[BeyondtheHorizon]

Originally Posted by CTartist

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/loca...490140801.html

OMG

It's not the only time a bear has broken into home.
It's happened 4 times this month in canton and it happened in bloomfield/torrington as well. Someone is going to get killed. Such idiocy. Someone explain why we can hunt deer, but not bear? Nobody has answered that one. Almost every state that has a bear population has a hunting season for them

That being said, Forget the hunting. We can do some population control by darting them and euthanizing them and giving their meat to pet shelters. Most of the bears are tagged anyway. We euthanize shelter animals, but not bears? No logic. Ct is not yellowstone. Nature handles overpopulation by starving the bears to death and many of these bears are now dumpster bears anyway due to the high population of them. Bears are losing fear and hungry.....bad combination for a 400 pound predator that has been known to kill and eat people. We didn't even use to have bears until recently as they flooded in from the berkshires and their population increased.

[Henry10]

Originally Posted by BeyondtheHorizon

It's not the only time a bear has broken into home.
It's happened 4 times this month in canton and it happened in bloomfield/torrington as well. Someone is going to get killed. Such idiocy. Someone explain why we can hunt deer, but not bear? Nobody has answered that one. Almost every state that has a bear population has a hunting season for them

That being said, Forget the hunting. We can do some population control by darting them and euthanizing them and giving their meat to pet shelters. Most of the bears are tagged anyway. We euthanize shelter animals, but not bears? No logic. Ct is not yellowstone. Nature handles overpopulation by starving the bears to death and many of these bears are now dumpster bears anyway due to the high population of them. Bears are losing fear and hungry.....bad combination for a 400 pound predator that has been known to kill and eat people. We didn't even use to have bears until recently as they flooded in from the berkshires and their population increased.

CT Is considering hunting bears. At this pace, not gonna be surprised if they allow it. If not all, some neighboring states allow it.

We are here as humans, and not going anywhere. We have wildlife managers now, whom we have delegated the powers to manage this situation.

[Cambium]

I can't find a good source that shows population by state. The site I got this from is no longer around.


But will post the graph I made again.

Maine: 25,000
Pennsylvania: 14,000
New York: 6,500
New Hampshire: 5,000
New Jersey: 3,500
Massachusetts: 3,000
Maryland: 600
Connecticut: 350
Rhode Island: 10


It's not the percentage increase we need to focus on, it's the amount.

However, I'd like to know the bear per square mile of each state before I say "Under 500 is nothing!"



And here are the Top 10 sightings for CT. (Remember, these are sightings, not the actual number of Bears)

Avon: 455
Farmington: 451
Granby: 383
Simsbury: 353
Burlington: 323
Torrington: 276
New Milford: 275
Southbury: 228
Newtown: 209
Canton: 204

[BeyondtheHorizon]

Originally Posted by Cambium

I can't find a good source that shows population by state. The site I got this from is no longer around.


But will post the graph I made again.

Maine: 25,000
Pennsylvania: 14,000
New York: 6,500
New Hampshire: 5,000
New Jersey: 3,500
Massachusetts: 3,000
Maryland: 600
Connecticut: 350
Rhode Island: 10


It's not the percentage increase we need to focus on, it's the amount.

However, I'd like to know the bear per square mile of each state before I say "Under 500 is nothing!"



And here are the Top 10 sightings for CT. (Remember, these are sightings, not the actual number of Bears)

Avon: 455
Farmington: 451
Granby: 383
Simsbury: 353
Burlington: 323
Torrington: 276
New Milford: 275
Southbury: 228
Newtown: 209
Canton: 204

That number is from quite a few years ago. The population has been exploding.

You can't just compare bears per square mile. You have large tracts of wilderness in states like maine. CT is heavily developed in comparison. You can't compare heavily developed small states to states with large tracts of wilderness for obvious reasons. For example, you could never compare available bear habitat in long island or rhode island vs Wyoming. In yellowstone 500 bears is not overpopulated, but 10 bears for nyc would be LOL

BTW- 500 bears is about the number of grizzly bears(which need more land than blacks) in all of yellowstone and I think yellowstone is over half the size of the state of ct.

