According to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the state's population of black bears, which peaked several years ago at 3,600, is now down to 2,500.
On the other hand, last year the state Agricultural Experiment Station said there were 2,800 to 3,000 black bears in northwestern New Jersey alone.
I can understand why there would be different estimates. Taking a bear census cannot be an easy business.
And the black bear population fluctuates. By the mid 1950s, hunting had reduced New Jersey's black bear population to about 100. Since then, hunting restrictions allowed the population to come back, and it is now culled, to some extent, by a limited hunting season each December.
Last year's hunt felled 251 black bears, 36 fewer than in 2012. In Passaic County in northwestern New Jersey only one bear was killed.
There is a sort of grotesque symmetry here. About 10 days ago, also in Passaic County, an aggressive black bear killed a 22-year-old hiker.
The Bear Attack
The hiker and four of his friends were walking in the Apshawa Preserve when they realized that they were being stalked by a 300-pound black bear. When the bear approached, they gathered in a group, yelling and gesturing and making noise, for almost half an hour. The bear stood his ground.
Finally, in desperation, the five turned and ran in all directions. The bear selected one, chased him down and killed him. The young man's body was found two hours later with the bear nearby, acting aggressively toward the officers who approached the scene. They shot the bear.
State officials report that this is an extremely rare incident, possibly the first ever in New Jersey or, if not that, the first since 1852.
In all of North America, I have read, about two humans are killed by bears each year. There are many more bears in Alaska and Canada than states like New Jersey, and presumably most bear-on-human killings occur in those places.
The young hikers in the recent incident seem to have done everything right. Here is the recommendation from a 2013 state publication titled "Living with Black Bears in New Jersey."
"When recreating in known bear habitat, travel in groups and speak loudly, clap or carry
noisemakers to alert a bear to your presence. Bears will avoid human contact and will
leave the area, but they may become aggressive if startled."
Apparently the bear hadn't read state's bulletin.
Black Bear Diet
If black bears could talk and you asked one what he was eating for dinner tonight, he'd probably say, "I don't know. What are you having at your house?"
Like many animals, black bears spend most of their time looking for food. In the wild, they subsist on plants, berries, honey and small animals or fish that they catch and eat. (Unfortunately, bears have yet to develop an appetite for deer.)
Bears also have a strong sense of smell, and they gravitate toward garbage, which they find tasty. Every year in New Jersey there are many, many, many instances, seldom reported, of black bears rummaging through garbage.
This year in New Jersey, there have been almost 150 reported incidents of black bears entering homes or tents or threatening to attack humans.
People who live near black bears are encouraged, strongly, to use bearproof garbage cans and to disinfect them every week. (I would not like to work as a garbage collector in these neighborhoods.)
Bears are smart enough to figure out that if they have found food in one place, that returning to that same place to forage again is a good idea.
In short, black bears have learned to live with humans. They have learned that humans live near food and, except during brief bear hunt seasons, humans will not attack them.
The tensions and limits of bear-human coexistence now are being explored in New Jersey.
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