Stowe residents are on the lookout for three orphaned bear cubs. On September 14, a hunter entered the Topnotch Condominiums area in Stowe and killed a mother bear. So far, Vermont Fish & Wildlife (VF&W) only acknowledged that the bear was female. But residents had seen her in preceding weeks and months with several cubs. One resident saw and recognized the mother bear just 15 minutes before she heard two gunshots nearby and then saw the camo-clad hunter drive off in his pickup. The next day, the resident took a video of several cubs believed to be the orphans in a tree very near the killing, where they'd likely fled for safety. The property was not posted against hunting.
VF&W was informed of this killing the next day and given the video. VF&W bear-kill report confirms the female bear kill from September 14 and the hunter has posted publicly on FaceBook about it. VF&W made no effort to contact the hunter about the kill in the condominium area or the cubs.
By hunting season, first year bear cubs travel with the mothers in search of food; they are in hyperphagia, the state where they are trying constantly to gain weight to survive the upcoming winter. Yearling bears are about 18 months old and typically leave their mothers in June or July. They need that period with her for protection and to learn myriad survival skills.
It is unknown whether this hunter saw the bear cubs before he shot the mother or took any steps at all to determine whether she had cubs. According to VF&W, it doesn't matter because Vermont is one of a very small minority of states/provinces in the U.S. and Canada that still allow the killing of mother bears with cubs.
Folks from the Stowe Bear Project and from Protect Our Wildlife have been involved in the efforts to locate and rescue the orphaned Stowe cubs, which so far have been unsuccessful. They likely will starve and cannot survive the coming winter.
Such killings usually occur out in the woods with no witnesses to speak up. But the deliberate killing of a mother bear in the presence of her two cubs was captured on a homeowner's security video in Fayston in 2022. One cub was found starved to death nearby a month later, the other was never seen again. A petition was filed seeking a regulation prohibiting such deliberate killings, but the VF&W board of directors in 2023 voted – unanimously – to continue to allow the deliberate killing of mother bears with cubs even though about 90% of U.S. states and Canadian provinces prohibit such killings. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine are among the only holdouts.
The increased hunter education the VF&W promised is insufficient, and still cannot escape the inherent contradiction in VF&W's stance. VF&W tells hunters, in essence, "we'd rather you not kill mother bears with cubs because they will die, but we've made it legal for you to do so."
The cruelty of leaving helpless bear cubs to starve is a primary reason to prohibit such killings. Another is that VF&W's allowing hunters to kill mother bears with cubs violates VF&W's own one killed-bear per year limit ("bag limit"). Most orphaned cubs will die prolonged and painful deaths by starvation and exposure, which means the hunter exceeded the bag limit by indirectly killing the cubs. Yet another is that, without their mother, orphaned cubs will more likely resort to human sources of food in trash, dumpsters, birdfeeders, etc., leading to human-bear conflicts that rarely end well for the bear.
What would it take for VF&W to reconsider its position? Perhaps in addition to hearing from the general public, it would help for VF&W to finally hear from ethical hunters who would not deliberately or recklessly kill a mother bear with cubs and who will not put up with unethical hunters who do.
Phelon lives in Fayston.
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