From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000--

Hunting ops stopped

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
mid-September 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.