This commentary is by Carol Winfield, a zoologist, naturalist and wildlife educator and rehabilitator who lives in Vermont.
I am writing to beg the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department not to extend bear season into the time when these animals are metabolically slowing down and denning up for the winter.
No true sportsman should ever consider allowing such an abhorrent practice as to kill a bear in its den, and extending the season into mid-December makes that more likely, not less. Other states, including Minnesota and Colorado, ban the practice, unlike Vermont. The Fish & Wildlife board has now proposed banning the killing of a sow bear with cubs, but there are no guarantees it will pass.
Multiple studies have found that extending the season does not necessarily reduce interactions with humans. One reason for the sharp increase in human-bear interactions is the increase in the human population, especially in rural areas. And some of this increase is from folks who did not grow up out in the country. They get a little more anxious about wildlife than Vermonters, and so they “warn” everybody when they see a bear. Social reporting amplifies this. When I was a kid, we saw bears and deer and foxes and thought, “Well, that’s cool,” and then went about our day. Now everyone can report to the whole world within seconds everything that happened in their lives, including seeing a bear, or their neighbor’s new car, or the soup they made for dinner.
As kids growing up in rural Vermont, we all knew that wildlife would get into your garbage if you didn’t secure it, and so we did secure it. No big deal, nothing newsworthy. And if we got careless and found our garbage strewn all over the lawn the next morning, we cussed, cleaned it up and were more careful next time. We didn’t report an “incident.”
By the Fish & Wildlife Department’s own admission in its media releases, it really does not know what the carrying capacity for bears is in our state. The department’s harvest-based population model is seriously flawed and likely inaccurate, as it does not reliably account for many factors affecting a wild population. So how can they possibly assert that there are too many? Is increasing the number of animals killed a measure to placate the fears of a very small number of people in the population?
Humans have traditionally treated other species abominably. But over the years, we’ve evolved somewhat and seen the error of our ways. Cockfighting, dogfighting and bullfighting are all banned in most civilized countries. Even in Britain, the great and glorious tradition of foxhunting with horses and hounds has now been discontinued.
Yet Vermont still allows hounding and trapping. Only around 18 states allow the chasing of bears with hounds. More than 85 other countries have banned steel-jaw traps, as have seven states in the U.S.
It is time to evolve and recognize that some of these so-called traditions are archaic and cruel and no longer necessary, and to ban them as the travesties they truly are. We cannot continue to allow wanton cruelty to animals by a few humans who call themselves sportsmen but seem to have no concept of the term. Honest, ethical hunters, who stalk their game and bring it down in the quickest and most humane way they possibly can, should also protest these abhorrent practices of chasing, tormenting and terrifying a wild creature with vicious dogs.
Any decent, honest hunter should also condemn the practices of baiting and of setting steel traps indiscriminately to catch any creature that has the misfortune to wander by.
“Tradition” is a warm, fuzzy word that goes well with family gatherings for holidays. But that word is distorted when used to justify cruel, sadistic, outdated practices.
