New Jersey is barely tolerant of urban bruins

LEDGER EDITORIAL, May 18

   We’ve never much cared for the phrase "zero tolerance."
   Whether it’s used to describe our policy against drugs or weapons or sex offenses or anything else we find particularly egregious or repulsive, it seems to us the whole notion of "zero tolerance" — or, to put it more succinctly, intolerance — is precisely what America does not stand for.
   Consider the dictionary definition of tolerance: "Sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own; the act of allowing something; the allowable deviation from a standard." In our view, these are the very underpinnings of our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights — the concept that freedom allows for deviation from a standard, that we as a people accept the exercise of beliefs and practices that might differ or conflict with our own.
   Of course, we may be splitting hairs here. It may be that the phrase "zero tolerance" isn’t meant to be taken quite so literally, that it doesn’t apply so much to our attitude about deviation from a standard as it does to our treatment of violations of the law. In context, our "zero-tolerance" policies against selling drugs or using a weapon in the commission of a crime or sexually abusing a child are, in essence, warnings to would-be perpetrators of such crimes that their actions will exact the severest form of punishment.
   While we might quibble over misapplication of the word "tolerance" to this purpose, we have no quarrel with the purpose itself. If the idea is to send an unambiguous get-tough message to anyone who might be thinking of committing a crime, no problem. But a recent news story offered us the most bizarre application of a so-called "zero-tolerance" policy we’ve ever seen, directed not at people who might be contemplating criminal acts but at a very different target:
   Bears.
   It seems that a 225-pound bear wandered into downtown Trenton — not exactly your everyday occurrence — causing the state Department of Environmental Protection to spring into action. The DEP’s Division of Fish and Wildlife, following established regulatory procedure, made an effort to escort the confused bruin out of town. (This is reportedly what the regulations call for when a bear is encountered in an "urban situation.") When the bear would not oblige, wildlife authorities had no choice, under department policy, but to kill the animal.
   Interestingly, the same thing happened a couple of days later in the Essex County city of Irvington.
   In both cases, the bears made the mistake of violating New Jersey’s "Bear Exclusion Zone," a defined area that stretches from the state’s northeast corner down along the Jersey Shore, then cuts across the middle of the state and extends along the southern Delaware River. Within this zone, officials explained, the state has a "zero-tolerance" policy toward bears.
   Excuse us for stating the obvious, but this template of linking a specified zone with a "zero-tolerance" policy is not universally applicable. Although there’s little evidence to suggest that this approach actually works at all, one could at least make the argument that a drug dealer could be persuaded to steer clear of a "Drug-Free School Zone" knowing the state has a "zero-tolerance" policy toward criminal activity therein. But does anyone seriously think this same tactic will work with bears?
   Call us Goldilocks, but until they start eating our porridge and sleeping in our beds, we’re likely not to get overly exercised about bears. If they roam into places where they pose a threat to people, by all means remove them — or, if you can’t, kill them. But please, call it an animal-control policy or a bear-management policy or anything else that more accurately describes its real motivation and intent. Let’s renounce our tolerance a bit more sparingly.