Bear bait a controversial issue in New Jersey
By BRUCE A. SCRUTON
bscruton@njherald.com
The debate over bear baiting in New Jersey has more sides than a jelly doughnut.
A homeowner can be cited for feeding a bear in their backyard, a violation of the state's "don't feed the bears" law.
On the other extreme, a hunter can put a pile of corn or apples in a spot in the woods and legally shoot a bear that comes by to feed and become a useful tool in the effort to control the black bear population. Hunters themselves will debate the "ethics" of baiting and wildlife biologists will cite a variety of reports and studies on effects, both positive and negative, of setting out feeding stations.
Lawyers go into court and argue that a backyard of sunflower seeds is no different than what the hunter is doing.
Anti-hunting activists say not implementing or enforcing trash laws is a bait-and-switch method of inflating conflict numbers to justify a bear hunt that begins today.
Today also is the opening of the six-day shotgun season for deer, which also can be baited.
But in the world of New Jersey hunting regulations, there are some intricacies in how bait can be used for each species.
A bear hunter must be at least 300 feet from a bait pile, on the ground and not in a blind or man-made structure when he shoots a bear.
A deer hunter can be in a tree stand or a blind with no distance requirement.
But, cautioned Larry Herrighty, any hunter who has an unfilled bear hunting permit and is in the zone for that permit, is presumed to be hunting bear, even if not in possession of the permit.
"You can't claim you left it (permit) home so you aren't bear hunting," said Herrighty, the assistant director of the state Division of Fish and Wildlife.
When the Fish and Game Council approved the state's bear management plan, which called for a bear hunt, it approved a recommendation to allow bear baiting since the two seasons would coincide and since the state has allowed baiting for deer since the 1990s.
"Baiting has its place," Herrighty said. "Set up in a wooded area where you can safely shoot, it can bring the bears to the hunter."
Goal of hunting season
One of the goals of the re-established bear hunting season in New Jersey was to reduce a population of bears that wildlife biologists believed was beyond the societal capacity and nearing the biological carrying capacity.
Biological capacity is what the environment can sustain while societal capacity is what the human population will tolerate.
Hunted almost to extinction, New Jersey classified bears as a game animal in the 1930s with a limited hunting season. By 1970, the season was closed as the population dwindled. As farmland returned to woodlands, especially the hardwoods such as oak and beech, which produce the bears' favorite food — acorns and beechnuts — the bruin population rebounded.
People moved into the wooded tracts of northwestern New Jersey and the inevitable clash began; more people, more garbage, more garbage, more bears. The garbage not only drew bears closer to people, but provided a stable and abundant food supply.
Combine the food supply, both natural and human-created, with the near-perfect bear habitat of ridges, woods and swamps, and the population grew denser.
In less than four decades, the black bear population went from a few hundred to nearly 3,500 just in the extreme northwestern part of the state, according to biologists at East Stroudsburg (Pa.) University.
The population density pressure in the northwestern corner of the state pushed black bears into all corners of New Jersey as well as into neighboring Pennsylvania and New York, which had their own healthy populations of bears.
Even with about 1,000 bears killed in the 2010 and 2011 hunts and more than 100 killed in collisions with autos, the department estimates there are still about 2,800 black bears in the area of New Jersey west of Interstate 287 and north of Interstate 80.
The 2010 hunt recorded 592 bears harvested while the 2011 hunt reported 469 bears killed over a similar six-day period.
In each of the hunts, the state made 10,000 bear permits available with about 9,000 issued last year. As of late Friday, about 7,500 permits had been issued for this year's hunt.
Unlike New Jersey, which didn't have a bear hunt for more than 30 years, surrounding states kept their bear hunting seasons.
Baiting allowed in a handful of states
There are 28 states that have some sort of bear hunting season. Less than a dozen allow baiting of some sort.
When it comes to the various states, there's also a wide range of rules and regulations.
Pennsylvania — where more than 2,600 bear were killed during the four-day bear season last month — does not allow baiting, and neither does New York where the bear season, depending on zone, stretches from September into December. Massachusetts outlawed bear hunting over bait in 1970 while New York outlawed the practice less than a decade ago.
Vermont also outlaws baiting, but in neighboring New Hampshire setting out bait is allowed, and so is bear hunting with dogs.
During the public hearings held by the Fish and Game Council as it pondered the bear hunt, there were those who asked the state to allow bear hunting with dogs.
"The council decided not to allow that," said Herrighty, who noted that deer hunting with dogs was not outlawed in New Jersey until 1946.
Two more years of hunts
Herrighty said the division and council are looking to have two more years of hunts after 2012 before seriously considering any changes.
"We'd like to have five years (of hunts) under our belt. Then we can evaluate how our efforts to affect the population have been," he said.
But there are those who don't want the state to wait, especially anti-hunting groups like the Bear Education and Resource Group and the Animal Protection League, which promise to protest the opening of the bear hunt today.
Late last week, the group, calling the division "the hunters' agency," lashed out at the practice of baiting and the state's lack of enforcement on trash management.
The groups approve of legislation introduced late last week by state Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Essex, which would require towns to mandate bear-resistant trash bins.
The groups also reported a 2012 study produced by Thomas Eveland, who teaches at Penn State University and Luzerne County Community College in Pennsylvania, which draws the conclusion that baiting of deer and bear in fact leads to higher populations since the well-fed animals will have higher reproduction rates.
On Friday, a news release was sent out under the name Garden Bait, a blog that promised updates on a blog baiting finds, such as hunters using baby diapers and "human junk food" as bait.
However, by Friday evening, the website for the blog had been taken down.
Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, has opposed the hunt in each of the past two years and again late last week was critical of the state's efforts.
"The department says they have a bear management plan, but they don't," he wrote in a news release. "They do not have the funding for staff to manage bears properly or even to educate the public."
In its defense, the department said it distributed thousands of brochures on bears, held nearly 100 education programs and stepped up its efforts that human food sources "do not unintentionally become a food source for bears."
Herrighty said, "We're pleased to see the numbers of (bear) complaints going down."
He said that while baiting can bring bears and deer closer to the hunters, "the usual hunting techniques like scouting your area, watching for signs and the habits of the game," also will work.
"The more time you put in looking, the more apt you are to be successful," he said. "I think 2012 will be a safe and productive hunt."