Bear Feeding Backfires
27/07/07 15:36 Filed in: NJ Bear
Issue
(published
in AIM. a weekly in sussex county, friday, July
27, 2007, written by a former star-ledger
reporter) lake wanda's in vernon, nj
By Jessi Paladini
Two weeks ago I got several calls from Lake Wanda residents wanting to speak with me about the bear situation that was getting out of control in their community.
They gave reports of neighbors fighting neighbors, stalking and videotaping, and a plethora of charges filed in municipal court against each other. Thinking it might be a good topic to write about, I went to Lake Wanda on a Sunday afternoon to speak with the Fish and Wildlife officials who were there to check on a bear trap they had set for a nuisance bear.
The residents said the bears made them prisoners in their own homes, and they alleged the bear activists in the neighborhood victimized them with false charges if they tried to address the problem. When I was there I confirmed with my own eyes what I had known for some time—Lake Wanda has a unique variety of black bear not found in many other parts in the county or state. Amusingly, I also became a victim for one of the bear activists.
By Jessi Paladini
Two weeks ago I got several calls from Lake Wanda residents wanting to speak with me about the bear situation that was getting out of control in their community.
They gave reports of neighbors fighting neighbors, stalking and videotaping, and a plethora of charges filed in municipal court against each other. Thinking it might be a good topic to write about, I went to Lake Wanda on a Sunday afternoon to speak with the Fish and Wildlife officials who were there to check on a bear trap they had set for a nuisance bear.
The residents said the bears made them prisoners in their own homes, and they alleged the bear activists in the neighborhood victimized them with false charges if they tried to address the problem. When I was there I confirmed with my own eyes what I had known for some time—Lake Wanda has a unique variety of black bear not found in many other parts in the county or state. Amusingly, I also became a victim for one of the bear activists.
I
don’t necessarily support a bear hunt, but I do
recognize that the bear population is getting out of
control and would support a non-lethal method of
curbing the population. My property borders Wawayanda
State Park, and for a number of years now we have
frequently had bears walking through our yard.
While they sometimes stop and sit for a minute or two, they immediately run off when seeing humans. We always love seeing the bears, and they have never been a problem for us, but then again we don’t feed them or do anything to attract them into our yard so there’s no reason for them to come around and stay.
In Lake Wanda, however, the bears are unusually friendly with humans. In Lake Wanda bears are seen walking right up to people’s front doors and knocking for food, sitting a spell for a bear-to-human chat, taking snoozes in backyard hammocks, or bringing their cubs for an evening visit. So what is so unique about Lake Wanda bears?
They’re not your common garden-variety bears; they’re hybrid interactive bears that are trained, like domesticated pets, to socialize with humans and eat out of their hands.
Now the B.E.A.R. group would, of course, frown on such interaction with bruins because they warn people against feeding bears. On their Web site they say, “Personal contact with bears should be avoided. Never try to touch or go near a bear. Above all, for their own good, please do not feed bears… For everyone’s sake, bears MUST be discouraged from visiting residential neighborhoods.”
Tell that to the bears in Lake Wanda, where Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner is not a movie classic but is in reality a sequel to daily life.
If the bears in Lake Wanda are not enough to alarm the average resident, the bear activists are. In Lake Wanda there is a small enclave of them who go to unusual measures to protect bears.
One of these activists, Ali Kazemian, was arrested and charged last week after Fish and Wildlife officers observed him trespassing on his neighbor’s property in the night and pouring a jug of human urine around a non-lethal bear trap to keep a nuisance bear from being captured. It was the second time that week he had been observed doing the same thing.
Just how serious is this situation that has pitted neighbor against neighbor? I was shocked to learn! Life has unfortunately become a nightmare for some Lake Wanda residents, and it’s a shame to see how this situation impacts their quality of life.
Carol Gramuglia, a Lake Wanda resident since 1994, says, “For those of us who have to live here, life has become outrageous. I personally have been dealing with harassment for years and take this situation very seriously.
When extremists make threats to call DYFS and make false charges against you with your children, threaten your dog, and follow you at night, it has elevated to a level that is no longer safe. Local and state law enforcement must take action now before residents are forced into action. Hopefully, it will not reach that point.”
The last three months since the bears have come out of hibernation have been “like a nightmare living here,” added Gramuglia.
“The bear activists are relentless. You can try to walk away from them but they continue after you. I am very apprehensive about letting my children go anywhere without knowing where they are because of this dangerous situation.
