When bears and people mix, it's the bears who pay the price--usually with their lives. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has extended the hunting season on New Jersey bears, in part because Christie's staff actually saw a bear. Horror! The new law on black bear hunting allows hunters to take twice as many bears.
Though black bears are not considered endangered, they have been squeezed out of most of their original habitat. Forests used to cover most of North America. Now those forest spaces are small and fragmented, tempting bears into the suburbs where they meet with the outrage of the species that stole their land.
Killing bears is not just, nor is it a good solution to keeping them away from tract housing. In general, bears would prefer not to mix with people, but people feed bears or leave their garbage accessible, and that makes starving bears more courageous about approaching houses in the suburbs. Please join me in demanding that Christie do more to educate the public not to feed bears or leave garbage unsecured. We also need to ask Christie to implement aversion programs in New Jersey to correct the behavior of bears that are found wandering in human neighborhoods.
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