DEP Black Bear Management Plan is Bull

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has announced new efforts to “increase and enhance nonlethal management of black bears”. This comes after last week’s announcement that the DEP is offering 11,000 bear hunting permits this year. New Jersey used to spend more than $2 million a year on bear management education, that money has been reduced by 90%. Ten years ago New Jersey had bear wardens whose jobs were to manage bears and educate the public. That program has been eliminated. Now only Conservation Officers do that work and there are 40% less of them then there was ten years ago. They not only have to deal with bears, but other species, poachers, and everything else.

“The DEP is just spinning with this announcement. The public have been critical of their lack of management plan and continuing with the hunt, so this press release is a way for them to justify the hunt. The DEP is still allowing just as many bears to be killed this year as were last year. By next year, we might not have bears left to manage non-lethally. The DEP release is also extremely vague on how and what they will be doing to increase bear education and are not making the event mandatory. This is just more spin from the DEP because of the large public outcry against the hunt. They announced a phony ban on bear hunt and now they’re announcing a phony management plan with no staff, no timelines, and no resources,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “This is nothing but a PR stunt to divert the public away from the fact that they’re going to kill just as many bears this year as they did last year. When it comes to bears, the DEP is full of bull.”

Governor Murphy signed an Executive Order banning bear hunting on all state lands, about 700,000 acres. However, this leaves just as much land in county parklands, private lands, water company lands, non-profit lands, and municipal lands where bears can still be hunted on. While running for Governor, Murphy promised to put a moratorium on the bear hunt that was increased under Governor Christie. While this measure still allows hunting, it does make efforts to reduce the number of bears killer by restricting where they can be hunted.

“People are angry at the Administration because they didn’t cancel the hunt as promised. Today’s announcement is just another way to confuse the public. Despite the ban on hunting bears on state lands, the DEP is giving out the same amount of permits as last year. This means the same number of hunters will be out there looking to kill the same number of bears. We’re concerned that even with the ban, the bear population will continue to be decimated to unsafe population numbers. Another reason for concern comes from the difficulty of enforcing Murphy’s ban on hunting on state lands. A hunter can kill a bear in one place and claim it was killed elsewhere without anyone finding out,” said Jeff Tittel.

New Jersey needs to transition from hunting to a real a real management plan, one that includes strong education and uses warning signs in the region, education materials at trail heads, enforcing not feeding bears, and garbage management. There needs to be warning signs in bear country with post at all trail heads with Do’s and Don’ts in bear country. We also need to teach people how to bear-proof their property, including the importance of having no garbage at night and bear proof containers. These will do a lot more in managing the bear population than having an unnecessary hunt.

“This plan is garbage because it doesn’t have any teeth. Without funding or staff, it can’t enforced, especially not in a mere month’s time. Instead of a stunt to cover the broken promises of stopping the bear hunt, NJ needs a real bear management plan! We need to address human-bear interactions by dealing with habitat management and garbage control. Without a real management plan, bears will change from a nuisance bear to an aggressive bear and will be put down. The black bear is a symbol that we still have wild places left in the state and that we haven’t completely given over to sprawl,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “The Governor needs to keep his promise to end the bear hunt and put together a real management plan.”