"My biggest question is when are the residents up here going to be able to expect relief? My children and I are always afraid someone is in the woods behind us, across from us, or watching us. I have to keep my children very close at hand to know they are safe. It’s like a powder keg here and it’s going to explode.”
Jennifer Spadaccini grew up in Ringwood and says she knows what it’s like to live with wildlife. She lived in Highland Lakes for three years before she bought her home across the street from Kazemian.
The bear trap set in her yard is the one in which Fish and Wildlife officers allege they observed Kazemian dumping urine. Spadaccini and her husband
built their Woodside Drive home and moved in just six months ago.
Up until the bear trap was put in her yard, Spadaccini said, “I happened to be one of the fortunate ones where I had never had any confrontation with any of the bear extremists. They would tell me to call them instead of calling the police.”
She said, “On any given day my husband and child and I can have run-ins with the bears right on our property and we become prisoners in our home because they don’t want to leave. Many times I’ve been out walking a dog and I’ve had run-ins with the bears. It has just stopped everyday life.”
The problem exists, she believes, because the activists feed the bears. “It’s a shame that having a non-lethal bear trap in my yard has caused such confrontation. Having that trap here enrages them so much?
"If it’s their opinion that a trapped bear is a dead bear then they’re guilty of creating the situation by feeding the bears and humanizing them,” she said.
Melissa Mead, a five-year Lake Wanda resident, said she feels threatened by the bear activists, particularly after someone on a public Internet forum made a comment anonymously about her children being kidnapped.
When I checked the Internet site Mead spoke of, a person using an anonymous screen name had, in fact, said Mead should be more concerned about her children being kidnapped than of the bears.
“This has impacted my children with playtime, whether they can go out or not. If I have something to do in the house, I can’t let them go outside alone, not only because of the bears but also because of the extremists. I never know what they’ll do to my children or to my dogs. I felt a definite threat with the kidnapping comment.”
A nuisance bear had been shot several weeks earlier in Mead’s yard. She said, “The shooting of the bear was traumatic for us too, especially with the babies (bears) up in the tree.” Mead believes there needs to be another hunt to control the bear population.
As I continued on my journey in Lake Wanda that day, I also tried to speak with Kazemian to get his perspective of the situation, but he refused to comment. That was two days before he was arrested.
After interviewing the residents and speaking with a police officer and employee from Fish and Wildlife, I continued on my trek and drove around to the other side of Woodside Avenue to take photographs of the densely wooded area on Nutley Avenue to give readers a perspective of the neighborhood.
When I got there, I drove to the dead end street and got out to take photographs. A black Nissan pickup truck was blocking the driveway at the very end of the street. I stood on the public roadway in the dead end street, about 50 feet from the pickup truck, and took photographs of the surrounding woods. I didn’t realize there was someone sitting inside the pickup truck.
Immediately upon seeing me, bear activist Susan Kehoe, got out of the pickup truck and began making a phone call to Vernon police. Kehoe had just been at Kazemian’s house, which is across the road from Spadaccini’s house where I had been speaking with the Fish and Wildlife officials.
To my utter shock and amazement, I heard Kehoe tell the police dispatcher to get an officer up to Nutley Avenue immediately because there is a woman trespassing in her driveway.
Not only was I nowhere near her driveway, but also the photographs I took clearly show I was on the public road and her driveway was about 50 feet ahead, at the front of her pickup truck which was blocking her driveway.
Her action was so confrontational and impulsive that I had an immediate sense of the volatility and alarm that the residents I had just spoken with say they experience on a regular basis. Upon listening to the police audiotape of the call a few days later, I learned that Kehoe told the dispatcher twice that I was in her driveway.
After Kehoe asks in a “distressed” voice to rush the dispatch of the police, the dispatcher presses her and asks, “She’s in the driveway or is she out in the street.” Kehoe then admits, “She was out in the street.”
Filing a false report to law enforcement authorities is a crime of the fourth degree, according to the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice, Title 2C.
As I left her street and drove to the intersection at the other end, I came upon Carol Gramuglia again and stopped and chatted for about 20 minutes. During that time, two police cars came and went from Kehoe’s road. Had the officers wanted to question me about the incident I was right there, but neither stopped.
As I began to leave the street, Kehoe and another neighbor, bear activist and NJARA (New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance) director Angi Metler, were at the corner a short distance away from where I had stopped to speak with Gramuglia.
