The public hearing on New Jersey’s plans to restore bear hunting closed on February 3. State officials including the New Jersey Fish and Game Council, maintain that lethal management of the bear population is essential to control the rapidly growing population and reduce the rise in bear-human encounters. The Sierra Club opposes the state’s comprehensive bear management policy and amendments and urges Gov. Phil Murphy to implement stronger non-lethal management efforts.
We recommend that NJ DEP’s non-lethal management plan include requirements for bear proof containers in bear country and provide financial support for municipalities to pay for them. Human-bear conflicts are greatly influenced by human behaviors associated with food and waste management and the abundance of food waste. Without this critical component of enforcing garbage management in bear country, New Jersey will continue to have nuisance cases even with a hunt.
“There are better proven solutions to limit human/bear interactions than hunting. Bears show up in human spaces because we’ve cut them off from access to their spaces. The bears of NJ need connected natural habitats so bears and other wildlife can migrate and thrive without approaching human spaces. We can solve this ‘emergency’ of more bear/human interactions while getting us closer to the global goal of conserving 30% of land by 2030,” said Anjuli Ramos-Busot, director of the NJ Chapter of the Sierra Club.
The number of bears in New Jersey has doubled from 1,500 to 3,000 since 2018 and is expected to reach 4,000 by 2024.