UPDATE: N.J. bear hunt opens after appeals court lifts emergency stay
As the New Jersey bear hunt remains indefinitely suspended due to a lawsuit filed by animal rights groups, a key question remains. Has the state’s bear population grown into a problem?
A Department of Environmental Protection spokesman said there is not a current estimate for New Jersey’s bear population. Without a bear hunt in the past two years, the state hasn’t been able to collect information used to make those estimates, officials said. Instead, the state is using a common projection calculation.
But measuring total bear numbers is less important in deciding to restart the hunt than the amount of damage those bears are causing, bear population management experts told NJ Advance Media.
It’s not unusual to use historical data to create population projection estimates, Duane Diefenbach, a professor of wildlife ecology at Penn State University who studies black bear population and harvest rates, said. New Jersey’s approach to re-starting the hunt is in line with how other states handle their hunts, he said.
“Nothing in wildlife is management is perfect. I mean, we never know exactly how many animals are out there,” Diefenbach said. “But I’m sure New Jersey’s wildlife agency has information from past hunts — that if we have so many hunters and such a season length, we can expect to harvest X percent of the population.”
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New Jersey uses a method called the “Lincoln-Petersen Index” when calculating its bear population, Larry Hanja, a spokesman for the DEP, said.
Bears are captured, tagged and released during research and relocation efforts, Hanja said. During the next hunt, the proportion of tagged bears killed is assumed to be the same proportion of tagged bears in the population as a whole.
With the second half of the formula relying on the hunt, it’s not possible to make the estimate if the hunt is cancelled. In the absence of that information, it’s not unusual to turn to other metrics like projections and incidents, Diefenbach said.
Instead of population sizes, a sharp increase in incidents has been the driving force behind the reinstatement of the hunt, Hanja said.
“It’s very difficult to get actual reliable population densities for wildlife species, particularly large mammals like deers and bears that are nocturnal,” said Paul Curtis, a wildlife specialist who heads the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University.
“Usually states get a rough estimate of abundance based on habitat and harvest,” Curtis said. “It’s very common for them to set hunting regulations and population objectives without actually knowing how many animals are in the landscape.”
While the population is estimated to have increased by less than 10%, bear incidents are on track to triple by the end of 2022 when compared to last year, DEP data shows. There were several high-profile incidents in the first few months of this year, including an elderly woman attacked while checking her mail.
“It’s not just the number of bears, but where the bears are, and where the people are and how they interact,” Diefenbach said. “So, I’m not surprised to see faster increases in human bear conflicts than in the population size of black bears.”
Curtis, who teaches in Ithaca, New York, said bear hunt regulations vary by state. He estimates the population of bears is between 4,000 to 5,000 in the Adirondacks and between 3,000 and 4,000 throughout the rest of New York, which has allowed hunting over the years.
“In the grand scheme, the impacts the wildlife cause are most important, not the actual numbers,” Curtis said. “You can have relatively low population of the animals, for example, but if they’re in the wrong place and causing intolerable conflicts, it can be too many.”
Bear incidents in New Jersey, as reported by the DEP, cover a host of behaviors, ranging from spotting a bear walking across the road to the fatal mauling of a dog. The most serious category of incidents has increased at the same pace as incidents overall, an analysis of state data shows, but still remain a small portion of the overall incident total.
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While human deaths are included in the most serious category, they are exceedingly rare, with just one death recorded in New Jersey state history. In 2014, a Rutgers student was attacked and killed while hiking in West Milford in Passaic County.
Non-fatal attacks are also rare and account for half a percent of the most serious bear incidents between 2013 and Nov. 21, 2022. Four were reported in that span.
Bear attacks on dogs are slightly more common, but still unusual. During that same period, there were 15 unprovoked dog attacks. More than a third of those attacks took place in 2022.
Although bears have been spotted in every New Jersey county, population estimates only take into account bears in the northeast portion of the state, where the population is centered, Hanja said.
The bear hunt has been fiercely controversial in New Jersey, prompting protests over the years and most recently pitting hunters against animal activists during a Fish and Game Council meeting in Trenton.
If a hunt moves forward in New Jersey, a second segment will be added if less than 20% of the available bears are killed, an executive order authorizing the 2022 bear hunt states.
The most recent bear hunt in 2020 was extended by four days after the 20% threshold was not met. In total, 410 bears were killed — 13.4% of tagged bears.
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Katie Kausch may be reached at kkausch@njadvancemedia.com.
Steven Rodas may be reached at srodas@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @stevenrodasnj.
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