Three Out Of Five New Jersey Bears Prefer Blackberries Over Blueberries

That’s a statistic I just fabricated. Why? To get your attention and with that I hope I can get you to read the rest of my article and others at this website. After all, I can’t sell advertising if I don’t have readers. This is my agenda but I have to believe that in the long run truth rules the day.

I have a reader (thanks Jim!) who keeps me up to date with all the latest press coming out of New Jersey about black bears. New Jersey has a bear problem and there are basically two forces at work to address the problem. On one side, you have the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, a branch of the Department of Environmental Protection, trying to manage bears to please everyone, an impossible task. The Division of Fish and Wildlife wants to have a bear hunt as a tool to control population but they don’t have the support of the DEP Commissioner Liza Jackson or Gov. Jon Corzine.

On the other side are all the animal rights groups, environmentalists and anti-hunting organizations. I’ll lump them all together as anti-hunting groups because it doesn’t matter what picture they paint of themselves, they are anti-hunting.

Lying has become a very excepted thing in this society we live in. We seem to have found a way to justify it. As far back as 2006, one study showed that 70% of college students would lie on a resume in order to get a job. Why is it that we feel this need to lie in order to promote ourselves or our personal agendas such as stopping hunting?

I can very easily deal with the person who states that they don’t believe in hunting. Fair enough. It’s when they begin their onslaught of fabrications of the truth that I get frustrated. Why isn’t the truth enough? Unfortunately, the truth doesn’t always work when perpetuating a personal agenda, mostly wrought with greed and selfishness.

Thomas Sowell talks about lying and the dangers of present day lying.

People have been lying for centuries. What makes their statistical lies so dangerous today is that so many people in the media are ready to accept and broadcast statistics turned out by activist groups with an axe to grind — when those groups share the liberal-left orientation of the media.

Many stated “facts” and “statistics” can easily be disproved but that takes effort, something most Americans these days aren’t interested in doing. Instead they want to be fed. Their own ideals and laziness make them targets of those selling lies as facts and this is part of the reason it is done.

Sowell says “wild statistics” sell.

Meanwhile, whole organizations and movements are in the business of trying to alarm the public — radical feminists, environmental extremists, race hustlers, “consumer advocates” and many more. Wild statistics help them get free publicity in the media and help stampede politicians to “do something,” usually by spending the taxpayers’ money to deal with a manufactured “crisis.”

False statistics are only part of the problem. Even accurate statistics can be given misleading emphasis.

New Jersey still has a bear problem and they need to deal with it rationally and sensibly but that is not happening. The cards are stacked against the New Jersey residents who don’t want bears breaking into their homes, ripping their garages and sheds apart by bears searching for food and they want to let their kids play in the back yard without fear of a bear getting them. The Gov. is anti-hunting. He put Liza Jackson in charge of the Department of Environmental Protection and she’s anti-hunting. Anti-hunting groups are doing a pretty good job of infiltrating the DEP and Division of Fish and Game to put a stop to hunting.

The public shouldn’t be fooled by the hidden agendas of these organizations saying they are trying to protect bears. If that were true they wouldn’t be promoting methods that leave bears subject to starvation and disease, along with getting trapped, transported and sometimes killed because of their nuisance. Their agenda is clearly to stop hunting.

Yesterday, Janet Piszar contributed an editorial in the Daily Record about saving bears in New Jersey. Piszar spins facts to mislead the public and tells outright lies. Should we believe anything she says in this piece?

Of course not but people will believe it because they want to. Piszar knows that and that is why she writes her article.

Piszar does not want the public to be heard about the realities of bear/human encounters. They are on the rise and in one report, incidents are around 80% from a year ago. Her article is an attempt to distort the facts.

Aside from presenting fiction in much of what she writes, she resorts to the same blame game of pointing a finger at us evil humans who live on this planet. That’s easy to do. We can always look at a glass as being half empty or half full. Piszar sees humans as evil, destroying the environment and causing the deaths of numerous bears and other wildlife, while offering no solutions other than offering that bears are more intelligent than man and we need more garbage cans.

Short of killing humans, which by the way has been suggested by some extreme environmental groups, more has to be done than simply buying more bear-proof garbage cans. What people like Piscar refuse to acknowledge, and this is because their agenda is against hunting not protecting bears, is that biologists and fish and game experts have been managing wildlife for many decades. Part of the problem in New Jersey with too many bears is a result of the great work done by these people to restore a diminished black bear population from years past.

These experts’ work is tried and proven and with newer and better science and management techniques, not only black bears but other species are benefiting as well. What animal protection group would have a problem with this? Isn’t this what they want?

