PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Wayne Pacelle, president/CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), was in central Aroostook County last Wednesday night on behalf of the Mainers for Fair Bear Hunting campaign encouraging supporters to continue spreading the “Yes on 1” message.
Question 1 on the Nov. 4 ballot reads, “Do you want to ban the use of bait, dogs or traps in bear hunting except to protect property, public safety, or for research?”
“We are fighting for every vote in every county of Maine, and we were rallying the troops here in Aroostook County for the ‘Yes on Question 1’ campaign,” said Pacelle, who is based in Washington, D.C. “We wanted to give supporters a bit of an update on how the campaign is going, talk about what’s going to happen in the next few weeks, and ask them to be active in all the different ways that they can help generate more support for the campaign.”
Recognizing that the supporters already share the same belief, Pacelle said it’s still important to motivate them, as well as reach those who are undecided.
“There’s a hardcore group of these bear baiters and hunters that we’re never going to convince, so we don’t want to expend energy on them,” he said, “but the vast majority of Mainers are fair people, they care about animals, and they believe in hunting. We want to convince them that this is the right alignment with their values; that voting ‘Yes’ on Question 1 conforms to their core beliefs.
“In terms of talking to our supporters, a lot of these folks I’ve never met face-to-face, and we want to energize them and organize them because they’re the ones who are going to talk to their friends and family members; they’re going to put up the yard signs; and they’re going to write letters to the editor,” said Pacelle. “We need them to be ambassadors in this community.”
While in the area, Pacelle was joined by Katie Hansberry, campaign director of Mainers for Fair Bear Hunting. In addition to central Aroostook, the duo also spent time last week visiting Bangor, Waterville, Lewiston, Augusta and Portland.
“We’ve got support from all over the state,” said Hansberry. “When we gathered signatures [to qualify for the ballot], we gathered almost 80,000 signatures from all 16 counties and from over 400 cities and towns.
“We’re a broad coalition, and it’s wonderful and important that the HSUS is part of that coalition. The HSUS has tens of thousands of supporters here in Maine and we’ve been hearing from them that this is an issue that they want addressed,” she said. “It’s great morale building to have the president/CEO of the organization come and visit, and demonstrate how important their support is.”
Pacelle said he wanted to come to Aroostook County to ask people for their vote.
“I want to ask people for their compassion and for them to uphold a hunting ethic in the state of Maine,” he said. “There’s nothing in conflict between being a hunter and being compassionate toward animals.
“We want to engage every Mainer and ask them to check their conscience and see if they think it’s fair to shoot a bear out of a tree, or a bear feeding at a dump site, or a bear caught in a leg snare with an execution-type killing of an animal that can’t get away,” said Pacelle. “Bear hunters will not get any quarrel with us except if they use unfair and inhumane methods such as baiting, hounding and trapping.”
Maine is the only state in the nation, he said, that allows all three of these practices.
“You don’t allow these practices in Maine for deer or moose, so why would they be allowed for bears?” he said. “In terms of meat, deer and moose are much more important in supplementing the diet for hunting families. If it were an issue of, ‘OK, we’ve got to kill them for food,’ you would then allow trapping and baiting and hounding of deer and moose but we don’t allow that because there’s an ethic associated with hunting. It’s not killing, it’s hunting, and hunting implies that the animal is given a chance to escape. The norms in Maine are such that other big game are not hunted by these methods, and now there’s been a big movement all over the country to end these practices with bear hunting.”
According to Pacelle, Colorado, Oregon and Washington — all big hunting states — passed this similar ballot measure with an overwhelming “Yes” vote, and all of those states doubled or tripled the number of bear hunting license sales.
“If you’re not using these unfair methods, the success rate is lower, but successful enough that they feel that they can go out. Collectively they’re killing a similar number of bears but they’re having much more hunting participation, so it’s better for the sport and preservation of hunting,” he said, “and it’s better for the state in terms of license revenue because you have that many more people buying licenses.
“Something else that we’ve learned from the other states is that the bear populations haven’t dramatically increased in number because the hunters are continuing to take the bears. Bears are slow to reproduce; during times of stress, the females reabsorb the embryos and the cubs don’t survive,” said Pacelle. “Nature tightens the reproductive faucet during times of stress, so you don’t have a situation like with deer where you have a much larger potential for an increase in the population.”
Pacelle said he believes baiting is the source of the problem of bear-human conflicts, not the solution.
“The worst thing you can do with bears is to set up dump sites to habituate them to human food sources,” he said. “Bears have an incredible sense of smell, they’re opportunistic feeders, and once they get a taste for human food, they’re going to seek more of it out. The estimate is 7 million pounds of junk food is dumped in the woods starting at the end of July in Maine. They don’t hunt them for another month, so they’re getting bears trained.”
The same day Pacelle and Hansberry were in Aroostook, Mainers for Fair Bear Hunting filed a motion that would stop the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s “continuing illegal use of taxpayer money to conduct a political campaign in opposition to Question 1.” The motion also asks the court to compel IF&W to immediately disclose records concerning its political activities, which “the department has hidden for many months.”
“We’re really concerned about the state overreaching and the IF&W using resources of the state to engage in electioneering,” said Pacelle. “That’s not the role in government. The government can provide fair, impartial information as informed government agencies, but they’re not supposed to be campaigning and using state vehicles, state uniforms and state dollars to be involved in an election.”
Pacelle said he wants to assure the people of Aroostook County that by voting “Yes” on Question 1, bear hunting in the state will continue.
“We want them to know that hunting will be safe, bear populations will be stable, and we’ll have every tool available to deal with any problem animal,” he said. “I think once people in Aroostook County understand those points, there’s no reason why a majority of them should not support Question 1. I just think we have a communication challenge because you’ve got people here that are stoking this paranoia and misinforming people about what the elements of Question 1 are. It doesn’t ban bear hunting, it just says if you’re going to hunt bears, do it fairly.”
As Election Day draws near, the Mainers for Fair Bear Hunting campaign will continue going door-to-door and talking to voters.
“It’s about persuasion. We’re going to try to knock on 25,000 doors, and make around 75,000 phone calls,” said Pacelle. “We think about 540,000 people are going to be voting in this election, so we want get 271,000 of them to agree with us.”
Hansberry said the campaign recently received its lawn signs and is in the process of dispersing them throughout the state.
“We want to make sure that we are getting the information out to Maine voters so they can be well educated on this issue,” she said. “We know that when they know about these issues, what they involve, and how cruel and unsporting they are, that they’re going to vote ‘Yes’ on Question 1 in November.”
For more information, log onto YesOnQuestion1.com.
