The dumbest statement you’ll hear all week on NJ’s bear hunt

New Jersey's bear hunt is set to begin again on October 14. It will be a scheduled six day hunt, then resume with another six days in December. While his own government experts explained non-lethal means, birth control among them, do not work, Gov. Phil Murphy over a year ago stubbornly issued an executive order anyway. That order banned the hunt on all state land, cutting out about half of hunters' territory.

Not surprisingly the number of bears taken in the hunt went from 409 in 2017 to just 225 last year. About half the land available to hunters, about half the number of bears killed.

Now listen to this completely ridiculous statement from Jeff Tittel, NJ Sierra Club Director. Tittel told NJ.com, "The numbers being down last year, I think it shows there may not be as many bears in parts of bear country."

So it's not that they took half the land away from hunters. It's that this evil hunting every year has destroyed the bear population and the evidence of that just happened to show itself at the exact same time half the land was taken away? What a ridiculous premise.

Even more ridiculous when you consider what Tittel said in a press release last year after the executive order was signed and before the hunt began.

"Despite the ban on hunting bears on state lands, the DEP is giving out the same amount of permits as last year. This means the same number of hunters will be out there looking to kill the same number of bears. We’re concerned that even with the ban, the bear population will continue to be decimated to unsafe population numbers."

So then he felt the same number of bears were likely to be killed. Now he feels the fact that the number of bears killed was cut in half had nothing to do with the available land being cut in half. Which is it, Tittel?

Protestors and people like Jeff Tittel want to believe no hunting should be allowed and that if we just did things like purchase bear proof garbage cans the problem would be gone.

Not true.

If you live in New Jersey's bear country you know how ineffective those cans are. The fact is left unchecked, the bear population will control to grow out of control in a state that already has the highest concentration of black bears in the nation. The environment cannot sustain that growing population, and getting rid of a bear hunt will lead to more bear human confrontations. According to Whyy.org, the DEP reports 20 cases of bears entering people's homes in 2018 alone.

We have a Disneyfication problem when it comes to animals in this society. If the bear population is left to grow and a bear enters your home, it won't be playing by Disney rules.

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