Protest DFW crimes at DFW headquarters

Starting with last December’s bear hunt, AnimalBeat has included numerous posts about NJ’s black bears, including the innocent bears killed in the name of public safety or “we didn’t have tranquillizer darts.” The agency behind all those killings, as well as the hunt, is the Division of Fish and Wildlife, in the Department of Environmental Protection.

Next Monday is the date for the first protest at the DFW office in Trenton. After this year’s killings – and before the hunt that’s no doubt planned for this year – it is an appropriate time to let DFW know what we think of its “crimes against nature and crimes against good government,” as the Bear Education and Resource Group in APLNJ describes them.

The bill of indictment against DFW includes the following, taken from the APLNJ flyer about next Monday’s event.

• Since April of this year, DFW authorized the killing of more than 20 bears, cubs, and yearlings to underscore a claimed need for a hunt
• DFW continues to promote a trophy hunt despite mounting evidence that hunts achieve nothing and cause increased "nuisance" behavior in orphaned cubs and yearlings left without their mother's guidance
• DFW inflates population estimates to justify their goal to expand the bear hunt
• DFW relocates bears to repopulate the species into other hunting zones
• DFW refuses to enforce the black bear feeding ban law
• DFW killed an innocent bear cub in Stokes State Forest after the bear was exonerated on all charges

The demonstration next Monday will take place at NJ Fish and Wildlife HQ, 501 East State St., Trenton, between 1-2:30 pm. The program includes a number of speakers, from leaders of the “Bear Group,” APLNJ and the League of Humane Voters, to HSUS and NJ Sierra Club reps, to an investigator and a wildlife specialist.

Yes, Monday is a “work day,” but if hunters take off from work for trophy hunts, bear supporters can take off to speak up against bear hunts and bear killing. That would be a good day’s work!

(http://www.aplnj.org/events.php)

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N0 chance for 102-pound “aggressor”

The black bear cub who wandered into a north Jersey campsite on Wednesday -- and did not hurt two young boys, as first claimed -- was caught and killed on Friday. Talk about guilty even if proven innocent. This bear was doomed just by showing up.

The discrepancies in the newspaper stories on Thursday, Friday and Sunday, especially whether the boys were attacked, are far less important than the sentence of death announced in Thursday’s story – regardless of subsequent corrections.

Is it “aggressive” for a young animal to explore a new area, hurt no one and go away? Does that sound like what DEP’s Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) calls a “Category One Bear,” the most dangerous kind?

Despite their shy and non-aggressive nature, New Jersey’s black bears can’t seem to win once they’re spotted doing anything by DFW and some law enforcement reps, who shoot (with bullets, not tranquilizers) first and make excuses later.

Similarly, DFW seems to take fatal action first, then make up a rationale. In Sunday’s story, after this cub was killed, “officials” said young bears on their own for the first time can be “cantankerous” – now apparently a crime punishable by death.

DFW is the organization that gave us last December’s heinous bear hunt. Now they seem determined to demonstrate the need for another mass murder of black bears this year. All those curious 102-pound bear cubs (possibly orphaned last December) to contend with: scary!
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