HUNTING OPS STOPPED

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:

Under pressure from Republican
governor Christie Whitman, 26 outraged
municipalities, and the threat of a
lawsuit from the New Jersey Animal Rights
Alliance, the New Jersey Fish and Game
Council on September 11 reversed its own
June decision to open the first bear hunting
season in the state since 1972––just nine
days before it was to start. The Fish and
Game Council instead agreed to give
Whitman’s own $1 million five-point plan to
discourage nuisance bears time to work.
There were an estimated 100 bears in New
Jersey in 1972, but are now about 1,200,
who are blamed for breaking into 29 homes,
attacking 25 farm animals, and attacking
40 pets during 1999.

The Montana Prairie Dog
Working Group, appointed to try to keep
prairie dogs from receiving federal protection
as a threatened species, in midSeptember
agreed to recommend that the
present year-round open season on prairie
dogs be closed on public lands from March
1 to July 1, the months when juveniles first
emerge from dens and are most easily killed.
The Arkansas Game and Fish
Commission on September 13 approved for
public review a set of three proposed hunting
ranch regulations which require hunting
enclosures to consist of at least 500 acres,
60% wooded, and forbid hunting introduced
species.