NEW YORK—In September, 22-year-old Rutgers student Darsh Patel was mauled to death by a black bear while hiking in the Apshawa Preserve in northwest New Jersey, marking the state’s first fatal encounter between bear and man in over 150 years.
Black bears are mostly averse to confrontation with humans, and attacks are rare. Between 1900 and 2009, only 63 people were killed by non-captive black bears in North America, according to an analysis in the Journal of Wildlife Management.
During the 19th century, deforestation and unregulated hunting had devastated black bear populations. This led in the mid-20th century to a federal restriction on selling bear meat. States also stepped up to regulate or stop the hunting of bears.
With no natural predators or pressure from humans, black bears have made a precipitous comeback in the past few decades. Now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction and bear intrusions into residential areas are increasingly common.
There were several incidents of black bears wandering in residential neighborhoods in South Jersey this summer. And in October, a tape of a six-minute fight between two black bears on the front-porch steps of a suburban North Jersey home became viral online.
In 2009, New Jersey saw 257 cases of dangerous Category I bear incidents, which include attempts by a bear to enter a home, a car, or a tent, and attacks on dogs and livestock. That year also had over 500 reported cases of bears rummaging through trash and 145 traffic collisions.
The black bear population in New Jersey was an estimated 300 in the early 1980s, but ballooned to over 3,000 by 2010. At that point, the density of black bears in northwest New Jersey was the highest of any state, said Larry Ragonese of the state’s Department of Wildlife Protection.
In response to a growing number of hostile encounters between humans and bears, the state created a five-year bear management plan in 2010, allowing for a six-day period of bear hunting per year to keep the population at a sustainable size. The hunt is scheduled December 8-13, around the time when bears transition into hibernation, to minimize the hunting of pregnant mothers.
In the first year 592 bears were killed, but the overall population grew because more cubs were born over the winter, although it has now fallen to around 2,400 from its 3,300 peak.
“If you have a high density, you have more movement,” said Randy Cross, a biologist with Maine’s Department of Wildlife. Cross says that once the bear density is high enough, there will be pressure for bears to leave the forests to look for food elsewhere.
Maine has experienced a similar bear boom in recent years, and Cross says that the population is at a “historic high.”
Prevention
Managing the bear population through hunting hasn’t been universally applauded.
New Jersey first reintroduced bear hunting in the winter of 2003, and then again 2005, but then-governor Jon Corzone put an end to hunting after pressure from animal rights’ activists who argued that non-violent measures were enough to prevent human-bear conflict.
Some experts advise residents who live within proximity to black bears are to refrain from using bird-feeders and planting fruit trees, and to put their trash out in the morning when trash is taken rather than the night before. Activists say that taking these precautions and adopting bear-resistant trash cans can effectively defuse the threat of wandering bears.