[WouldLoveTo]

I saw 2 per square mile for Great Smoky Mountain National Park - they estimate 1500 live in the park.

[BeyondtheHorizon]

Originally Posted by WouldLoveTo

I saw 2 per square mile for Great Smoky Mountain National Park - they estimate 1500 live in the park.

The state of CT is not a national park. It's heavily developed and small. People live here and we have cities and suburbs last time I checked. The area has been settled for hundreds of years.

2 per square mile would put CT at over 11,000 bears. Good luck with that. Dumpster diving bears would be all over hartford.

[parentologist]

They're flooding in from the Berkshires? Build a wall!

Seriously, we cannot have bears as common as deer in the suburbs. I love seeing them, but it's just not safe. And they're so hungry because there are too many of them - they're outstripping their food supply, and so are aggressively seeking food wherever they can find it. We can do everything right - secure garbage cans inside the garage until right before pickup, store grills inside the garage, get rid of the bear, uh, I mean bird feeders. Even then, cooking and food odors from inside homes attract them. Remember the woman in Avon who was baking cookies and the bear showed up at her closed slider?

It's time for a hunting season on them. As for the meat, it's supposed to be delicious. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about how bear meat was her favorite, when she was a little girl. I wonder what the toxin level would be? Fact is that a large amount of a bear's diet is vegetarian, so shouldn't be too bad. High end restaurants in NYC would probably be thrilled to serve bear. Between selling the meat, and licensing fees for hunting, the program would make money for the DEP for animal control of the rest of the bear population.

Better that, than someone being killed by a bear. I've been worried for years about sending my kids down to the bear stop, I mean, bus stop, to wait for the school bus.

[WouldLoveTo]

Originally Posted by BeyondtheHorizon

The state of CT is not a national park. It's heavily developed and small. People live here and we have cities and suburbs last time I checked. The area has been settled for hundreds of years.

2 per square mile would put CT at over 11,000 bears. Good luck with that. Dumpster diving bears would be all over hartford.

Really? That's what you got out of my post? All I did was post it is as example of a listed amount of bears per square mile - in a national forest which is obviously not a developed state. Sheesh. The things people will read into.

The point was, if a national forest is showing 2 per square mile, CT has nowhere near that many. A square mile is not that big. But I agree with you that population is exploding and it looks like the state is not really publishing any specifics on that.

[AntonioR]

Originally Posted by parentologist

They're flooding in from the Berkshires? Build a wall!

A well built wall would definitely stop new bear migrants from flooding in. Of course, this will not stop the cubs born to bears that already crossed into the state.

I remember reading that in many places in the country where highways are built higher than the land (in effect creating a wall), they also make sure they build passageways for bears and other animals to cross from one side to another. I guess without those passageways the animals have no way of crossing, it brings the migration to a screeching halt.


On a more serious note, people should consider building sturdier and higher fences along the perimeter of their homes/properties with well built and secure gates. A well built fence could definitely stop bears and other dangerous animals from wandering into anyone's backyard and into people's homes.

[BeyondtheHorizon]

Originally Posted by AntonioR

. A well built fence could definitely stop bears and other dangerous animals from wandering into anyone's backyard and into people's homes.

Unless it's a very high electric fence with cleared trees on both sides, it's not working and that really isn't feasible. People shouldn't live like prisoners
in their own homes

They can tear open a car door or trunk at the hinges. Literally ripping off the door. These are very powerful animals.

Here's what was left of a car that a bear broke into
"“The doors were ajar. The two front seats were shredded to bare metal. Both doors were completely ripped, and the air bags had been ripped out. There really isn’t a piece of plastic inside that’s still intact,”



https://news.softpedia.com/news/Bear...s-396616.shtml

Oh and they can climb trees as well.

This same thing happened in CT
https://turnto10.com/news/local/bear...cut-womans-car