Activists continue challenge to state bear hunt in northwestern New Jersey

Anti-bear hunt activists again disputed figures from state wildlife biologists on just how many black bears are in northwestern New Jersey, and they are supporting one more effort to get a court to stop the scheduled December hunt.

Six of the activists appeared at a news conference Thursday on Zoom, called to talk about an appellate court decision on a lawsuit filed nearly a year ago that went into how the Division of Fish and Wildlife and the Fish and Game Council "grossly exaggerated by 50% their own numbers" to justify a hunt.

"They make bad policy," said Angi Mettler, who said she lives "in the middle of bear country, where I see very few bears."

She lives in Vernon, and Sussex County has among the highest numbers of bear-human interactions reported to the state, officials say. Vernon has its own police department with officers trained to handle bear complaints and no requirement to report the number of complaints they receive to state officials.

Mettler also disputed the state's numbers on the actual bear population. "They claim 4,000 bears in the state," she said. "Turns out, it's closer to 1,600."

In October, Assistant Commissioner Dave Golden, who heads the Division of Fish and Wildlife, said the estimate is that more than 3,100 bears live in the "study area" of northwestern New Jersey.

That "study area" is also the area where bear hunting is allowed in New Jersey and includes all of Sussex and Warren counties and parts of Bergen, Passaic, Morris, Hunterdon and Somerset counties.

On a national scale, though the state is low in estimated bear population compared with other states, the northwestern part of New Jersey has among the highest concentrations of black bears in the world.

Biologists note that typical bear country has one to 2.5 bears per square mile. In the study area of New Jersey, the density is estimated to be up to three bears per square mile.

The news conference was called also to bring attention to an appeals court decision handed down in October in which a panel of judges said the state was wrong when it set an "emergency" bear hunt last December.

The activists called last December's hunt "illegal," but the court did not hand down any punishment for that hunt.

The emergency was based on a large increase in the number of human-bear interactions from 2021. There was no bear hunt in 2021 because Gov. Phil Murphy and the Department of Environmental Protection commissioner refused to sign a new Comprehensive Black Bear Management Policy.

A new policy was adopted and signed earlier this year, drawing another lawsuit. The suit was dismissed at the Superior Court level, allowing the October hunt to go on.

However, an appeal of that dismissal was filed, and it's not known whether a decision will come before the scheduled "six-day shotgun" season set for Dec. 4 to 9.

During the archery hunt, also known as Segment A, 330 bears were killed.

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Depending on the number of specially tagged bears taken during the first six days of the shotgun season, Golden has the authority to extend the hunt for a few days the following week.

Each year, Division of Fish and Wildlife biologists make an estimate of the black bear population within the study/hunting area using various methods adopted by wildlife experts.

Division employees then go into the woods in summer and live-trap bears to be fitted with numbered ear tags and be given inner-lip tattoos. The number of tagged bears is a percentage of the estimated bear population.

As bears are killed by hunters and brought to check stations, biologists look for those special tags and collect data on the bear and from the hunter about where the animal was harvested.

With the known number of tags returned, biologists come up with a harvest rate (tagged bears killed out of total tagged bears). That percentage then determines whether the hunt will be extended, if it is below a 20% rate, or stopped, if the rate gets to 30%.

During the news conference, the group also challenged the state's method of using "complaints" to measure whether there is a need for a hunt.

The group said the state lumps all bear complaints together, "whether it be a bear walking into an open garage or someone saying 'I saw that bear in the field again today.'"

The monthly black bear complaint summaries are available on the Division of Fish and Wildlife website, where they are broken down by county and into three categories of seriousness, which are further divided by type of incident. There is a category for "sighting" as well as categories for attacks on farm animals, damage to buildings, damage to homes or getting into garbage.

The group said Murphy promised to put more money into education and methods of keeping bears out of household garbage and that he needs to do more in the area of mandating "bear-proof" garbage cans.

The members brought up some cities in the western part of the U.S. where garbage is tightly controlled and collected.

But most of those areas are relatively new and were designed with wildlife in mind, providing corridors for animal movement as well as garbage collection beginning from scratch.

Some towns in northwestern New Jersey have tried to mandate bear-resistant garbage cans, but the cost of the cans and retrofitting fleets of trash-collecting trucks can be a large financial investment.

Most towns have some sort of regulation on when trash cans can be put at the curb, but enforcement also can be expensive.

The state's conservation officers have authority to issue citations, but most often they concentrate on commercial operations. The internet is full of videos of bears getting into large dumpsters or people opening one to empty trash and finding a bear already inside.

The Division of Fish and Wildlife has also invested in educational programs that send experts to speak to social and civic groups, appear at schools and have displays at community events and fairs.

This article originally appeared on New Jersey Herald: NJ bear hunt activists challenge validity of program