Gov. Murphy Reinstates Bear Hunting in New Jersey, a Year After Ending It
The governor cited an increase in reported bear sightings and aggressive encounters. Opponents have said they intend to try to block the Dec. 5 hunt in court.
In a 2014 photo, protesters gather near a bear hunt check-in station at the Whittingham Wildlife Management Area in Fredon, N.J. Credit...Mel Evans/Associated Press
TRENTON, N.J. — Starting next month, New Jersey will again allow hunters to use guns and bows to shoot bears on private and state-owned land in a major policy reversal for Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat who campaigned for a first term on a pledge to end the hunts.
Months after taking office in 2018, Mr. Murphy used his executive powers to suspend bear hunting on state property. Then, in 2021, the Murphy administration allowed the state’s bear management plan to expire, making bear hunting illegal anywhere in New Jersey; the state’s last bear hunt was in the fall of 2020.
But after a unanimous vote on Tuesday by the state’s Fish and Game Council, and a series of planned emergency actions by the governor and his Department of Environmental Protection, New Jersey is expected to authorize a six-day bear hunt, starting Dec. 5. If 20 percent of the estimated bear population is not killed during that window, the hunt could be extended for another four days, according to the environmental agency. Permits are likely to go on sale on Thursday.
Several individuals and organizations, including the Animal Protection League of New Jersey, have said that they plan to pursue legal action to try to block the hunt.
“It’s a recreational trophy hunt,” said Doris Lin, the animal league’s legal director.
Mr. Murphy said last week that he intended to lift his 2018 executive order that barred bear hunting on state land, citing an increase in the number of reported bear sightings and aggressive encounters.
“While I committed to ending the bear hunt,” he said in a statement, “the data demands that we act now to prevent tragic bear-human interactions.”
Nonlethal bear management strategies alone, he said, “are not enough to mitigate this trend.”
The black bear population in Morris, Passaic, Sussex and Warren Counties, where the animals are most prevalent, has reached roughly 3,000, according to environmental officials. Left unchecked, the population would be expected to grow to about 4,000 within two years.
“There’s a sincere concern for public safety,” said Dave Golden, an assistant commissioner with the state’s environmental protection agency.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the game council issued a declaration of “imminent peril,” enabling the governor to take emergency action. The council also modified the state’s bear management plan to prohibit hunters from shooting cubs that weigh less than 75 pounds, or adult bears traveling with small cubs. Hunters are also barred from shooting bears within 300 feet of a baited area.
The state has cited statistics showing that reported sightings of bears, as well as aggressive interactions between bears and humans and bears and dogs, had increased. There were 433 reported bear sightings during the first 10 months of this year, up from 190 during the same period last year, according to the Department of Environmental Protection’s most recent bear activity report. There were also more than three times as many reports of serious “damage and nuisance” by bears, the data show.
But longtime opponents of bear hunting, including Jeff Tittel, a former director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said that the data did not differ significantly enough from past years to warrant emergency action.
“It is a tyrannical response to a fabricated problem,” Annette Batson, the founder of Humane Montclair, an animal advocacy organization, who was one of about three dozen speakers to address the council before its vote. Most speakers urged the nine-member panel not to authorize the bear hunt.
In 2012, when New Jersey, under a Republican governor, permitted bear hunting similar to what Mr. Murphy intends to restart next month, there were 734 reports of bear sightings. There were 1,460 reports of damage and nuisance that year and 1,932 the year before, according to state bear activity reports.
In 2018, when Mr. Murphy first barred bear hunting on state property, homeowners reported that bears had entered 20 properties; in the first 10 months of this year, there were 12 similar reports.
“This is not an emergency,” Mr. Tittel said. He said he believed that the governor’s sudden policy shift had more to do with Mr. Murphy’s national political ambitions than public safety.
“It’s one thing to be for gun control,” Mr. Tittel said of Mr. Murphy’s strong support for gun-safety legislation, “but another thing to be against hunting. That would hurt him in states like New Hampshire, Iowa, Michigan and Pennsylvania.”
Mr. Murphy, the chairman of the National Governors Association, has said that he supported President Biden, an ally who has indicated that he intends to run for re-election.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Murphy, Alexandra Altman, said that politics were “obviously not the reasoning.”
“Someone’s going to get hurt if we don’t act,” she said.
Ed Wengryn, a research associate for the New Jersey Farm Bureau, which supports the bear hunt as a way to protect crops, said the bureau was aware of no discussion about reinstating the hunt before the governor announced it the day after last week’s midterm election.
“We were surprised,” Mr. Wengryn said, “pleasantly so.”
Phillip Brodnecker, who grows corn and sunflowers on a Sussex County farm, supports bear hunting, and said he believed the state’s limit on killing animals within 300 feet of a bait site should be relaxed.
“It’s crazy how much damage we get,” he said. Farmers have long been able to apply for what are known as depredation permits to hunt animals that are harming crops or livestock, but Mr. Brodnecker said that permitting a wide-scale hunt was easier.
Most speakers, however, said they were not convinced that the state had made a fulsome effort to use nonlethal means to reduce the bear population — by requiring that trash be well secured, for instance, or better educating residents about inadvertently attracting bears with bird feeders. A bill pending in the State Legislature would expand the state’s ability to issue $1,000 fines for unsecured garbage.
“We all know that access to garbage is a major problem,” said John Gfrorer, a resident of Deptford in southern New Jersey. “So what specifically has been done to solve the issue? Evidently really nothing.”
Wade Stein, the president of the New Jersey Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, thanked Mr. Murphy for his decision.
“Thank you for allowing us to assist you with keeping New Jersey safe,” he told the council before its vote.