The NJARA Web site says the group is “a community based, non-profit, educational organization working toward a peaceful, nonviolent co-existence with our earthly companions both human and nonhuman.” Metler made definite eye contact with me but said and did nothing.
Three days later, I discovered that Metler had issued a NJARA call to action “alert,” asking its members to write letters to the editor in support of Kazemian and asking for financial support for “a defense fund for activists arrested in the line of duty.”
Metler said in the alert, “Since May of this year, a volatile situation affecting black bears has been brewing in the Lake Wanda section of Highland Lakes. The press has labeled this area as “ground zero” for bear activity and four families living in Lake Wanda have joined forces with the Division of Fish and Wildlife to garner support for a bear hunt. Traps have been placed at various locations and three bears have lost their lives.”
Metler asserts in the alert that families in Lake Wanda are “targeting bear activists with harassment, intimidation, and threats.”
The alert disparages Spadaccini and gives talking points for prospective letter writers. Metler advises them to “Mention that Fish and Wildlife, who is in the business of providing trophy hunts to their constituents, should not be in charge of collecting and processing complaints. If you can think of anything else to write about how you feel about bears, please step up to the plate and get those letters generated!”
Having witnessed firsthand the insanity in Lake Wanda, I left the community shaking my head, wondering how this situation ever escalated to what it is today, and for me the answer is simple: residents in Lake Wanda are feeding the bears and humanizing them.
It is my firm belief that the bear activists themselves have created a monster by making pets out of the bears. Over the years various people have given me a great deal of photographs and other documentation for me to logically come to that conclusion.
The Lake Wanda activists themselves have opened a proverbial Pandora’s Box, and as a result, they have lost all credibility.
Now they’re desperately trying to blame everyone and anyone who gets in their way—including a columnist who was just trying to understand what’s going on in that community!
Maybe they never intended for it to get out of hand as it is. Maybe it was out of sheer innocence—or ignorance—that they fed and humanized the bears, but they have created an intolerable situation for the residents who live at the top of Lake Wanda, and they give a black eye to their entire organization.
What I saw in Lake Wanda was not a sincere effort in “working toward a peaceful, nonviolent co-existence” with humans or bears.
I tried to contact members of B.E.A.R. in several ways to see what they had to say about the Lake Wanda situation, but they did not return my calls. Educating people on living with the bears was a great thing, but it seems to me that the mission of some of the animal activist groups has changed.
Lake Wanda bears are clearly different from bears in other communities. The Fish and Wildlife officer told me they have five times the number of complaint calls in Lake Wanda than in any other community. The bears in Lake Wanda go looking for food because it has been made readily available to them for so long that it’s an entitlement for them. I am convinced that that’s why such a problem exists in Lake Wanda.
The adage is that a fed bear is a dead bear. A Fish and Wildlife officer told me that the activists themselves have created the situation that has led to the euthanizing of the bears, and that’s really a shame.
Their behavior is now extreme and they have hurt their own cause,—and I witnessed the extremeness of their behavior and became a victim of it myself.
Neighbors are filing criminal charges against neighbors in Lake Wanda, and the situation has plummeted to an all-time low.
Gee, and we all thought we could solve all of our bear problems just by getting those yellow garbage cans with the screw-on lids.
While they sometimes stop and sit for a minute or two, they immediately run off when seeing humans. We always love seeing the bears, and they have never been a problem for us, but then again we don’t feed them or do anything to attract them into our yard so there’s no reason for them to come around and stay.
In Lake Wanda, however, the bears are unusually friendly with humans. In Lake Wanda bears are seen walking right up to people’s front doors and knocking for food, sitting a spell for a bear-to-human chat, taking snoozes in backyard hammocks, or bringing their cubs for an evening visit. So what is so unique about Lake Wanda bears?
They’re not your common garden-variety bears; they’re hybrid interactive bears that are trained, like domesticated pets, to socialize with humans and eat out of their hands.
Now the B.E.A.R. group would, of course, frown on such interaction with bruins because they warn people against feeding bears. On their Web site they say, “Personal contact with bears should be avoided. Never try to touch or go near a bear. Above all, for their own good, please do not feed bears… For everyone’s sake, bears MUST be discouraged from visiting residential neighborhoods.”
Tell that to the bears in Lake Wanda, where Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner is not a movie classic but is in reality a sequel to daily life.
If the bears in Lake Wanda are not enough to alarm the average resident, the bear activists are. In Lake Wanda there is a small enclave of them who go to unusual measures to protect bears.
