The New Jersey Fish and Wildlife Council will vote Tuesday on a proposal to revive the state’s bear hunting season.
The bear hunting season could be returning to New Jersey after farmers and residents have complained about the surging black bear population and the Department of Environmental Protection reporting that encounters with bears have increased by 237% over 2021 numbers, according to reporting from News 12 New Jersey.
Those factors have prompted Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to reconsider his stance on the season, which he canceled in part starting in 2018 and entirely last year, following through on a promise he made to animal rights activists during his 2017 election campaign.
“Since the outset of my administration, I have promised to ground every difficult decision on the latest science and evidence in order to protect our communities,” Murphy said in a statement last week while signaling support for reviving the hunt.
“From the data we have analyzed to the stories we have heard from families across the state, it is clear that New Jersey’s black bear population is growing significantly, and nonlethal bear management strategies alone are not enough to mitigate this trend.”
Murphy’s change of heart would be a welcome one for many state residents who have complained of increased encounters with bears that have terrified residents and damaged crops and livestock.
“They really knock a lot of corn down, eat a lot of corn and they’ll take anywhere from 5% to 25% of a field. We’ve seen some fields that have been 70% decimated this year,” Phillip Broadhecker, a farmer from Hampton Township, told News 12. “You can actually go on to Google maps and look at Earth views in the fall of fields and see circles and round spots in fields, and it’s astounding how bad it is.”
Broadhecker said the damage doesn’t stop at crops, noting that livestock and even people’s pets have been the targets of the growing population of bears.
“We’ve got a lot of livestock that have been killed or injured up here. Goats, chickens, pigs, small horses, even people’s dogs,” he said.
