New Jersey’s black bears are on the move. We are seeing them in all 21 counties now, from Aberdeen to Atlantic Highlands, Montclair to Middletown, and Westfield to Wyckoff. And who can blame the bears? New Jersey’s bear population has doubled from around 1,500 in 2018 to more than 3,000 today. They are literally running out of room.
New Jersey is, in fact, home to more bears per square mile than anywhere else in North America – more than Maine’s black bears, Montana’s brown bears, or Alaska’s grizzlies.
Unfortunately, our expectations for symbiotic living with this cramped species are tragically unrealistic. And our state government is turning a blind eye to the consequences. Comparing the first five months of 2022 to the same time last year, bear sightings and complaints to the NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife have skyrocketed. Category III complaints – which range from mere sightings to vehicle strikes – are up nearly 100 percent. Category II complaints – including property damage, garbage destruction, and other nuisance behaviors – have more than doubled. And Category I complaints – such as attacks on livestock, home entries, and other aggressive behaviors – have more than tripled. Last month alone, there were 116 incidences of nuisance bears. And those are just the numbers reported to the NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife. When a bear is pressing on your front door, are you calling Trenton or your local police department?
Last fall, when the New Jersey Fish and Game Council unanimously approved an emergency order allowing for a controlled bear hunt that October, it was met with silence from the Department of Environmental Protection, whose approval was required. It was an abdication of responsibility that belied the governor’s earlier commitment to solve the problem.
When Governor Murphy eliminated the bear hunt on state lands in 2018 and then eliminated it altogether in 2021, he promised to “develop a new black bear policy that keeps public safety at the forefront of our concerns while protecting wildlife in the State”. As of this writing, that policy does not exist beyond recommendations for bear-safe garbage cans. New Jersey’s black bear population is wholly unmanaged, to the point that the state is not even conducting annual bear counts anymore. Sussex County Commissioner Dawn Fantasia has been relentless in calling for a comprehensive bear management policy. Instead, the state closed certain state parks to camping.
So where does that leave us or, more specifically, New Jersey’s black bears? In the case of nuisance bears – the Category II complaints that include property damage – many are relocated to a state Wildlife Management Area (WMA). From 2009 through 2018, the state transported 185 nuisance bears to these WMAs, and that was before the bear population doubled. The most popular WMA among them was the Black River WMA in Chester Township. Nearly 15 percent of New Jersey’s relocated nuisance bears, 25 in total, came to our community’s 5-square mile WMA.
In that decade, Chester Township became New Jersey’s black bear dumping ground. This dubious distinction has long troubled residents in the more than 130 homes that border the Black River WMA, many of whom observe the bears leaving the WMA for their home turf. Biologists (and neighbors) confirm the obvious: bears don’t stay where they are put. Relocation simply does not work, nor is it appreciated by those on the receiving end. Other interventions, such as sterilizations, are needlessly complicated and, without a bear management policy in place, not happening.
The right approach – the humane approach – to control New Jersey’s rapidly growing black bear population is a controlled hunt as part of a comprehensive bear management policy. A controlled hunt will do what it has done in the past: bring New Jersey’s black bear population back to a sustainable level, reduce bear-human interactions, and yield a healthier bear population overall. This is the approach recommended by biologists at the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife as well as the New Jersey Fish and Game Council. And it is the same approach utilized to control other imbalanced animal populations, namely whitetail deer. Black bears are incredible animals populating at an unhealthy rate. No one understands that more than the New Jersey hunters motivated by responsible conservation.
For the many New Jerseyans encountering black bears for the first time, for those who have long tolerated bears relocated in their backyard, and for the unsustainable bear population itself, New Jersey should return to the proven, scientific approach: a controlled New Jersey bear hunt.
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Michael Inganamort is the Council President in Chester Township.
