Shannon Keeney

ENVL 3121: Wildlife Management

April 22, 2016
New Jersey Residents Opinion on Black Bear Management
Introduction
Most people today live in urban and suburban environments, where their connection to
nature and wildlife is minimal. Since people have moved away from the rural setting of growing,
hunting, and fishing their own food they are more disconnected from nature. This impacts their
opinion on the humane management method of hunting. People who live in rural areas live closer
to nature and are more likely to accept hunting, while people who live in more urbanized areas
are more likely to be unaccepting of it. (B&R 2003) The black bear population in New Jersey has
been growing since the 1980s, this is causing them to expand their range from the northwestern
corner of New Jersey. (NJ Division of Fish & Wildlife 2016) Black Bears have been sighted in
all 21 counties but the bears are concentrated in four northern counties: Sussex, Morris, Passaic,
and Warren. (Harker and Bates 2007) People living in these counties have daily, weekly,
monthly, or annual encounters with bears. Those who live outside of these counties may have
encounters with black bears but it is much more uncommon. A survey was created to assess the
opinions of New Jersey residents on black bear management and hunting, the respondents were
required to provide the county they live in to see if there is a difference in opinion between
people who live in bear country to people who live outside of it and are disconnected from the
black bear population. Since wildlife management is expanding to include stakeholder input in
management decisions, it is important that overall human opinions are understood.
Methods
A survey was created using Google Forms and was sent out through a post on my
personal Facebook page and two Facebook groups. The questions on this survey aimed to gain
New Jersey residents opinions on wildlife, wildlife management, and black bears in New Jersey.
This survey was set up to first understand how New Jersey residents interacted and felt about
nature and wildlife then to understand if they thought wildlife needed to be managed and lastly to
find out their opinions on New Jerseys black bear population and how it should be managed.
The survey was set up like this to ease the respondent into the more complicated questions about
wildlife management, also to help understand why the respondent feels as they do towards
management methods, specifically hunting. The survey was opened for a week and the results
were put into an Excel file for interpretation. This was a qualitative survey to allow for easier
comparison on respondents answers. There were survey questions that had choice answers, like
strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, and strongly agree. The answers to these questions
were combined to allow for better interpretation. Strongly disagree and disagree were combined
to be just disagree and strongly agree and agree were combined to just be agree, neutral remained
unchanged. The answers to the question about how many encounters residents had with black

bears annually, was also modified from the answer 0, 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, and 6+ to be 0, 1-4, and 5+,
to allow for easier interpretation and a better representation of the data.
Results
There were 61 respondents to the survey that was open for approximately a week.
Respondents living in Passaic County, mostly disagreed with hunting being a humane
management method. (See Figure 1) Respondents who felt they had a strong emotional bond
with wildlife, mostly disagreed with hunting being a humane management method. (See Figure
2) Averages were used to assess the number of bear encounters to if the respondent believed the
population needed to be managed. The average was used because there were only 4 respondents
who had over 5 encounters with bears annually and the average prevented a bias interpretation.
Respondents who agreed that the black bears should be managed were scored as a 3, if they were
neutral they were given a 2, and if they disagreed a 1. Respondents who had no encounters with
black bears had an average of 26, 1-4 interactions an average of 11, and over 5 interactions an
average of 4.

Do you think hunting is a humane wildlife management method?

18
16
14
12
10

Number of Respondents

Agree

Neural

Disagree

4
2
0

County Respondnt Lives In (NJ)

Figure 1: A graph of the county the respondent lives in and their answer to the question do you
think hunting is a humane wildlife management method?, the legend corresponds to their
answer to that question.

Does respondent's connection to wildlife effect their opinion on hunting?

30
25
20
Agree

Number of Respondents 15

Neutral
Disagree

10
5
0

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

I feel a strong emotional bond with wildlife (respondents opinion)

Figure 2: A graph that represents the respondents answer to I feel a strong emotional bond with
wildlife and their answer as agree, neutral and disagree. The bars in the graph represent the
respondents answer to do you think hunting is a humane management method?, the key
corresponds to their answer to that question.
Discussion
Respondents who live in and around bear country (Passaic, Morris, Sussex, and Warren
Counties) mostly disagreed with hunting being a humane management method. This is surprising
especially since there is a lot of forested area in these counties, it would be expected that
residents in these counties would be more accepting of it. It was expected that people who felt a
strong emotional bond with wildlife would disagree to hunting being a humane management
method. It was found that on average people who had less experience with black bears agreed
that the population needs to be managed. To better understand why residents who had no
experience with black bears agreed that the population needed to be managed, a question that
asked if they feared black bears would be added. This survey effectively answered the questions
I had, although some of the answers were surprising. Also to better understand New Jersey
residents and their opinions on these topics, I would try to get a wider range of people to answer
since a majority of the respondents were from Passaic County, which could have caused some
bias.

References
B&R. 2003. Chapter 10: Hunting and Trapping. Wildlife Ecology: 178-199
Harker, D. and C. Bates. 2007. The Black Bear Hunt in New Jersey: A Constructionist Analysis
of an Intractable Conflict. Society and Animals 15:329-352
NJ Division of Fish & Wildlife. 2016. Know the Bear Facts Black Bears in New Jersey.