bear hunt

http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/09/time_to_go_on_a_bear_hunt_editorial.html#incart_river

New Jersey is a densely-populated state, which has lead to an abundance of food -- namely, garbage -- that allows bears to breed younger and more often and live longer.
To ensure our own safety, we must keep a tight check on the growth of bears. There's no point in arguing over whose habitat this was first: People live here now. They pay property taxes. And if this were really about original property rights, we'd be turning the state over to the Native Americans.
The upcoming six-day December hunt will be the last in the state's 5-year management plan for bears. After that, biologists will decide whether to keep the hunt, expand it or eliminate it.
Our vote is to keep it, and expand it if necessary. Bear lovers point out that this week's attack is the only such fatality in New Jersey in 150 years. But clearly, the hunts are not just for chest-thumping trophies, as animal rights activists have claimed. We need bears to fear humans; not see them as lunch.

http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/09/that_bear_attack_was_predictable_-_and_predicted_mulshine.html#incart_related_stories

That fatal attack by a black bear in Passaic County should come as a surprise to no one.
Thanks to pressure from the anti-hunting crowd, New Jersey’s bear population has grown far beyond the capacity of our limited forests to support it. Look at a map of the northwest corner of the state and you will see that there are very few areas that aren’t within a few miles of roads and/or development. And most of that is older development, by the way.
The idea that humans are moving into bear country is nonsense. Fifty years ago, when most of those roads and houses already existed, there were almost no bears in the state. The bears moved into human country, not the other way around. And thanks to pressure from the animal activists, the state hasn't been able to schedule enough bear hunts to keep their numbers down.
That makes it inevitable that bears will go into populated areas and therefore lose their fear of humans - as happened in this incident according to this report by James Kleimann and Myles Ma. I’ve been writing about this since back in the first Christie administration – Christie Whitman, that is. She fell prey to the anti-hunting crowd. Here are a few of those columns for your reading pleasure: