Louis Porter, commissioner of the Fish and Wildlife Department, told the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules that the population of roughly 6,000 black bears now in Vermont “is close to, or at a high, probably since the Industrial Revolution.”
The resurgence of the black bear population since the 19th century represents “a huge success story in Vermont,” Porter said, but with more bears, there are “more bear problems.”
Porter said bears can thrive in areas fairly densely populated by humans because they like to eat things like bird seed, compost, and honey from beehives.
The department released a notice Tuesday urging hunters not to use corn as bait for deer. Deer and bear baiting is specifically prohibited by Vermont hunting regulations, but Porter said that bears coming to rely on various human sources for food contributes to them becoming less wild and causing more problems.
According to a department report, game wardens responded to 465 incidents last year involving bears colliding with cars, damaging property, and threatening public safety.
That number represents a substantial increase over recent years. Department reports show that wardens responded to 241 incidents in 2015, 291 in 2014 and 265 in 2013.
All told, the report states that 158 bears died from being hit by cars in 2016 and at least another 33 were killed as a result of other human-bear conflicts.
The new rules, Porter said, probably won’t affect how many bears hunters kill annually, but he hopes they will indirectly reduce the number of bear-human conflicts.
The quota of one bear per hunting license holder per year remains unchanged.
Porter said the changes, which deal in large part with the use of bear hounds, “simplify the participation and ability of bear hunters to abide by those rules” and “ensure that we can in fact enforce those rules.”
Changes include clarifying the allowed uses of the hounds, shortening the hound hunting season for out-of-state permit holders (who are allotted 10 percent of the permits distributed), requiring hunters to take wardens to the site of kills upon request, and mandating that bear carcasses be field dressed before they’re reported.
“By keeping that activity (the use of bear hounds) going,” Porter said, the department hopes to keep bears from getting too comfortable around people.
Bear houndsmen only kill around 10 percent to 15 percent of the annual bear harvest, Porter said.
But, Porter added, they play “an important part” in the management of the species overall because “hunting with bear hounds keeps bears afraid of people and keeps them wild.”
“In fact,” Porter said, “one of the best ways we have to rehabilitate a bear if it becomes accustomed to eating people’s dogfood or chickens or beehives is that one of the bear houndsmen will come and chase that bear and scare it and maybe prevent the property owner or residents from having to shoot it.”
