If the notion of deer being administered contraceptives, bears giving up foraging for food, and coyotes sparing anything that looks like dinner seems idiotic to you, welcome to the People’s Republic of New Jersey where these notions are embraced by people who think anything other than hunting these creatures is going to change their ways.
In April, a 23-month-old toddler, playing with family members in the backyard of a Monmouth County home, “became the first confirmed victim of a coyote attack” when bitten on the head and neck, before the coyote tried to drag him away. The shouts of the children with whom he was playing brought the adults to the scene. “It was not afraid of us,” said the toddler’s grandfather. When you’re really hungry and you’re a coyote, fear takes second place to dinner.
Kristin LaVitola of Roselle, not exactly a wilderness town, told me how, twice that same month, she had sighted a coyote about “the size of a German Shepherd and looks to be well fed.” But you live in New Jersey I hear you saying. New Jersey!
Perhaps that is part of the problem. The estimated 200,000 deer don’t realize they’re in New Jersey, nor do the estimated 3,200 bears in the northwestern section of the State. No one really knows how many Canada geese are totally unaware that they are not in Canada.
Despite being constantly told that humans living in the most densely popular State in the nation have taken over the areas where the wildlife live, the wildlife have not gotten the message! These animals blithely show up in people’s backyards acting as if they own the place.
This is particularly true of bears who regard birdfeeders as snack stations and garbage containers as the equivalent of a local Wendy’s or Taco Bell. The last time there was a bear hunt in New Jersey was 2005 and 328 were culled. It took all manner of legislative lobbying and court cases to achieve that. The State even introduced “No Bear Zones” where they were definitely not supposed to be. The bears arrogantly ignored these restrictions. They began to wander about in places like Trenton, apparently attracted to the scent of lawmakers.
Undeterred, Lisa Jackson, the latest in a line of bear-loving Department of Environmental Protection commissioners, put the kibosh on any hunt this year. In early August the DEP held a hearing on the subject of not hunting bears. “Heated debate continued in Trenton last night about whether the state Department of Environmental Protection is wrong not to kill some of the burgeoning population of bears that, on occasion, kill livestock and break into homes,” noted one reporter. Just how difficult is it to figure out that not culling the bears will, each spring, lead to more bears?
Meanwhile, as usual, a state appeals court was reviewing lawsuits that claim Ms. Jackson had overstepped her authority when she cancelled the latest bear hunt. Instead, said, Jane Piszar of the Bear Education and Research Group, opponents of hunting, “managing people is the way to manage the bears.” By some bizarre leap of logic, it is always people who are to blame for bears who adamantly refuse to take up a monastic lifestyle, let alone rummaging through garbage cans and trying to break into people’s homes.
The result of this idiocy was an $800,000 DEP program for a door-to-door campaign to educate and encourage people to secure their trash. “However, reports on bears breaking into homes and killing livestock continue,” reported a daily newspaper. Once again, the impudent bears have failed to cooperate.
The news just keeps getting worse. On August 9 it was front-page news that “Deer contraceptive proves unreliable.” Hey, would I kid you? With no hint of irony, the reporter lead off the story saying, “The search for the ‘magic bullet’ contraceptive, a one-shot, long-lasting solution to the state’s deer overpopulation woes, has once again eluded scientists, according to the latest study by a wildlife research team.”
Want to know what would constitute a “one-shot, long-lasting solution”? Just ask any hunter. Here again, the notion of capturing, marking and inoculating free range deer, particularly in the months before breeding season, borders in delusion and idiocy. Even supposing you could do this to a couple of thousand deer, you would still have to locate them and do it again because they would require a booster shot.
In a 2006 resolution, the State League of Municipalities noted that “High densities of deer have created near-emergency situations, causing deer-vehicle collisions resulting in death and injuries, ecological damage to native species of woodland flora, gardens and agricultural crops, as well as elevated risk of Lyme disease, all of which costs our citizens and farmers more than $50 million annually and places their health and safety at risk.”
Though it is not likely, I keep hoping for the day when the legislature, the Department of Environmental Protection, and the assorted loonies who are determined to protect every single deer, bear, coyote and other wild critter in the State will conclude that letting the hunters do the job is the most sensible way of protecting the humans who pay taxes and, oh yes, hunting license fees.
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. His book, “Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy”, is published by Merril Press.
