In 2021, the Murphy administration allowed the state's bear management plan to expire, making bear hunting illegal anywhere in New Jersey; the state's last bear hunt was in the fall of 2020. By 2022, Murphy realized that his knee-jerk reaction to animal rights activists complaint about the hunt caused additional public safety problems for New Jersey.
Since Murphy “passively” ended the bear hunt, there has been a 237% increase in bear damage and nuisance reports, received by the DEP between January 1, 2022, and October 21, 2022, compared to the same time period in 2021.
As a result of these consequences, Murphy will finally allow the hunt to occur this year to try to stop the increasing bear encounters that come with an out of control rise in the bear population. The black bear sightings had already steadily increased since 1995, so Murphy’s decision to stop the bear hunt exponentially increased the population.
It was obviously was a mistake to allow the hunt to expire and bend to the irrational will of the activists. In 2020, the same activists even tried to ban the bear hunt due to the pandemic. They finally got their way in 2021.
The activists are at it again, petitioning Murphy to stop the bear hunt, which has over 35K signatures. What’s more bothersome, is that NJ couldn’t even get 5K people to sign a petition for the physical safety and mental health of their kids to get the masks off during school hours last year.
At least this time, murphy is thinking about the kids instead of the activists. Lets just hope this holds.
“There are a lot of considerations to something like this, number one is keeping people alive - particularly our kids," - Governor Murphy