Fight over CA Black Bear Hunt Heats Up This Week
Suzanne Potter, Producer
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
A controversial proposal to let individual hunters kill two bears per season instead of one is on the agenda at a meeting of the California Fish and Game Commission's Wildlife Resources Committee tomorrow and Thursday. The state allows hunters as a group to kill 1,700 hundred black bears per year, and 1,300 were taken in 2022.
Judie Mancuso, founder and president of the group Social Compassion in Legislation, opposes hunting.
"From an ethical and moral standpoint, we absolutely shouldn't be hunting bears," Mancuso said. "This is purely a trophy sport. It's not about being overrun with bears."
Both conservationists and the pro-hunting advocacy group Howl for Wildlife are rallying members to weigh in at the meeting. Hunters have submitted a petition to authorize a second bear tag for the Fall hunt and to allow tags to be resold if they are not used within the season, which starts in August with two weeks of archery hunting and then transitions to rifle hunting through late December.
The Wildlife committee will also take comment on the development of a new bear management plan, which was last updated in 1998. Mancuso wants the hunt to be stopped until the new bear-management plan is approved.
"We don't want to be killing any bears because this management plan hasn't been completed," she said. "And the department has no idea how many bears we even have in the state. "
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife's 2020 bear take report estimated the population to be about 15,000 animals in the official hunting grounds. And bear tags are big business. In 2020, California sold 30,000 tags and raised more than $1.5-million for wildlife management and conservation.
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