The six-day bear hunt in New Jersey yielded fewer kills this year than last year and New Jersey Sierra Club Chapter Director Jeff Tittel told NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider that he doesn’t believe a hunt is necessary in the Garden State. Instead he supports a comprehensive management plan for bears. Tittel also discussed the state’s comeback from Hurricane Sandy saying officials need to rebuild in a smarter manner instead of just replacing what was destroyed, and said he believes there needs to be more oversight over rail lines in the wake of the Paulsboro derailment.
According to state officials, 285 bears were killed during this year’s bear hunt compared to 469 last year. Tittel said those numbers show a drop in bear population, which means a hunt might not be necessary.
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“I think we first need to have a real management plan, one that educates the people who live in bear country, one that helps protect habitat where the bears live and manage food sources like garbage. And I think if we do those things, we really don’t need a hunt,” Tittel said. “We don’t believe that this hunt was necessary because we don’t have a management plan that actually manages bears in our state.”
Tittel said the state is responsible and shouldn’t allow people to put garbage out at night or feed bears because that will increase the population and also make bears see humans as a food source. Managing food and garbage while protecting bears’ habitat and educating the public will stop the need for a hunt, according to Tittel.
He believes having another hunt next year is a bad idea and could threaten the bear population. “The fact that numbers are dropping so dramatically shows that there’s fewer and fewer bears,” Tittel said. “We forget that back in 1970 there were fewer than 50 bears in the entire state. At that time we hunted the bears pretty much out of New Jersey and I’m concerned we may end up doing that again instead of having a management plan that actually works.”
After Hurricane Sandy destroyed parts of New Jersey, Tittel said the state needs to rebuild in a smarter way, limiting development in some areas to keep people and property safe. As an example, he said Barnegat Bay in Mantoloking should have been left open where it met the ocean to help clean the bay better and when there is a storm surge, the water would go there instead of homes.
“There’s some places we should rebuild and most of the places we should. There’s other places where we need to limit development or keep development out,” Tittel said. “And other places we need to step back from the water a little further, build a little higher to protect people and property for the future.”
When asked how Gov. Chris Christie has handled the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Tittel said, “Well I don’t think you can just automatically pass a blanket order that says you can rebuild infrastructure in the same place in the same way without getting permits. They were destroyed. So it’s either a waste of money or we’re actually going to be putting that infrastructure back in the same place and have it get destroyed again. And I don’t think that makes sense.”
Tittel said officials should move the infrastructure to a safer place when rebuilding the shore area and plan regionally to develop a cohesive plan for the coast “so that when we rebuild we make it better and that will make us long-term a better state because it will attract more tourists, it’ll protect our beaches better. Restoring natural systems like wetlands and dunes, we know that helps protect properties as well. So we need to have an overall comprehensive plan for the coast so that when we come back stronger, we’ll be better and I think that’ll help make sure we have a Jersey Shore for future generations.”
The train derailment in Paulsboro released toxic chemicals into the air that caused home evacuations and school closures. Tittel said the regulations for trains and cargo should be updated. “We need to have the federal government change its rules so that state inspectors can go there, that there are more federal inspectors,” he said. “People don’t realize that there are trains with hazardous materials going through many of our communities on a daily basis and even the first responders in the towns don’t know it.”
Education and oversight is key, according to Tittel. “I think we need to do better at educating and inspecting and having oversight because it was terrible what happened, but it could be worse the next time with something even more dangerous and so we need to fix what we’re doing and eliminate some loopholes and create some more oversight,” he said.