Black bears live to see another day
State lawmakers to abandon plan for hunting season
HARTFORD — Connecticut’s black bears won a last-minute reprieve this week, as state lawmakers said Thursday they were abandoning their push to establish a limited bear hunting season.
The decision — hailed by wildlife and conservation activists — was the latest blow against a years-long campaign by hunters and farmers to legalize bear hunting, particularly in the Northwest corner of the state where the majority of sightings are concentrated.
On Friday, lawmakers were scheduled to hold an initial vote on a proposal that would have permitted the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to set up a lottery system for hunters to kill up to 50 black bears each year in Litchfield County. In addition, the bill included a permitting system to allow farmers to kill nuisance bears, stricter regulations against the feeding of wildlife and other non-lethal means of preventing encounters between humans and the state’s growing population of bears.
After hundreds of advocates wrote to members of the Environment Committee protesting the inclusion of a bear hunt, however, support for the legislation began to stall, according to state Rep. Joe Gresko, D- Stratford, who serves as the House cochair on the committee.
Gresko said Thursday that he had polled other members earlier this week and determined there was not enough support to send the bill on to the floor of the Senate.
“Instead of letting the whole bill go down in flames, I offered to take the bear hunting provision out of it and let the rest of the bill go,” Gresko said.
Even with the proposal for an open hunting season removed, members of a coalition that was formed two years ago to advocate for non-lethal means of confronting bears continued to raise concerns about the bill. In particular, they have objected to a provision that would allow DEEP to issue permits to farmers to kill bears and other “nuisance” animals that are damaging crops or livestock.
Wildlife advocates, along with some lawmakers, have argued that DEEP already has the authority to kill bears that pose a danger to humans, and that more funding needs to be made available for electric fencing and other non-lethal controls, along with restitution to farmers who do suffer damage from wildlife.
“I don’t know what the final product is going to be,” said Ann Gadwah, the advocacy and outreach organizer for Sierra Club Connecticut, one of the groups involved in the coalition. “It certainly takes a weight off our minds that there won’t be a bear hunting lottery.”
While lawmakers could in theory attempt to revive the hunting provision later this session, Gresko said he doubted that legislative leaders would endorse the move given the lack of support from the Environment Committee. He added that the remaining sections of the bear management bill —as well as a separate measure to allow Sunday hunting — remained precarious heading into Friday’s vote.
Last October, a bear attack that sent a 10-yearold boy in Morris to the hospital revived calls for lawmakers to do something to slow the frequency of conflicts with bears. In a subsequent debate, Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, voiced his support for the idea, saying it was “probably” the right move for Connecticut.
“Is someone going to have to get killed to have a season?” said Adam Murray, the president of the Northwest Connecticut Rod and Gun Club, when informed of the decision to pull the hunting proposal. “It shouldn’t get that far.”
There are estimated to be between 1,000 and 1,200 black bears roaming Connecticut according to DEEP, which has supported hunting as a means of controlling the bear population and limiting encounters with humans. In 2022, the agency tracked 67 home entries by bears, the most ever recording in a single year.
As the number of runins
with bears increases, DEEP has also urged residents to take steps to avoid feeding and attracting bears, such as taking in bird feeders during the summer and not leaving trash bins outside. A spokesman for the agency said Thursday that lawmakers’ decision to remove the hunting provisions from the bill did not impact DEEP’s overall support for the remaining measures.
“Ultimately, we believe all of these tools will help reduce both the severity
and number of humanbear conflicts across the state,” the spokesman, Paul Copleman, said in a statement.
Those who support a hunt note that Connecticut is one of only two states in New England that does not include hunting as part of its bear management policy. The other outlier, Rhode Island, is home to only a small number of bears.
“New York does it, Vermont does it, they’ve had great success and they still have bears,” Murray
said. “It’s not like they’re going to wipe them out.”
Advocates like Gadwah, however, have pointed to the outcry that erupted last after an offduty police officer killed a sow with two young in Newtown, citing it as one example that public sentiment favors more humane solutions to dealing with confrontations with bears.
“We don’t believe that most people in Connecticut want a bear hunt, and we’re glad lawmakers listened,” she said.