AUGUSTA, Maine - Supporters of Question 1 on the November ballot say newly-produced documents they've received in a court order show the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has been engaged in a broad, coordinated campaign with the Wildlife Conservation Council, the group opposed to the bear hunting referendum.
This week a superior court judge ruled that state wildlife biologists' role in opposing restrictions on the use of bait, hounds and traps was a matter of free speech and directed by state statute. Katie Hansberry of the group Mainers for Fair Bear Hunting says her group is now appealing that ruling.
Hansberry says internal emails from the IF&W also suggest bear biologist Randy Cross doesn't agree with the message he makes in a series of television ads.
"You know, Randy Cross stated in an email that black bears are not a threat, that there has not been to human safety," Hansberry says.
In the ads, Cross and another IF&W employee say Question 1 poses a "serious threat to public safety." But Cross's email from October, 2012 says, "Since there has not been an unprovoked bear attack in the history of white settlement in Maine, it is not a realistic threat."
"So the information that's contained in these emails is completely inconsistent with the claims that they're making publicly," Hansberry says.
Reached by telephone in his Bangor office, bear biologist Randy Cross says he stands by the message of the television ads and says he believes his email, one of thousands he says he's written about bears and public safety, was taken out of context.
"The more interaction you have between bears and people, the more likely someone's going to get hurt, some person's going to get hurt. And the level of interaction that we have now is nothing like what it would be if we allow bears to reach their biological carrying capacity," he says.
In other words, Cross says, an increase in the state's bear population without the use of bait, hounds and traps to keep the numbers stable, would result in more bear-human interactions with more potential for harm.
