By Robert Torricelli
It’s been almost 20 years since I left Bergen County to live in the rural farmlands of Hunterdon County. It’s been a wonderful experience but it’s not for everybody.
During my first months here, my neighbor had two dogs killed by poisonous copper head snakes. I learned to never walk along the exposed rocks of dry stream beds on hot sunny days without extreme caution.
A few years later my housekeeper lost a small dog to one of the large hawks that patrol my property in search of prey and I’ve learned the hard way to wear long sleeves and a hat when walking the fields because I’ve often stepped in hornet nests. More recently, I stopped letting my Huskie outside some nights when I hear the Coyote packs howling.
I thought of these incidents when reading Paul Mulshine’s critique of Gov. Phil Murphy’s bear hunt moratorium. Bears are a reality of rural life, too. They naturally prefer to avoid humans and wouldn’t bother people if we avoid their dens and never threaten their cubs. They’re by far the least of our local dangers. Bees, snakes and even wild dogs kill many more people than bears but we’re not eradicating any of them. They are all a part of rural life and if you don’t want to live responsibly with them, don’t share their habitat.
Before the moratorium, New Jersey sanctioned the killing of 400 bears a year. Mothers were killed with cubs. Hunters entered lodgers where families hibernated. Wounded or terrified cubs wandered onto highways to die. It wasn’t a hunt, it was a cruel and despicable slaughter.
Shockingly, New Jersey rivals Alaska with the least humane and most aggressive hunting laws in the United States. Killing contests, baiting, trapping and unrestricted killing without regard to the gender or age of some animals have been permitted. In a cruel irony, some of these practices like baiting are fostering the bears’ familiarity with human food and creating the very danger that hunters claim to be solving.
It’s hard to believe that this is happening in a progressive state like New Jersey and it begs the question as to why? It’s actually quite simple. The regulated write the regulations. Wildlife management is a legitimate concern of environmentalists, bird watchers, hikers, horseback riders and most other citizens but hunting regulations are written by and for hunters. None of this is based on any legitimate science.
It’s time to reform the New Jersey Fish and Wildlife Council. Governor Murphy and the Legislature need to protect wildlife and all of our interests by changing the council to reflect our common humane values and make New Jersey and leader in the humane treatment of wildlife instead of an embarrassment.
Robert Torricelli, a Democrat, represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate (1997-2003) and House of Representatives (1983-1997).
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