Earth Protect Blog

By Amelia Nierenberg

The New York Times

Sara Grant was inside her home this month in Sherman, Conn., a small town near the New York state line. Her 2-year-old was upstairs. Her newborn daughter was in her arms.

Suddenly, she saw her 4-year-old son, Gavin, running up the driveway, sobbing. A bear was close by.

“I screamed louder than I had ever screamed before,” she said.

Grant’s golden retriever, Jake, leaped forward and chased the bear off the property, driving it into the woods.

“He got multiple treats, an ice cream cone,” Grant, a 33-year-old stay-at-home parent, recalled of her dog. “He definitely got extra belly rubs that night.”

Human-bear interactions have increased dramatically in Connecticut in recent years, as the state’s population of black bears has multiplied and their geographic range has expanded. This year bears in Avon crashed a parade and broke into a bakery. Elsewhere in the state, they have even invaded houses.

The danger was underscored this week in nearby Westchester County, N.Y., when a bear attacked a 7-year-old boy who was playing in his yard. (On Wednesday, health officials said the bear tested negative for rabies.)

Worried about public safety, Gov. Ned Lamont recently signed into law a measure that allows residents to shoot and kill bears under certain circumstances: if a person “reasonably believes” a bear could seriously hurt a person or a pet, or if a bear is trying to enter a building with people inside.

It also prohibits intentionally feeding potentially dangerous animals on private property.

Connecticut is the only state in the Northeast with a significant bear population but no bear hunting season. The new law, essentially a stand-your-ground law for bear encounters, was a modest step that has drawn critics from all sides.

Those who advocated instead for a bear hunt say the new law did not go far enough. They argue that bears must be taught to fear humans for their own protection, and that dead bears deter live bears from populated areas.

“It’s about altering the behavior of our bears and how they perceive humans,” said Jason Hawley, the leading bear biologist at the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, adding, “Bears don’t have a negative association with humans. In fact, I’d argue that they have a positive association with humans.”

Others say the law allowing people to kill bears in self-defense is dangerous, and nearly unenforceable. They are skeptical that law enforcement officials will be able to determine if people truly felt threatened before shooting.

They argue that residents should instead be taught to bear-proof their garbage cans, to put out bird feeders only in winter and to clean barbecue grills meticulously.

Remove the buffet, the thinking goes, and discourage the customers.

“Hunting bears is unsafe. It’s not necessary, and, most importantly, it’s not going to reduce interactions between people and bears,” said Annie Hornish, the Connecticut director for the Humane Society of the United States, which is part of the CT Coalition to Protect Bears.

Connecticut is hardly an outlier. Bear sightings have risen in parts of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maryland, North Carolina, California and beyond, about 50 years after hunting restrictions and restoration efforts took effect, reviving devastated populations nationwide.

Bears also have expanded their geographic ranges. In many states, they are roaming closer and closer to cities.

In the suburbs across Connecticut, bears who venture close to people’s homes are largely looking for food, wildlife experts say.

They fish leftovers out of bins, which humans helpfully leave in a row outside on collection days. Some tip over cans, teaching their babies to forage. Others prefer bird feeders.

“Bears tend to go for the easy food,” said Deborah Clark, the animal control officer in Simsbury, a town of about 24,000 people.