Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) Commissioner Katie Dykes on Monday threw her department’s support behind legislation establishing a black bear hunting season in Connecticut, saying the population needs to be controlled to reduce human-bear conflicts and that she has the support of Gov. Ned Lamont.

“DEEP is in support, and the Lamont administration supports, the authorization of a managed bear hunting season in the state,” Dykes said to the General Assembly’s Environment Committee during public hearing. “We’ve seen the frequency and severity of human-bear conflicts increase significantly… We’ve been tracking this over time that shows these trends are increasing.”

DEEP compiled a State of the Bears report for 2024 showing that Connecticut had more than three times the number of human-bear conflicts than neighboring states where there are significantly more bears but also have bear hunting. While the majority of those conflicts involve bears getting into trash and birdfeeders, there were 67 incidents of bears breaking into homes in Connecticut in 2024 and two attacks on humans.

“We know in the states surrounding us that a regulated bear hunt is a tool in addition to many other tools that we have in place to help reduce this public safety risk and help reduce the amount of human-bear conflicts,” Dykes said.

Jason Hawley, wildlife biologist for DEEP said that bear hunts often remove the “boldest” of the bears who cause the most problems, and the population begins to become “more wary around humans.”

“Massachusetts has one of the most conservative bear hunts in the nation, they harvest less than three percent of their bear population, but they had one home entry in 2024, and we had almost seventy,” Hawley said. “They have 4,500 bears, we have twelve, thirteen hundred, so what’s happening is the bears they’re harvesting are super-habituated and food-conditioned bears that are dangerous and that’s why they don’t have the conflicts that we have.”

Connecticut is one of the few states with a black bear population that doesn’t allow for a hunt, and while the possibility of establishing a hunt has been debated for years in the General Assembly, it has repeatedly been rebuffed by the public and environmental groups, who the hunt is merely for “trophy hunting,” and that it will do little to decrease the human-bear conflicts.

Tanya Bourgoin of the Sierra Club of Connecticut opposed the legislation and called for more study to be conducted on Connecticut’s bear population before instituting a management plan. 

“I do believe in a good management plan; however I don’t believe we’ve done enough studies right now to have a bear management plan,” Bourgoin said. “We are working off of statistics that are coming out of New Jersey or are over ten years old. I believe that the very first step in a good management plan is to thoroughly and accurately assess our situation. We are not New Jersey, we are not New York, we are not Massachusetts; we are Connecticut.” 

Laura Simon, president of the Connecticut Wildlife Rehabilitators Association and wildlife ecologist, said she was frustrated to see “how science is being misused in lawmaking, regarding the bear hunt legislation.

“Studies absolutely do not support recreational hunting, or hunting, to control nuisance conflicts,” Simon said, adding DEEP was relying heavily on a study out of New Jersey that has multiple flaws. “There’s good reason that hunting does not reduce conflicts, it’s not effective or efficient to arbitrarily pluck bears out of the woods and hope that they are the problem bears.”

“If Connecticut wants to allow sport-hunting, that is a separate conversation, and that’s one that needs to be opened up to the public for input, but it is disingenuous and misleading to try to justify sport hunting under the guise of problem control,” Simon said. “It will not work.”

Several lawmakers on the committee appeared skeptical a hunt would decrease human-bear conflicts.

“I share some of the skepticism of my colleagues regarding boldest bears being the ones that are going to be targeted by the hunt,” Rep. Bendan Chafee, D-Middletown, said, noting that bears have been spotted in Waterbury, Hartford, and on the Berlin Turnpike. “I just don’t understand how allowing a hunt in northwestern Connecticut is going to prevent those bears from coming into conflict with people.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to pursue locking garbage cans and making sure they don’t come into contact with food as easily to avoid conflicts as opposed to a hunt?” Chafee continued.

Rep. Mike Demicco, D-Farmington, said he was “a little troubled by the bill” because it gave “carte blanche” discretion to DEEP to create and manage a possible bear hunting season.  “There’s really no parameters that I can see,” Demicco said. “To me, that’s troubling.”

Thus far, DEEP has pushed a public awareness campaign, reminding people not to put out bird feeders and to secure their garbage cans to deter the bears from associating humans with food, but so far it appears conflicts are only increasing as the bear population increases. 

Recent legislation allows farmers to seek a permit to kill a bear if it is damaging their crops or livestock, and DEEP will eliminate bears that have shown signs of aggression. State law also allows bears to be killed in self-defense and DEEP Deputy Commissioner Mason Trumble said there were three instances in which bears were killed in self-defense. Connecticut has also made intentional feeding of bears illegal, although DEEP officials admitted it is difficult to prove intention.

Former Republican State Representative David Wilson, a hunter, testified in support of the bill, recounting a 2022 incident in which a bear attacked a child in his district. Wilson said bears are on his street weekly no matter how much they secure garbage cans and have “come right into my garage.” 

“Connecticut has experienced a growing number of human bear encounters in the past few years driven by a hearty food supply and a lack of natural predators,” Wilson said. “Anything we can do to start to reduce the conflict and perhaps change the habituation of these beasts would be good for the state of Connecticut.” 

Republish This Story

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.