The Return of the Wild
Suburbanites must learn to kill again.

BY GEOFFREY NORMAN
Friday, December 5, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
After decades of assuming that civilization is bad for wild animals and nature--as seen on PBS--humans are learning that things can go the other way. It's not a pretty sight.

Consider New Jersey, where, if things go according to plan, some 7,000 hunters will take to the woods next week and kill up to 500 bears. The rationale for the state's first bear hunt in more than 30 years is simple enough--too many bears. In 1995, there were 285 complaints about bears plundering birdfeeders, getting into the garbage, menacing pets and generally behaving like bears in territory claimed by humans. Last year, there were some 1,175 such complaints.

Fifty-seven bears entered homes. Two attacked people, including a two-year-old. In some parts of Jersey, kids are told not to put school lunches in their backpacks but to carry them in their hands instead. That way, if they encounter a bear, they can throw a sandwich on the ground to distract the animal and make a getaway.





That New Jersey has any bears at all probably comes as a surprise to many people who don't live there and think of the place as one large suburb where the most dangerous animal around is Tony Soprano. There are, in fact, rural sections of New Jersey, but the bears don't need deep wilderness to survive. They are happy to share space with people who are looking for a little weekend place in the country or a suburban home with a pretty setting. They have adapted and become, in the minds of many, at least a nuisance and perhaps a menace.
Predictably, there is opposition to the hunt. Lawsuits have been filed. Letters--along with stuffed teddy bears--have been mailed to the governor. At least one man has gone on a fast as a way of protesting the hunt. Some opponents argue that there simply is no bear problem and that humans need to learn to take bear encounters in stride. Others want to try contraception to keep bear populations down. The arguments can become intricate and confusing, but one thing is clear--killing animals bothers some people.

The animals, however, are increasingly making a case against themselves, and not just in New Jersey. Call it the return of the wild. People who once thrilled at the mere sighting of a white-tail deer now put up fences against them and think of them as "rats with hooves." Deer are involved in almost two million collisions with automobiles annually, with damages averaging about $2,000 and about 100 of them killing the driver. Deer also help spread Lyme disease.

There are thriving moose populations in Maine and Vermont where the animals are hunted but not vigorously enough to keep them off the roads. Cougars are making a robust comeback, which is understandable, since their primary prey is deer. Cougar attacks on humans--some fatal--are on the rise. There are suburbs in Colorado where it is considered risky to jog. Alligators, once endangered, are now a nuisance in Florida, where they routinely attack and kill pets. They also go after the occasional human. Coyotes survived a sustained campaign by the federal government to wipe them out and are now everywhere, and they have a distinct fondness for house cats. And, then, there are the bears. More grizzlies in Yellowstone and spreading out of the park. More black bears all over the place, it seems. One killed a five-month-old child, a little over a year ago, less than 70 miles from New York.

The animals have made a remarkable comeback, and they are not likely to quit breeding. There is no way to negotiate with them, and they cannot be regulated. Deer will devour the expensive landscaping and bears will get into birdfeeders, kill pets, and pull off the occasional breaking and entering. It's their nature. There may be technological fixes out there in the future, but for now the solution to the problem of too many animals seems simply to be--killing them.





Ah, there is the rub, if not the rub-out. People seem to love nature and want to get close to it. But they don't want to share it, and when it comes to control, they don't want to get their hands dirty. They are unwilling to look nature in its brutal and uncompromising face. Some communities have hired "sharpshooters" to thin deer herds. The idea seems to be that it isn't the killing that is the problem. It is that it is being done by amateurs. One recalls Dr. Johnson's crack about the people who opposed bear baiting not because it gave pain to the animal but because it gave pleasure to the people. A deer that is assassinated by a "sharpshooter" is just as dead as one shot by a hunter. Who, by the way, paid a license fee and tax on his gun and ammunition.
The thrill of the hunt is, of course, not for everyone. And attitudes about hunting can be complex. I wondered for a long time if I could kill a bear. This was back when I had never seen one and didn't expect to. I have seen many in recent years. The first was no more than 30 steps away, looking at me with curious and intelligent eyes. Its pelt was deep and rich, and its movements were graceful and fluid. I could have raised my bow and easily put an arrow through its heart. But I merely watched while the animal took a few steps and then seemed to vanish, like smoke, in the woods.

I couldn't kill that bear, but I don't have a problem with the New Jersey hunt. The many people who do may well possess an ethical refinement that simply escapes me, but I fear that some may possess instead a de-natured sense of nature. They build into nature, they live nearby it, they thrill at its beauty and diversity and consider themselves sensitive environmentalists who want to shield nature from the harm that humans do. But they do not know it. They have only a distanced, sentimentalized sense of nature, very much the product of city-centered, suburban modern life, so far from rural realities that earlier generations knew so well. There was a time that you'd be considered a complete fool not to kill the bears that are invading your backyard. Maybe you still are.

The arguments over hunting begin to seem tiresome in an age when it is literally impossible to kill enough deer to keep some roads safe. There was, undeniably, a time when Americans hunted and killed animals too feverishly. They learned, through hard experience, to preserve animal populations. The comeback of the alligator, deer, moose, bear, cougar and other species is a result of human learning, effort and discipline. Now humans are going to have to learn how to kill again. New Jersey, evidently, is the place to start.

Mr. Norman is a contributing editor of National Geographic Adventure.

I wanna kill me a bear..


wonder if the wife will find a stuffed bear "cute" :)

Bear......the other white meat.

Did anyone think that the problem might not be that there are too many bears, but too many people?

We talk a lot about controlling the herd but we sure don't do too much about controlling "our" herd.

C'mon man, talk some sense!

Bears don't argue about killing other bears.  You are only allowed to kill members of a 'different' herd.  
If you don't buy that, then lets drive to Joizee and I'll randomly shoot bears, and you randomly shoot people.  I'll let you explain your rationale to a judge.

It's hard to believe that they have any bears, let alone 500, in a state as small as New Jersey, and that close to NYC. I vote for giving the bears a new lease on life and trapping them for shipment to Yellowstone or a similar area.

Relocating most wild animals doesn't work. They die. I don't know the exact reason why they die. Yellowstone, according to the article, is over run with bears now.

They are going to KILL 500 bears.

Yellowstone has too many bears as is.

Jersey has MORE than 500 bears

Why can't we just let Darwinism take effect?  Let the yuppie scum that doesn't want to hurt the bear's feelings get eaten and the guys with the guns who make dead bears get to flourish.  The gene pool needs a little more chlorine.

If they have such a problem with bears there are 2 solutions: Get a gun and solve the problem yourself or MOVE AWAY FROM THE AREA!

Last time I checked it was the species that has evolved enough to produce firearms that gets to decide which herd gets thinned out.