Bear Hunting Stirs Debate
12/31/95
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
As record kills occur during the bear hunting season in New
England, conservation groups are pushing for stricter rules governing the
apparent commercialization of the hunt. Hunters are using radio-collared
dogs and sweet baits, and more are exploiting the overseas market for the
bear gall bladders.
g.b.
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Headline: Bear Hunting Stirs Debate
Source: The Associated Press
Date: 12/31/95
Copyright 1995 by The Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) -- John Carpenter points his high-powered
rifle at the bear, no bigger than a big man, clutching and helpless
about 30 feet up a tree above six yapping dogs.
This bear wasn't going anywhere -- now or ever. There was time
for everything: to tie the dogs out of harm's way, to line up a
clean shot, to gently squeeze the trigger.
Branches crack, a heavy thud jars the Berkshire Mountain ravine,
and the 308-pound bear lies lifeless in a bed of dead brush, a
bullet in the head.
Massachusetts hunters, including Carpenter, killed a record 134
bears during the 12-day fall season, nearly doubling the previous
high of 68 in 1992. In New Hampshire, state wildlife regulators
closed their season almost a month early to stop an already record
kill of 461 bears.
For all their unending feuds, many hunters, conservationists and
state wildlife regulators now agree on something: bear hunting is
booming in New England and many other parts of the country.
"It wasn't that long ago that black bears were considered a
varmint. Now bears are regarded as a big-game species," said
Charles Bridges, chief of inland wildlife for New Hampshire.
Saying too many hunters now seek trophies instead of challenge,
alarmed conservationists are pushing a wave of state and federal
initiatives to ban what they view as some of the worst abuses:
using bear-tracking hounds, often wearing radio collars; attracting
bears with sweets and other bait; and selling the bear's gall
bladder for its bile, which is prized as a traditional Chinese
medicine.
"Basically, he's become a commodity now," said Jan Turnis, a
staffer with the conservation group Bear Watch.
Wayne Pacelle, vice president of the U.S. Humane Society, said
radio collars, which signal the location of dogs when they have
chased a bear up a tree, add efficiency -- if not sport -- to the
hunt. "Shooting a bear from a tree is the moral and sporting
equivalent of shooting a bear from a cage at the zoo," he said.
Many bear hunters scoff. Carpenter, 19, just shrugs: "I guess I
was brought up hunting since I was a little kid, and I just go out.
When we kill it, we eat it, it doesn't go to waste, so I don't see
anything wrong with that." He said dogs give the hunter more time
to decide whether he wants to pass up an individual bear, such as a
female with cubs.
"When you run three miles down through the canyons and brush,
that's exciting and challenging, and that's hard work. The whole
hunt is not the guy waltzing up to the tree," said Richard
DeChambeau, director of hunter services for the National Rifle
Association.
However, after victories in Colorado and Oregon, conservation
groups have now collected enough signatures for preliminary
approval to propose on the 1996 ballot a legal ban on hunting with
dogs and bait. Aaron Medlock, a leader of the petition drive, says
the bans would help crack down on poachers, who favor the surer
methods of hunting with dogs and radio equipment.
While black bears, the predominant target of U.S. bear hunters,
are far from an endangered species, federal officials view North
America's estimated 600,000-member population as threatened in some
areas, like Louisiana. An estimated 40,000 are legally killed each
year by hunters. Some conservation groups say that many, or more,
are illegally killed, in violation of conservation regulations.
John Neal, a senior special agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, says the overall population is nevertheless stable. In
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, state wildlife officials even
chalk up the recent heavy kills to growing bear populations,
coupled with a summer drought that flushed out some animals.
Yet Peter Knights, co-director of the Investigative Network, a
nonprofit group that does undercover research on the bear-parts
trade, fears that the often illegal trade will someday threaten the
very existence of black bears in this country, as he says it has in
parts of Asia.
"This business is the same business that destroyed the rhino
and tiger populations," said Knights. "This time, I don't want to
wait until there's that few bears left."
With higher numbers of Asian immigrants in some American cities,
bear gall bladders have also found markets in this country. Last
September, four Chinese were charged in Los Angeles with trying to
smuggle in about $2 million worth of bile, according to
authorities.
Bills before Congress would make it illegal to trade in bear
gall bladders, though some states have already banned it.
But even dramatic anti-poaching sweeps across the nation several
years ago, with dozens of alleged poachers arrested in some cases,
have failed to stop illegal bear hunting.
Much like the drug trade, trafficking in bear parts can reap
amazing profits. A poacher might receive $50 for a gall bladder,
which can sell for more than $1,000 in this country and several
thousand dollars in Asia.
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