Views on Black Bear Management in New Jersey

Abstract

Fierce controversies over wildlife management imply polarized public opinion, but this may be more complex, as in the debate over renewed black bear hunting in New Jersey. Statements about black bears and management options were assessed by Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) staff, environmental scientists, pro-hunt and anti-hunt citizen group members, and other bear-country residents using Q analysis. Four perspectives included “protectors” (largely anti-hunt members), “hunt supporters” (largely pro-hunt and DFW members), “movers,” and “educators.” Protectors and hunt supporters were not truly polarized, occupying separate orthogonal factors rather than opposite ends of a single factor. These two groups disagreed fiercely on some topics (primarily hunt rationale and consequences), but agreed on others, or one was indifferent on topics eliciting strong views from the other. Identification of two other unique perspectives also underlines complex views of black bear management in this urban state.

Keywords:

• bears
• hunt
• Q analysis

Notes

1. As for similarities or differences among our groupings beyond their views on bears, with a sample size of 43 these results might be an artifact simply of the people we interviewed. We assessed demographic differences (e.g., age, education, local residence time) between people who defined protectors, hunt supporters, and movers (educators featured only two defining sorts, including a strong anti-Educator). Differences significant at the Bonferroni-corrected level (p < .01695, ensuring p < .05 for three contrasts) occurred only for protectors, who differed from hunt supporters and movers in being more female, and from hunt supporters in reporting less experience (β = .74) of bear attacks on pets or livestock, or property damage (but no difference in bear sightings). Contact first author for details.

2. Don Carlos et al. (2009) operationalized “context” as the severity of a bear–human “incident.”