November 29, 2022
TRENTON, NJ (MERCER)–Animal rights groups said in a combined press release today that a coalition of state and national animal protection groups including Animal Protection League of New Jersey, the Humane Society of the United States and Friends of Animals, launched an emergency court challenge to the black bear trophy hunt that is scheduled to begin Dec. 5. The hunt was authorized by the New Jersey Fish and Game Council earlier this month. Hunt clubs nominate six of the Council’s eleven members.
The animal groups are challenging the Council’s misuse of an emergency rulemaking loophole to bypass required procedures that guarantee the public the right to weigh in and require the Council to respond to said public comments. Despite having ample time to comply with these procedures, the Council forced through a last-minute emergency rule, leaving the public no time to respond.
The lawsuit seeks emergency relief stopping the Dec. 5 hunt. The hunt targets hundreds of bears and sets no express limitation on the number that can be killed. The Council advanced the proposal without counting the number of bears in New Jersey and without performing a scientifically sound estimate of the population. The Council then went further by claiming without evidence that the state’s bear population will expand by a preposterous 33% in just two years without a hunt. That speculation has no basis in science; black bears are extremely slow to reproduce.
“The Council is not above the law and should not be allowed to impede public input by fabricating an ‘emergency,’” said Jennifer Best, Director of Friends of Animals Wildlife Law Program. “The only thing that will keep the public safe and black bears wild is education on simple and effective solutions, such as bear-resistant trash cans and removing bird feeders from March through November.”
The Council claimed that emergency action was necessary due to an increase in reported bear incidents. But the number of incidents reported this year is not unusually high compared to many other years during which hunts were conducted. In fact, over 90% of bear-related complaints were reports of routine bear behavior and incidents that pose no imminent danger to the public, such as sightings of injured bears and bears seeking food from unsecured garbage cans and bird feeders. To date, the state has failed to take steps to establish the trash control programs that have successfully mitigated conflicts in Western states.
Scientific studies show only a weak correlation between the population of bears and bear attacks. Bear-human interaction is more closely connected with specific human behaviors that drive encounters. Some states with large black bear populations have fewer conflicts than states with much smaller bear numbers, a study by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies found. California, for example, which has 35,000 bears, reported just 259 interactions.
Black bears are among the slowest reproducing land mammals in North America. Trophy hunts and high kill rates over bait can lead to irreparable population damage. Hunting bears causes additional mortalities from infanticide when father bears are killed and new males enter their territory. When the state sanctions a hunt, poaching incidents go up—there has already been a case earlier this month when four bear cubs were killed in an apparent poaching incident in Passaic County. Public safety is also threatened by a bear hunt in New Jersey, where hunting accidents have killed more people than bears have.
“In addition to the disingenuous emergency, the New Jersey black bear hunt is illegal because the Comprehensive Black Bear Management Policy is arbitrary and capricious and fails to meet the standards set out by the state Supreme Court,” stated Doris Lin, Legal Director of APLNJ, who successfully overturned the state’s bear management policy in 2007.
File photo of a black bear in a residential area in Vernon, New Jersey
Bear Hunt Will Occur December 5 to 10, 2022
November 29, 2022
TOMS RIVER, NJ (OCEAN)–Toms River Polie reported that on Monday, November 21, 2022, police were dispatched to Intermediate East regarding a potential swatting incident/threat received by the school. Out of an abundance of caution, the area was thoroughly checked and cleared, and the threat was deemed unfounded, prior to students entering the building.
Within 45 minutes of the investigation, Detective Graham Borg and Corporal Jesse Robertazzi of our Cyber Crimes Unit successfully identified the suspect, a 14-year-old male, from Edmonton, Canada. The detectives, with the assistance of Officer Scott Fallano, were subsequently able to connect this individual to another swatting call at a residence, received the prior morning by TRPD dispatchers.
Our law enforcement partners in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada arrested and charged the 9th grader in Canada for the two swatting incidents in Toms River.
*Swatting is when someone makes a prank call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address.
