PACKET EDITORIAL, Sept. 15
By:
Now that the state Fish and Game Council has caved in (you’ll pardon the expression) to Gov. Christie Whitman’s qualms about next week’s scheduled black bear hunt, one has to wonder whether Princeton Township’s efforts to control the local deer population could suffer a similar fate.
The circumstances surrounding the scheduled bear hunt and the proposed deer management plan are certainly analagous. In both instances, a rapid increase in the population of nondomesticated animals is causing considerable concern to humans. In the case of bears, it’s been a 20-fold increase statewide in the last three decades; in the case of deer, a Bambi boom has made Princeton Township home to more than 1,300 does and bucks – about four times more than its 16.5 suburban square miles can reasonably sustain.
To address the growing problem of bears – which includes, just in the last year, more than 1,600 citizen complaints, 46 auto accidents in which bears were killed, 34 incidents of aggressive behavior, 29 cases of home entry, 25 attacks on livestock and 40 attacks on pets – the Fish and Game Council scheduled a hunt, the first in 29 years. The plan was to trim about one-third of the state’s bear population, later cut back at the governor’s urging to a maximum of 175.
Then the issue got hot – and the governor got cold feet. Animal-rights activists filed a lawsuit, deluged the State House with angry letters and very nearly convinced the Legislature to call off the hunt. When the lawmakers failed to do their bidding, the opponents trained their sights on the governor, who turned out to be an easier mark. She promptly announced a change of heart and asked that the hunt be postponed for at least a year. A reluctant Fish and Game Council fell into line and, by a 6-4 vote, granted what a Humane Society official termed a "deserved stay of execution for New Jersey’s black bears."
The governor’s preferred strategy for dealing with the bear population explosion is a "management strategy" that would include training local police in bear-control techniques, authorizing them to "euthanize all bears that pose a threat to the safety of persons or property," initiating a public education campaign to make people aware of proper bear-management techniques and relocating bears "who pose only a nuisance to humans."
George Howard, the venerable former director of the state Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife who now sits on the Fish and Game Council, cast one of the four votes against the governor’s request to postpone the hunt.
"This might be good politics, but it’s poor wildlife management," he declared. "We’re going to end up with an escalating population of bears."
He’s right, of course. Police training and public education are worthy endeavors, to be sure, but we doubt seriously that these efforts will endow large numbers of New Jersey law enforcers or laymen with the ability to readily distinguish, upon an unexpected encounter with a large black bear, one that is truly threatening from one that merely poses a nuisance. Besides, the real problem with bears in New Jersey is not their disposition; it is their sheer number, which now exceeds the capacity of this suburban state to reasonably accommodate. No amount of training and education of humans is going to slow down the rate at which the population of black bears is growing. Only a controlled hunt can do that.
The same holds true for deer. In the wake of her capitulation to the vocal opponents of the bear hunt, one can only hope that the governor will not be similarly inclined to undermine Princeton Township’s efforts to thin the deer herd. There is a new law on the books, signed by Gov. Whitman, authorizing municipalities to develop their own deer-management plans. We trust that whatever techniques Princeton Township chooses to employ in accordance with the law to control the deer population, the governor will allow them to be implemented without delay – and without interference.