By Nick Pinizzotto, president and CEO of the Sportsmen’s Alliance.
If you’re a betting person, you could bet the house on it. When it comes to bear hunting and management of bear populations across the country, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is going to have something to say about it. What you can also bet on is, whoever their mouthpiece is on the issue will offer up quotes that make it clear that their rhetoric has nothing to do with sound wildlife management and everything to do with emotion and pushing the group’s extreme agenda.
The recent bear management issue to ruffle the feathers of HSUS brass is in Kentucky where the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources is proposing to expand the state’s bear hunt by allowing the taking of 10 more bears during the 2015 season than the previous quota of 25.. In a July 3 article in the Lexington Herald-Leader, HSUS spokeswoman Wendy Keefover offered two quotes that make it clear that the organization’s motives have nothing to do with scientific bear management. Keefover stated, “They should be augmenting the population rather than killing it,” and “We are not asking them to stop the hunt, we want them to stay with their current regulations…This is too much too soon.”
I wonder what level of experience or expertise is behind these comments. Why does Ms. Keefover, or HSUS for that matter, feel they are more qualified to make a management decision like this than the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources? Karen Waldrop, a deputy commissioner with the agency said it best by stating “We are very responsible with the management of our wildlife species in this state. We put a lot of work into our season and our quota because we want to make sure we protect wildlife in Kentucky.”
We have experienced and well-qualified state wildlife management agencies across the country to make decisions based on good science, and to regulate proven methods for sustainably controlling animal populations. Professional wildlife managers in Kentucky, Maine, Florida or anywhere else in the country are only motivated by doing what is best to keep bear populations healthy, and part of that equation is removing a percentage of those animals through hunting.
Yes, some must die so that more can live healthier lives, and there is no more humane way to accomplish that than through hunting. While that may hurt the feelings of HSUS and their supporters, that doesn’t make them an expert on the issue or give them a license to continually cost all of us time and money to defend proven scientific practices that are truly in the best interest of bears, or all wildlife for that matter. Enough is enough already.