| Dear Friends, Neighbors, and Colleagues,
Last Thursday, a mother bear was fatally shot in a small forest in Newtown. The black bear, known as ‘Bobbi’ (#217), was loved by the Newtown community. She left behind two orphaned cubs.
Following the incident, DEEP showed up to determine what the best course of action would be for the cubs. They said that it was better to let nature take its course.
DEEP remained in the area to observe the cubs. They were not able to locate them until Sunday night when a group of rehabbers had spotted them. At this point, there was a rehabilitation facility in New Hampshire prepared to take the cubs in, but DEEP insisted that they would not interfere. They told the rehabbers to step away.
State Rep. Nicole Klarides-Ditria (my cochair of the Animal Advocacy Caucus), and other members Rep. Anne Hughes, Rep. Allie-Brennan, and I decided to go to the location and ask DEEP why they were not considering rehabilitation, which would be the "typical" rescue operation. After applying necessary pressures, DEEP finally decided to capture the bears.
On Monday morning, people on the scene said that the lead biologist of the DEEP Wildlife Division said they were actually not going to catch them. I communicated with the DEEP Commissioner and she claimed that they were going to catch them. I returned to Newtown to see what was really going on.
When I arrived, it was believed that DEEP would use the tranquilizer method, but later in the day, around 2pm, they finally suggested they will shift to diversionary feeding method to lure the cubs out of the tree they were perched on with traps set at the bottom of the tree. They ultimately used the tranquilizer method and put them into crates.
The cubs were then brought at the Session Woods Wildlife Management facility in Burlington. They spent the night waiting to be sent to Kilham Bear Center in NH where they should be arriving soon. The use of resources and risk posed to the cubs over the past few days could have been spared if DEEP had made the decision to catch and rehabilitate the bears initially, Thursday of last week.
It was quite clear the lead biologist, after catching those little fur balls, realized they were too small to have been on their own. Also the statements of DEEP are strange when talking about human or public interaction, there were seemingly none until DEEP was called to help catch the cubs once they were spotted. If DEEP had meant for the public to stay away from the cubs they should have communicated with all the houses around the forest, however it was mentioned by the neighbors that no one went after the cubs unless associated with DEEP, municipal police, or rehabilitators who found the cubs. I went in as an observer to try and get quicker updates on the situation in the forest.
Thank you to my legislative colleagues State Representative Nicole Klarides-Ditria, State Representative Anne Hughes, State Representative Raghib Allie-Brennan, and State Representative Mitch Bolinsky for applying pressure on DEEP to capture the cubs, as well as board members of the CWRA (Laura, Regina, Deb..), Annie Hornish of the Human Society of the United States Connecticut Director, and Lori Brown, for helping locate the cubs and being amazing advocates. And thank you to the neighbors who rallied around together in support, the municipal Police, and First Selectman Dan Rosenthal. |
