Courtesy BearWatch A BearWatch member who lives in the Manzano Mountains puts out a childs wading pool in the summers, and bears including this mother bear come to drink and bathe.

The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish has recently released its Final Adopted Bear Rule for the next five years, 2020-24, and the news is not good for New Mexico’s bears or for those of us who had hoped for some reasonable conservation for this species.

BearWatch did its homework to provide input for the rule-making by analyzing past harvest statistics: the number of bears killed by hunters per year, ages of harvested female and male bears, hunter success rates, and a multitude of other pertinent facts.

BearWatch met with six of Gov. Lujan Grisham’s new game commissioners for two-hour meetings held at their convenience in different locations in the state. We met to express our concern about the past eight years of the department’s mismanagement in regard to the over-harvest of New Mexico’s bears, especially female bears, and to suggest remedies that could be incorporated into the new Bear Rule.

The yearly statewide harvest limits have been so high – 804 total; 40% or 318 females – that they were never reached, which meant that there were no limits or management in place. Unfortunately, the commissioners chose to disregard biological science and harvest stats, and made no change to the faux “limits.”

BearWatch’s research showed an alarming statistic: the average age of killed female bears, sows, is now 6.5 years, or at the threshold of a red-line age 6 recognized by BearWatch’s bear biologist experts for maintaining the population. Since New Mexico’s sows don’t have their first cub until around 5.7 years old and reproduce only every two years afterward, if the average killed sow is less than approximately 6 years old, the population cannot reproduce itself. This is a major concern and is being ignored by the commission in the new Bear Rule with the statewide annual sow harvest limit set at an outrageous 318, triple what it should be.

As BearWatch predicted, when hunt limits were doubled during the past eight years, you have a declining bear population, with hunters unable to find male bears, so they irresponsibly kill female bears – 2019 showed only a 10% hunter success rate. Female bears are the future reproducers and better management should be in place to protect them.

We also reported to the commissioners that for the past two years, when mother bears were killed by cars, etc., and there were surviving cubs, those cubs were being destroyed by Game and Fish officers or being released too young on their own to starve or be predated upon by other wildlife. In the past, with the department’s help, Dr. (Kathleen) Ramsay’s bear cub rehabilitation foundation took care of as many as 30 cubs some summers. Game and Fish officers took no cubs to Ramsay this summer and only one last year. BearWatch finds this new practice unethical and callous.

Commissioners did change one rule for the next four years. They were concerned about the heat in the southern part of the state for bear hunters and their hounds, so they extended their hunt into late November and December. Of course, late-winter hunting is unfair to a bear since they are in torpor, an almost drugged state, and not up to a hound pursuit. Denned females with cubs can be disturbed, abandon their cubs and be killed. This makes for an unfair and unethical hunt. Commissioners were aware of this, but chose to give the hound-hunters their late November-December hunt, anyway.

Bears are the most intelligent wild species in North America. They are omnivores, with 90% of their diet consisting of vegetable matter. Unlike the grizzly, they are not considered to be an aggressive animal. The black bear is the logo of the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. I often ask myself why New Mexico’s bears are treated with such disdain by the Game and Fish Department and this Game Commission.

It takes courage and leadership to reject bad advice that is being foisted on you by the same people who have mismanaged this species for the past eight years. Unfortunately, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s newly appointed commissioners were not up to that task and New Mexico’s black bear population is at risk because of them.

Read this Guest Column in the Albuquerque Journal

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Now Queen Elizabeth II is building on her fashion-forward reputation: The 93-year-old monarch will stop buying clothing made with real fur, the queen’s longtime designer and personal assistant wrote in a recently released memoir.

The queen’s confidante, Angela Kelly, wrote, “If Her Majesty is due to attend an engagement in particularly cold weather, from 2019 onward fake fur will be used to make sure she stays warm.”

The mink lining of a coat that Queen Elizabeth II wore to Slovakia in 2008 has been replaced with fake fur, according to Ms. Kelly’s memoir, “The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe.”

The move comes as a number of fashion labels such as Prada, Versace and Coach have opted to stop using real fur in their collections.

Buckingham Palace, in a statement issued to news media outlets based in the United Kingdom, confirmed the report — but with a caveat. It pointed out that the queen won’t be ridding her wardrobe of ceremonial robes and other official garments that are lined with fur, and that she could still wear them on occasion.

Humane groups commended the queen for her fashion choice, saying it reflected the mood of the British public toward the use of real fur.

“Our Head of State going fur-free sends a powerful message that fur is firmly out of fashion and does not belong with Brand Britain,” Claire Bass, executive director of Humane Society Internationals U.K. division, said in a statement.

Ms. Bass said the queen’s decision was a boon for the anti-fur movement.

“The U.K. banned fur farming almost two decades ago because it was deemed too cruel, now we must finish the job and ban fur sales too,” Ms. Bass said. “We are calling on the British government to follow Her Majesty’s example and make the U.K. the first country in the world to ban the sale of animal fur.”

The queen, who assumed the throne in 1952 after her father died, has often been photographed wearing fur over the years.

PETA, the animal rights group, also commended the queen for the move.

“The queen’s decision is in line with the many forward-thinking consumers, businesses and nations that are recognizing that innovative faux-fur fabrics are better for the environment and spare animals a miserable life and a bloody, painful death,” the group said.

PETA also renewed its call for the queen’s guard to discontinue its use of bearskin hats and replace them with fake fur.

However, the British Fur Trade Association said in a statement that it was “pleased that the queen will continue to wear fur garments contrary to the claims of certain groups.”

“Natural sustainable fur that is subject to high animal welfare standards is part of the solution to the problem of fast fashion whilst faux alternatives are made from plastics that unlike natural furs are polluting and do not biodegrade and is why people are choosing to wear the real thing,” said Nicholas Dunn-McAfee, public policy and engagement manager for the association.

Read the article in the New York Times »

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Despite a seven-year campaign by wildlife advocates to remove traps from public lands, the game commission continues to promote the trapping and killing of countless thousands of wild animals throughout the state. For just $20, trappers can buy a license to set as many traps and kill as many animals as they want in a manner so cruel it has been banned in over 100 countries. These traps are not marked, so anyone on public lands is at risk. Current rules allow some 500 trappers to hold the entire state hostage for a product we don’t need. Trappers kill our wildlife for personal profit, privatizing and vandalizing a public asset. This massive, indiscriminate killing is not management in any real sense and serves no constructive purpose in modern society. It’s a sad fact that our game commission is focused on continuing the exploitation of vulnerable wildlife.

Read the entire Guest Column in the Albuquerque Journal »

The post A Toxic Relationship: Wildlife management is failing the animals and the people of NM appeared first on TrapFree New Mexico.

New Mexicans are increasingly moving toward a consensus that foothold trapping of furbearer animals ought to be more closely regulated — if not mostly banned, as our neighbors in Arizona did in 1994. Unfortunately, at the same time the New Mexico State Game Commission has taken important steps in the opposite direction. Increasingly, the commission seems to serve only a tiny minority — only 1,921 furbearer licenses were sold for 2009-10. But more than 40,000 people hike in areas where traps could be set.

The latest evidence of an out-of-touch game commission came in July, when it ignored 12,000 public comments advocating a ban on trapping on public lands. Worse than ignored — the commission lifted a year-old ban on furbearer trapping in the Gila and Apache national forests that had been enacted to protect reintroduced Mexican gray wolves.

Read the full article in Desert Exposure >

The post Trapped in the Past – The game commission must stop ignoring public concerns about trapping. appeared first on TrapFree New Mexico.