Draft Black Bear Conservation Plan for California available for comment until June 14, 2024

[sierrahunter]

The State of California has produced a Draft Black Bear Conservation Plan, which will fundamentally change how it manages black bears (see link below).

• The plan will change how California determines if bear populations are healthy. Instead of using bear tooth aging to establish population size and status (which is very outdated), the plan would use integrated population modeling, which is much more accurate. Using this methodology, California estimates there are 65,000 black bears in the State, which is much higher than previous estimates.
• The plan divides the State of CA into 5 "Bear Conservation Regions" within which bear populations will be monitored and managed (including harvest limits). This would open the opportunity for regionally specific tags, but I have not read that this is the intent.
• The plan itself does not indicate management decisions, and instead leaves that to subsequent F&G Commission deliberations.

The goals of the plan are twofold: 1) to conserve black bear populations that are abundant..., and 2) provide opportunities for black bear hunting, viewing, etc. To accomplish the first goal, the Department of Fish and Wildlife will have to establish that populations are not declining, as before. This seems reasonable, but they are using a 90% confidence threshold to determine this. This is unusual, as typically, scientific literature uses a 95% confidence threshold to determine significance. It essentially means that the State could curtail hunting opportunities if they are 90% confident that bear populations are declining. I don't like this and commented on it, but they won't change it.

I can see at least one potentially vulnerability with the plan. The Humane Society has managed to eliminate bobcat hunting in California because they argued that there was insufficient data to know anything about their populations. This bear conservation plan sets a fairly high bar for monitoring that I'm not sure the State will be able to accomplish given fluctuating budgets. If the State cannot monitor according to the plan, will they cease bear hunting or be vulnerable to litigation to that end?

This plan will receive very little comment from hunters and a great deal of comment from the humane society and other "antis". Please consider sending a comment from a hunter's perspective at the below link (the plan is there, too). Such comments let the Commission know that hunters are watching this process.

Black Bear

 

[Farmer1pat]

Good thoughts @sierrahunter . I have already sent my comments in regarding the plan from the standpoint of a hunter. We need as many California based hunters as possible to comment on the plan in support of hunting and expanding black bear hunting opportunities. This feels like our first opportunity in a long time to have a hunters voice heard with regards to black bears. The last time was when the legislators tried to take it away completely only a couple years ago. It seems to have almost backfired on them now, and it prompted the dfw to do a real study on the population numbers to confirm that bear harvest is sustainable.
The plan to me seemed generally positive for hunting. There is some stuff in there that I don’t like, but it finally feels like the DFW is addressing the fact that bears are expanding and something needs to be changed.
I personally like the idea of black bear zones. It seems antiquated to have one harvest limit for all of the state. Hopefully they can use the zones to allow for more harvest in certain areas that need it and can sustain it.