The answer is quite clear and I’ve said it before. It’s not their agenda. Their agenda is to stop hunting but they know simply stating that won’t work. There must be more and so they blame man for everything and perpetuate myths and spin the truth to convince lazy Americans not willing to discover the truth for themselves, that hunting is the cause not the cure.

Why should any of us believe anything Piszar writes. You see, Janet Piszar is the director of the Bear Education And Resource (B.E.A.R.) Group, an organization that claims to be interested in educating people on how to deal with living with bears. Their very own website spells out quite clearly that their goals go far beyond educating the public about bear.

The mission of the Bear Education and Resource Group (est. 1992) is to teach residents how to live responsibly and peacefully with black bears. We, ourselves, have been educated by Lynn Rogers. Ph.D., the world’s foremost bear expert. And we believe that hunting bears for trophies and sport—under the guise of public safety and to lower bear nuisance complaints—is cruel and unnecessary.

They even brag about the successes they’ve had at halting bear hunts.

But this kind of information is to be expected coming from any anti-hunting group. The real reason we can’t believe anything Piszar says or anyone related to B.E.A.R is the other absurd accusations this organization makes of the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife.

They inflate population statistics. Need population info, ours and theirs………They encourage residents to contact them, regarding bears. Whether the homeowner calls to complain or to ask a question, the call is logged as a nuisance complaint. This manipulated data is further compromised, as 10 calls about one bear are recorded as 10 complaints. F&W then uses these complaints to justify a bear hunt.

At times, F&W relocates bears. We suspect that when bears end up in urban areas, that it is F&W who intentionally transported them there, to incite fear. When such incidents are reported in the media, it further fuels fear.

F&W employees—who should be non-biased—argue publicly in favor of black bear hunting and align themselves with hunters. They are essentially a state-sanctioned hunting organization. (emphasis added)

I contacted the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife and asked them if they were aware of this information posted on B.E.A.R.’s website. I couldn’t get an official response or a statement from them but they did say this:

Other than to assure you we do not relocate bears near urban areas – we rarely relocate them, and when we do it is from an urban area to the nearest appropriate (meaning sufficient habitat) state land.

The Division of Fish and Wildlife told me that all the information about black bears on their website is accurate and that they stand by it.

Any organization that would make such absurd accusations, offering absolutely no proof that any such thing actually takes place, cannot and should not be trusted. This is proof that truth never gets in the way of a good personal agenda.

Further down the page where B.E.A.R. accuses the DFW of using scare tactics and placing bears in your backyard in order to scare you into allowing them to have a bear hunt, they also make a statement that is completely misleading.

The Division doesn’t have a black bear management plan; they have an agenda.

This is an outright lie and distortion of the truth. The Division did have a bear management plan. As a matter of fact it was a plan that was approved by the courts. When groups sued to stop the bear hunt in 2006, a judge did put a halt to the hunt saying that the existing bear management plan was inadequate for offering a hunt. The Division went back to work and appeared back in court with a revised plan that the judge approved, declaring the state could have a hunt.

This didn’t stop the anti-hunters, including Gov. Corzine and Commissioner Jackson. They didn’t want the hunt either and because they couldn’t present any scientific or rational reason not to, they instead ripped up the court-approved bear management plan in order to put an end to bear hunting.

I will say that I believe the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife does have an agenda. That agenda is to do their jobs, to manage the wildlife utilizing the best available science and all the proven tools to protect and care for the wildlife that belong to the citizens of New Jersey. It just so happens that hunting the game animals is a tried and proven management tool that the New Jersey governor is against and he is supported by all the anti-hunting groups.

Their actions are putting the wildlife in New Jersey at risk, while claiming they are saving the animals. It’s a sham hiding behind the guise of anti-hunting.

B.E.A.R. is a sham, perpetuating lies to the public to promote their agenda of anti-hunting while asking for your money to save animals.

Don’t take my word for it. Visit their website and read for yourself. Do you want to trust an organization that accuses the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife of trapping bears and dropping them off in your backyard just to scare you? Think for yourself.

Tom Remington

Related Articles

• Gov. Corzine Sees No Bear Problem (5)
• New Jersey’s Anti-Hunting Campaign Of Lies And Bad Information (7)
• Legislators Urge Gov. Corzine To Take Off Blinders Concerning Bear Management (1)
• Bear Complaints Up 44% In New Jersey (5)
• New Hampshire Bill To End Hunting/Trapping Of Fur Bearer Animals (4)
• Where Bears Are In New Jersey, More People Now Want Hunt (7)
• Doug Giles: God Loves Hunting And Hunters (1)

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