Wildlife advocates in San Luis Obispo celebrated yesterday after learning that black bears would not be hunted in the county—at least this year.
The Fish and Game Commission unanimously decided to postpone any changes to the state’s bear hunting regulations after the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) said they needed more time to address concerns from the public.
The proposed expansion of hunting regulations has attracted controversy since the CDFG announced Feb. 17 its plans to allow for the first time the hunting of black bears in San Luis Obispo County, as well as the state-wide elimination of a regulation which says the hunting season ends once the number of black bears killed reaches 1,700.
Currently, the hunting of black bears, Ursus americanus, is illegal in San Luis Obispo County and the state’s hunting season ends the last Sunday every December, or after hunters turn in 1,700 bear tags.
“We’re very pleased,” said Jeff Kyper, executive director of Los Padres ForestWatch, a nonprofit advocacy organization for the protection of public lands in the Central Coast. “We’ll continue to track the process as it will probably come back again.”
“(The decision) certainly took us by surprise,” he said. “If the commission had approved it, they would have been open to lawsuits and public outcry, so they made the correct decision today.”
The Commission agreed to postpone any further decisions until next spring. “We certainly expect it to come up again,” Kyper said. “And when it does, we’ll start the process all over again.”
According to CDFG bear program coordinator Doug Updike, the commission began receiving public recommendations from San Luis Obispo County residents asking to expand bear hunting in the county since 2007. The CDFG spent two years researching the logistics and possible effects on the local bear population, deciding earlier this year that the proposal would have little impact.
“The black bear population statewide has more than tripled,” Updike said. “As a result of that analysis, the kind of hunting that is being proposed show no signs of a significant impact on the local population.”
The plans were discussed at an April 9 Commission hearing in Lodi, where a number of California residents voiced their opposition. Critics of the proposal said the CDFG failed to adequately research and find an estimate of the number of bears in San Luis Obispo County, a step they say is necessary before making any decision. Many also said they were morally opposed trophy hunting of the bears.
Last week, a coalition of more than 40 advocacy groups, including Big Wildlife, the Humane Society of the United States, Los Padres ForestWatch and more sent a letter to the Commission urging them to reject the proposal. Brian Vincent, communications director for Big Wildlife, an Oregon-based organization that opposes the hunting of carnivores such as bears, cougars and coyotes, asked the commission to postpone their decision until a forum could be held in the affected region and locals had the chance to voice their opposition.
“We oppose this for a number of reasons,” Vincent said shortly before Tuesday’s hearing. “California currently has only approximately 200 game wardens and that’s a lot of land to cover. It makes very little sense to expand hunting when there’s already very little enforcement and poaching is going up. Not only is what is being proposed cruel, but it’s also environmentally harmful.”
Vincent also said the way bears are hunted is inhumane and that if more people knew how, there would be even more opposition.
“This is trophy hunting, so some guy can have a rug next to his fireplace. This is not about feeding a family,” he said. “The bear doesn’t have a chance. They use hounds to chase it up a tree and then shoot it. Where’s the sport? It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”
Vincent also took issue with California hunting laws, which allow hunters to use bow and arrows to kill black bears. “That is completely inhumane; it can take hours for the bear to die. I don’t think Californians support this type of trophy hunting, so there is a moral issue here.”
In addition to animal rights groups, the majority of San Luis Obispo County Supervisors sent letters to the Commission. Supervisors Bruce Gibson, Adam Hill and James Patterson, of Districts Two, Three and Five, respectively, sent separate letters saying they were “in strong opposition” and even “offended by” the proposed expansion of hunting into the county. (See the PDFS: Gibson’s letter, Hill’s letter, Patterson’s letter)
“Well, from what I looked over, it looked only like trophy hunting,” County Supervisor Bruce Gibson told the Mustang Daily. “There were two things I noticed: first, (CDFG) didn’t have a good sense of the population, and also the bears are not much of a danger to humans, with minimal interaction, as far as I know.”
“I just didn’t see sport hunting of them is justified and that’s what prompted me to speak up,” Gibson said. “Otherwise, I usually wouldn’t get involved in these issues.”
One of the main areas of contention for critics of the expansion was what they saw as a lack of research into a clear population figure in the county. The CDFG spent two years conducting ‘bait station’ samples, where cans of fish are hung up to measure bear activity in a certain region, as well as studying hunting results in neighboring Santa Barbara County, where bear hunting is legal.
Cal Poly assistant professor of biology John Perrine, who has worked with bait stations, said they are indicators of activity but not useful for estimating population.
“Bait stations are just to figure out where the bears are, not their population,” Perrine said. “It’s a can of fish you open at the top and hang in a tree and leave it there. The only animal that can take it down and chew it up is a bear, so you have confirmed activity.”
Perrine said estimating a population within a region is difficult and, ironically, one of the best tools that the CDFG has to estimate are the hunters themselves.
“Once shot, the hunters must take the bear to a check station,” he said. “If they make 20 tags available and the first weekend 20 bears are shot, we know we have a dense population. If not, that tells the state the population is not very abundant.”
Officials estimate that statewide, the black bear population has grown dramatically since they began arriving in the 1950s. Between 25,000 to 30,000 black bears are estimated to occupy roughly 52,000 square miles in California.