One of these activists, Ali Kazemian, was arrested and charged last week after Fish and Wildlife officers observed him trespassing on his neighbor’s property in the night and pouring a jug of human urine around a non-lethal bear trap to keep a nuisance bear from being captured. It was the second time that week he had been observed doing the same thing.
Just how serious is this situation that has pitted neighbor against neighbor? I was shocked to learn! Life has unfortunately become a nightmare for some Lake Wanda residents, and it’s a shame to see how this situation impacts their quality of life.
Carol Gramuglia, a Lake Wanda resident since 1994, says, “For those of us who have to live here, life has become outrageous. I personally have been dealing with harassment for years and take this situation very seriously.
When extremists make threats to call DYFS and make false charges against you with your children, threaten your dog, and follow you at night, it has elevated to a level that is no longer safe. Local and state law enforcement must take action now before residents are forced into action. Hopefully, it will not reach that point.”
The last three months since the bears have come out of hibernation have been “like a nightmare living here,” added Gramuglia.
“The bear activists are relentless. You can try to walk away from them but they continue after you. I am very apprehensive about letting my children go anywhere without knowing where they are because of this dangerous situation.
"My biggest question is when are the residents up here going to be able to expect relief? My children and I are always afraid someone is in the woods behind us, across from us, or watching us. I have to keep my children very close at hand to know they are safe. It’s like a powder keg here and it’s going to explode.”
Jennifer Spadaccini grew up in Ringwood and says she knows what it’s like to live with wildlife. She lived in Highland Lakes for three years before she bought her home across the street from Kazemian.
The bear trap set in her yard is the one in which Fish and Wildlife officers allege they observed Kazemian dumping urine. Spadaccini and her husband
built their Woodside Drive home and moved in just six months ago.
Up until the bear trap was put in her yard, Spadaccini said, “I happened to be one of the fortunate ones where I had never had any confrontation with any of the bear extremists. They would tell me to call them instead of calling the police.”
She said, “On any given day my husband and child and I can have run-ins with the bears right on our property and we become prisoners in our home because they don’t want to leave. Many times I’ve been out walking a dog and I’ve had run-ins with the bears. It has just stopped everyday life.”
The problem exists, she believes, because the activists feed the bears. “It’s a shame that having a non-lethal bear trap in my yard has caused such confrontation. Having that trap here enrages them so much?
"If it’s their opinion that a trapped bear is a dead bear then they’re guilty of creating the situation by feeding the bears and humanizing them,” she said.
Melissa Mead, a five-year Lake Wanda resident, said she feels threatened by the bear activists, particularly after someone on a public Internet forum made a comment anonymously about her children being kidnapped.
When I checked the Internet site Mead spoke of, a person using an anonymous screen name had, in fact, said Mead should be more concerned about her children being kidnapped than of the bears.
“This has impacted my children with playtime, whether they can go out or not. If I have something to do in the house, I can’t let them go outside alone, not only because of the bears but also because of the extremists. I never know what they’ll do to my children or to my dogs. I felt a definite threat with the kidnapping comment.”
A nuisance bear had been shot several weeks earlier in Mead’s yard. She said, “The shooting of the bear was traumatic for us too, especially with the babies (bears) up in the tree.” Mead believes there needs to be another hunt to control the bear population.
As I continued on my journey in Lake Wanda that day, I also tried to speak with Kazemian to get his perspective of the situation, but he refused to comment. That was two days before he was arrested.
After interviewing the residents and speaking with a police officer and employee from Fish and Wildlife, I continued on my trek and drove around to the other side of Woodside Avenue to take photographs of the densely wooded area on Nutley Avenue to give readers a perspective of the neighborhood.
When I got there, I drove to the dead end street and got out to take photographs. A black Nissan pickup truck was blocking the driveway at the very end of the street. I stood on the public roadway in the dead end street, about 50 feet from the pickup truck, and took photographs of the surrounding woods. I didn’t realize there was someone sitting inside the pickup truck.
Immediately upon seeing me, bear activist Susan Kehoe, got out of the pickup truck and began making a phone call to Vernon police. Kehoe had just been at Kazemian’s house, which is across the road from Spadaccini’s house where I had been speaking with the Fish and Wildlife officials.
To my utter shock and amazement, I heard Kehoe tell the police dispatcher to get an officer up to Nutley Avenue immediately because there is a woman trespassing in her driveway.
