At a recent riverside gathering, a friend and I served wild game tacos. Each of our 40 guests ordered two: one elk and one black bear.
I have yet to hear of anyone who prefers moose.
Black bear populations in the United States are healthy and growing. The International Union for Conservation of Nature considers the species to be “least concern.” This is the same conservation status as raccoons and crows.
Black bear hunting, however, is a perennial tinderbox in wildlife politics. From coast to coast, black bear hunters are often attacked by politicians, animal rights extremists and wildlife management officials who are hostile to hunting. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy campaigned in part on his opposition to black bear hunting in the state and, once elected, went against his own wildlife management agency’s recommendation to end the practice. rescinded the policy (following a dramatic increase in conflicts between bears and humans).
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife conducts a strictly regulated annual campaign bear hunting With a cap on the total number of animals killed, as well as bans on the waste of bear meat, the killing of cubs, and the killing of sows accompanied by cubs. However, politicians and activists have repeatedly attempted to strip the agency of its power to authorize hunts without any evidence that they are harmful to the bear population. In fact, California’s black bears have thrived amid hunting, and all evidence suggests that the state could significantly expand bear hunting without any negative impact.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife issued a draft black bear management plan In April, California's black bear population is estimated to be about 65,000, up from 20,000 in 1998, when The last such plan The measure was adopted. The spectacular growth in their numbers could justify an expansion of hunting.
The increase is due not only to more bears, but also to better counts. The 1998 population estimate was derived from data on hunted black bears. Today, that data set is combined with information from an array of nearly 3,000 cameras spread across California's bear habitat.
Animal rights activists often distort or hide these population data. The number of bears killed by hunters It fell dramatically, For example, after the California Legislature banned the use of dogs to hunt animals in 2012. A decade later, the The Humane Society of the United States filed a petition The Department of Fish and Wildlife called for a moratorium on black bear hunting, citing declining hunter success rates as evidence of a declining bear population, which was clearly not the case.
Yet it is hunters, not the Humane Society, who help foot the bill for black bear research and management. From 2012 to 2022, black bear hunters paid more than $27 million in licensing fees that funded the salaries of state biologists and game wardens. An excise tax on guns, ammunition and other hunting-related equipment generates an additional $10 million to $30 million a year for the state, much of which has gone toward black bear research and management over the past decade.
A hunter is unlikely to kill a bear in California. Nearly half of black bears die within their first year of life, most often due to cannibalism, starvation or neglect. Among adult bears, the leading causes of death are human-related, but thanks to cars and other anthropogenic hazards, this is true even in areas where bear hunting is not permitted.
In California’s areas open to hunting, the annual harvest rate (the proportion of bears killed by hunters) is just 3 percent of the population, but black bear populations can support an annual harvest rate of at least 16 percent without decline. California could allow each hunter to take two bears instead of the current limit of one, double the total bag limit to 3,400, and repeal the ban on hunting with dogs, and still see no decline in total bear numbers. The new management plan alludes to this, noting that “protection from hunting may not necessarily result in increased survival and, consequently, population growth.”
The first documented fatal attack by a black bear on a human in California took place in November. While it was an isolated incident and there is no reason to think that increased bear hunting could have prevented it, it was a reminder that all species exist within the context of, and often at the expense of, other species.
One study found that a newborn mule deer west of the Sierra Nevada crest is six times more likely to be killed by a black bear than by any other cause. And for every time a mountain lion kills a prey animal in the Mendocino National Forest, it has more than a 70 percent chance of losing it to a black bear. This forces mountain lions to kill more deer and is likely related to documented declines in the local population of that species.
Such is the eternal interaction between predators and prey, which has had a human dimension for thousands of years in California. Fortunately, rigorous science and proper regulation can help us manage the relationship between hunting and prey in ways that are sustainable and even beneficial to wildlife. By responsibly consuming surplus black bears, hunters can fund the means to improve our collective understanding of wildlife, fund habitat protection and other projects to support wildlife, and help hire game wardens to protect the animals.
It's understandable that most Californians never choose to be hunters. What's less clear is why more people don't support those who do.
Steven Rinella is a writer and conservationist who presents “The Carnivore Podcast.”
