By RICHARD COWEN
STAFF WRITER,The Record
www.northjersey.com

No bear management policy, no bear hunt.

That’s been the rule in New Jersey ever since 2004, when the state Supreme Court cancelled a proposed hunt because the state didn’t have a valid black bear management plan on the books.

That decision was brought to bear on Thursday, when an appeals court upheld Environmental Commissioner Lisa P. Jackson’s 2006 decision to withdraw approval of the Comprehensive Black Bear Management Policy.

Jackson had done so to block a hunt proposed by the state Fish and Game Council.

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(newton) nj herald

By BRUCE A. SCRUTON
bscruton@njherald.com
The Fish and Game Council, faced with top politicians' objections to a bear hunt, has put forward a proposal to eliminate a bear hunt this year, but mandates a hunt in 2008 and 2009 if the number of serious bear-human encounters don't come down by nearly a third in each of the next two years.
"Council is not willing to subject the citizens of New Jersey to this level of risk to public safety and property damage for more than a year," says the proposed policy, which was sent to state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson at noon on Thursday.
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BY FRED J. AUN
For the Star-Ledger
Scary incidents involving black bears keep happening across North Jersey even as the Corzine Administration continues to say hunting is not a valid way to stop them.
On July 13, a bear tried to enter a Knowlton woman's kitchen, where some freshly baked muffins were cooling, according to an official state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) report.
Four days later, said the DEP, a bear ripped off the window screens of a Vernon home and entered the kitchen.
And on the same day, a bear entered two tents in Worthington State Forest.
Despite these close calls, the DEP's commissioner, who canceled the 2006 bear hunt, remains steadfast in her position that non-lethal methods of bear control must prove to be failures before a tried-and-true means of wildlife population control -- hunting -- will be allowed.
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Hearing to focus on using hunt to reduce numbers
BY ROB JENNINGS DAILY RECORD
A public hearing on the volatile bear hunt issue will be held next week in Trenton, the state Department of Environmental Protection said on Monday.
The acting chairwoman of the state Fish and Game Council, Jeannette A. Vreeland, said on Monday that a bear hunt is needed.
"There's just too many bears, and too many break-ins. For the safety of the people, it's needed," Vreeland said.
The DEP, which blocked a hunt endorsed last year by the Fish and Game Council, again is on the opposite side.
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(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.  
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WEST MILFORD -- More than two years after state officials said they would tackle the problem of bears raiding suburban garbage cans, more than 3,000 bruin-proof containers are being delivered to selected neighborhoods.
The cans, made of heavy-gauge plastic, are being placed in front of selected homes -- two per household -- by Department of Public Works employees.

Friday, July 20, 2007 bergen record

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Vernon Township is in the middle of New Jersey with the highest concentration of black bears. That's led to a number on ongoing complaints about the furry marauders who have pretty much made it a frightening proposition for some residents to wander in their yards or walk their pets without facing encounters with bears some residents say "just won't go away."

Unfortunately, it's also home to several activists who have opposed the state's efforts to control the bear population with two one-week hunts in 2003 and 2005. One, Albert Kazemian, 50, apparently doesn't care that his neighbors don't want the bears around.

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As the reports of bear/human encounters continue to rise across the country, it is becoming apparent - at least to everyone except politicians who see animal rights groups as an open wallet - that something is terribly wrong with non-injurious wildlife management. With only one death attributed to bear encounters, opponents of hunting as a management technique are saying the whole matter is blown out of proportion by hunting groups.

That is an effective debate technique, but it hardly holds water for the residents of areas who have seen their pets and livestock killed or injured, neighborhoods vandalized and have to worry about running into a three hundred pound - plus forager when they round the corner of their garage. While there may be any one of a number of reasons, the facts of the matter remain: people and bears are running into each other in increasingly higher numbers. Statistically, the odds of being killed or injured by a bear are still pretty small, but that's small consolation to the parents of eleven year-old Sam Ives of Utah who was pulled from his tent and killed by what authorities now say was a "normal" black bear that suddenly turned aggressive.

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Editor:
Never in my life did I believe that my hard-earned tax dollars would be used to fund a program that would invade my own home. I am referring to the DEP news release of March 12 announcing a “Five-County Enforcement Sweep on Illegal Feeding of Black Bears.”
 
This release doesn’t even hide the fact that my state government is going to come to my home, my property, and snoop around.
 
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Is that the trash police?

The state's foolishness over dealing with bears is beginning to rival what you would see in a cartoon. We've already commented on the silliness of the state proposing to spend $850,000 to educate residents in northwest New Jersey about bears. Now we learn that an apparent component of that idea is the dispatching of state Department of Environmental Protection workers to inspect trash cans. The trash-sweep is scheduled to cover Morris and four other counties: Sussex, Warren, Bergen and Passaic. Picture this: A uniformed state worker shows up at your house and asks, "May I please see your garbage can?"
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(easton, pa.)

DEP in denial
Belatedly, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is tackling the "human" aspect of the bear problem in the northwest part of the state, including Warren County. In coming months the DEP will go hunting for the enablers of bear confrontations -- people who feed the birds, don't secure their trash in bear-proof containers, or leave pet or livestock food where bears can sniff it out. State workers will hand out educational materials, warnings and, if necessary, fines.
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By MICHAEL RISPOLI
GANNETT STATE BUREAU

TRENTON - If Yogi or Boo-Boo have been stealing pic-a-nac baskets in northwest New Jersey, the state Department of Environmental Protection wants to know.
Later this month, in a move that would make Jellystone Park's Ranger Smith proud, the DEP plans a sweep across five counties - Bergen, Morris, Passaic, Sussex, and Warren - to find out if residents and businesses have been intentionally or unintentionally feeding black bears.

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