Not only was I nowhere near her driveway, but also the photographs I took clearly show I was on the public road and her driveway was about 50 feet ahead, at the front of her pickup truck which was blocking her driveway.
Her action was so confrontational and impulsive that I had an immediate sense of the volatility and alarm that the residents I had just spoken with say they experience on a regular basis. Upon listening to the police audiotape of the call a few days later, I learned that Kehoe told the dispatcher twice that I was in her driveway.
After Kehoe asks in a “distressed” voice to rush the dispatch of the police, the dispatcher presses her and asks, “She’s in the driveway or is she out in the street.” Kehoe then admits, “She was out in the street.”
Filing a false report to law enforcement authorities is a crime of the fourth degree, according to the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice, Title 2C.
As I left her street and drove to the intersection at the other end, I came upon Carol Gramuglia again and stopped and chatted for about 20 minutes. During that time, two police cars came and went from Kehoe’s road. Had the officers wanted to question me about the incident I was right there, but neither stopped.
As I began to leave the street, Kehoe and another neighbor, bear activist and NJARA (New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance) director Angi Metler, were at the corner a short distance away from where I had stopped to speak with Gramuglia.
The NJARA Web site says the group is “a community based, non-profit, educational organization working toward a peaceful, nonviolent co-existence with our earthly companions both human and nonhuman.” Metler made definite eye contact with me but said and did nothing.
Three days later, I discovered that Metler had issued a NJARA call to action “alert,” asking its members to write letters to the editor in support of Kazemian and asking for financial support for “a defense fund for activists arrested in the line of duty.”
Metler said in the alert, “Since May of this year, a volatile situation affecting black bears has been brewing in the Lake Wanda section of Highland Lakes. The press has labeled this area as “ground zero” for bear activity and four families living in Lake Wanda have joined forces with the Division of Fish and Wildlife to garner support for a bear hunt. Traps have been placed at various locations and three bears have lost their lives.”
Metler asserts in the alert that families in Lake Wanda are “targeting bear activists with harassment, intimidation, and threats.”
The alert disparages Spadaccini and gives talking points for prospective letter writers. Metler advises them to “Mention that Fish and Wildlife, who is in the business of providing trophy hunts to their constituents, should not be in charge of collecting and processing complaints. If you can think of anything else to write about how you feel about bears, please step up to the plate and get those letters generated!”
Having witnessed firsthand the insanity in Lake Wanda, I left the community shaking my head, wondering how this situation ever escalated to what it is today, and for me the answer is simple: residents in Lake Wanda are feeding the bears and humanizing them.
It is my firm belief that the bear activists themselves have created a monster by making pets out of the bears. Over the years various people have given me a great deal of photographs and other documentation for me to logically come to that conclusion.
The Lake Wanda activists themselves have opened a proverbial Pandora’s Box, and as a result, they have lost all credibility.
Now they’re desperately trying to blame everyone and anyone who gets in their way—including a columnist who was just trying to understand what’s going on in that community!
Maybe they never intended for it to get out of hand as it is. Maybe it was out of sheer innocence—or ignorance—that they fed and humanized the bears, but they have created an intolerable situation for the residents who live at the top of Lake Wanda, and they give a black eye to their entire organization.
What I saw in Lake Wanda was not a sincere effort in “working toward a peaceful, nonviolent co-existence” with humans or bears.
I tried to contact members of B.E.A.R. in several ways to see what they had to say about the Lake Wanda situation, but they did not return my calls. Educating people on living with the bears was a great thing, but it seems to me that the mission of some of the animal activist groups has changed.
Lake Wanda bears are clearly different from bears in other communities. The Fish and Wildlife officer told me they have five times the number of complaint calls in Lake Wanda than in any other community. The bears in Lake Wanda go looking for food because it has been made readily available to them for so long that it’s an entitlement for them. I am convinced that that’s why such a problem exists in Lake Wanda.
The adage is that a fed bear is a dead bear. A Fish and Wildlife officer told me that the activists themselves have created the situation that has led to the euthanizing of the bears, and that’s really a shame.
Their behavior is now extreme and they have hurt their own cause,—and I witnessed the extremeness of their behavior and became a victim of it myself.
Neighbors are filing criminal charges against neighbors in Lake Wanda, and the situation has plummeted to an all-time low.
Gee, and we all thought we could solve all of our bear problems just by getting those yellow garbage cans with the screw-on lids.
