said there are no scientifically proven alternatives. This year's hunt would include up to 10,000 hunters who, with a license and $2 permit, could kill an estimated 500 to 750 bears, Staff Writer Scott Fallon reported.
As in the past, we do not support a black bear hunt in New Jersey. We believe a hunt should be the last resort to temper an out-of-control bear population. We're not there yet.
Whether the current bear population is tolerable is clearly open to interpretation, as the heated disagreement between animal-rights activists and sportsmen shows.Those in support of a hunt, and the Fish and Game Council's report, say that birth control is ineffective, that relocation is too expensive and that bear-human encounters have grown too common. Those against a hunt take the same facts and argue that birth control is promising, that relocation is possible and that common-sense precautions with trash cans and bird feeders can keep bears at bay.
There will never be consensus on the issue. In this matter, the decision to hunt or not is based on values as much as, if not more than, facts. In the values equation, we land squarely on the no-hunt side.
Regular readers of this page will recall our support for a deer hunt at Garret Mountain last year. In that case, the deer had overtaken a relatively small area, throwing off the local ecosystem and facing a winter of possible starvation. A hunt was not only efficient, it was on the right side of humane. We cannot consider a hunt humane in this circumstance, because the bears pose little danger to others or themselves.
Still, the hunt is approved. Short of a successful court challenge, it will go on.
Fewer and fewer states are allowing bear hunts, and so New Jersey's hunt is likely to attract hunters far and wide. At the very least, the state should raise the bear-hunt permit fee above the petty price of $2. The average campsite permit costs ten times that.
The Fish and Game Council suggests $28. It should be much, much more. And those revenues should be spent on non-lethal bear management and research. At least then, maybe, the bears won't have died for sport alone.
