Climate change, ticks, expanding hunting opportunities and living with bears are the new themes of the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Departments proposed 10-year Big Game Plan.

We werent talking as much about climate change 10 years ago, said Mark Scott, director of wildlife at the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, in an interview last Thursday.

Every 10 years, approximately, the department updates its Big Game Plan, which looks at bears, deer, moose and turkey.

Fish & Wildlife Commissioner Louis Porter said in an interview last Thursday these are game animals whose populations are thought to need more in-depth monitoring and regulation by the state. It is a planning document that guides policy and decision-making, it is not regulatory, Porter said. He likened it to a municipal town plan and said nothing in it would stop the state from reacting to a crisis such as an infectious disease.

The draft plan can be viewed online at bit.ly/0305BigPlan. There will be a public meeting about it from 6:30-8:30 p.m. March 18 at White River Valley School, 273 Pleasant St., Bethel. That meeting isnt to be confused with a number of sessions the state will hold on the moose and deer seasons, said Scott, though department officials will be telling people about the Big Game Plan at those as well.

Porter said there is only one public meeting on the Big Game Plan because public participation has been low. Most comments come online to bit.ly/0326PublicMeeting, or via ground mail (to Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, One National Life Drive, Montpelier, VT 05620).

Scott said the current draft is the result of two years of work involving meetings with interested groups.

According to the plans section on climate change, storms are becoming more intense and frequent, winters milder and shorter. It has also been connected to the rise in tick-borne diseases, and the spread of invasive species. While deer, bears and turkeys are highly adaptable to this, moose are having a rougher time.

Unfortunately, moose are struggling, as less predictable and wider extremes in weather patterns will likely cause more dramatic shifts in natural food abundance, reads the plan. The department is actively incorporating climate change mitigation strategies into fish, wildlife and habitat management at multiple scales guided by Vermont Conservation Design. This habitat conservation tool prioritizes key habitat blocks and movement corridors that maximize the ecological function of landscapes, habitats, and their species.

Hunters on the declineAccording to a Big Game Survey conducted by the department, 86% of Vermonters support regulated big-game hunting, but sustaining that level of public support might be difficult in coming years with current and expected changes to the states demographics. According to the department, people within the state, and almost all people moving in from out-of-state, are heading into the urban and suburban areas of Chittenden County.

In 2018, 35% of the states population is estimated to reside in the U.S. Census Bureau-defined Burlington metropolitan area, up from 30% in 1990 and 33% in 2000, and that percentage is expected to continue to steadily increase in the next decade, reads the plan. If national trends hold, suburbanization will likely lead to less knowledge about wildlife, lower exposure to hunters, hunting and hunting as a tool for managing wildlife populations, more emotional and familial feelings towards individual animals, and less hunting and fishing participation. These factors have generally been associated with less understanding and support for regulated hunting.

Porter said the loss of hunters is an issue for several reasons, among them being hunters are a key tool in managing big-game animal populations. The Big Game plan talks about possibly having to raise bag limits to accommodate fewer hunters, even though game meat can be promoted as a local food source.

Scott said that according to surveys, Vermonters like seeing wildlife around where they live. To reduce bear-human conflicts, he said, the Big Game Plan calls for efforts being directed to people in the form of further outreach and education.

Black bear numbers are limited less by the environments carrying capacity and more so by human tolerance of them, according to the plan. Bears can cause a great deal of property damage, can injure humans, and, unlike deer or turkeys, the public is often poorly prepared to interact with them, reads the plan.

It goes on to say there have been a record number of bear-human interactions in recent years, more so than the department can directly address in an effective manner. Outreach efforts have made people more aware of what they should do, but, increased knowledge, however, has yet to result in a measurable decrease in complaints, reads the plan.

The department expects bear-human conflicts will remain high.

Additionally, a mandated composting law (Act 148) which took effect in 2020 could, at least temporarily, increase problems statewide without proactive measures aimed at bear-human conflict reduction, reads the plan.

The law bans food scraps from landfills. It doesnt require anyone to compost their food scraps, but the state has been encouraging people to do so. The Big Game Plan foresees the need to educate people on how to compost without attracting bears. Many Vermonters already do compost, but it is expected more people will take it up.

Brenna Galdenzi, president of Protect Our Wildlife, a Vermont-based advocacy group, said the root of the bear-human conflict is human behavior, not bear behavior, and the the group doesnt believe more hunting of bears is the answer. She said if the Big Game Plan focuses on educating people and adjusting their behaviors, that is good.

keith.whitcomb @rutlandherald.com

Originally posted here:
Climate change a feature of Vermont's 10-year Big Game Plan - Rutland Herald