With Governor Lamont’s veto of the wide-ranging housing bill recently passed by the General Assembly, Connecticut towns aren’t likely to reach the “fair share” quotas of “affordable” housing the bill set for them. But the legislature’s failure to approve other legislation may ensure that each town ends up with another quota — a quota of bears.
Confrontations with bears in Connecticut have been increasing rapidly, and according to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, there were more than 3,000 last year. These included two attacks on people and 67 of what might be called “bearglaries,” in which the hungry creatures broke into people’s houses. Bear attacks on livestock are up too.
A few days ago a bear attacked a man as he walked with his dog on his property in North Canaan. He escaped with scratches.
According to the environmental department, Connecticut has far more bear confrontations than neighboring states, though neighboring states are estimated to have more bears than Connecticut’s 1,200 or so. Maybe Connecticut has so many more bear confrontations because, except for Rhode Island, Connecticut’s neighbors allow bear hunting while Connecticut doesn’t.
The increasing conflicts with bears prompted some legislators in the recent session to propose authorizing bear hunting. But the bears have a lobby organization as influential as the government employee unions, and it also frightened the legislators out of protecting the public.
The bear lobby argues that people who put bird feeders in their yards or fail to secure their trash barrels are to blame for the increasing confrontations. Certainly bird feeders and trash barrels are attractions, but as the many “bearglaries” show, removing feeders and securing trash barrels has little deterrent value. [ITALICS] Providing [END ITALICS] access to bird feeders and trash barrels may actually [ITALICS] discourage [END ITALICS] bears from breaking into houses for food.
In any case, the bears are already rampant in Connecticut and won’t be going away on their own. Unmolested and having no natural predators, they will reproduce at an estimated rate of more than two cubs per year per mother. A doubling of the state’s bear population every three years seems possible, with the population pushing steadily into the eastern part of the state. As long as Connecticut’s feckless policy toward bears is only to shoo them into a neighbor’s yard, more confrontations are inevitable, with or without bird feeders and trash cans, and within a decade every town in Connecticut could have a dozen bears as permanent residents.
Unlike housing developers, bears don’t observe zoning regulations. So odds are that, if state law doesn’t change, bears will be disrupting many suburbs and rural towns long before those towns get their first “affordable” housing.
It’s understandable why government employees come first in Connecticut, far ahead of the public interest. They are numerous and politically organized and have their own political party, so politicians are afraid of them. But why do bears have to come second, [ITALICS] still [END ITALICS] far ahead of the public interest?
Unlike taxpayers, bears are not an endangered species. Other states manage to stand up to them. Except for the political timidity of the state’s elected officials, why should bears be any more protected in Connecticut than coyotes and poisonous snakes?
WHO NEEDS ‘BABY BONDS’?: A month ago Hartford Mayor Arunam Arulampalam announced he had rounded up an extra $3 million in city funds and various grants for the city’s ever-dysfunctional school system.
Aleysha Ortiz wants that money instead. She’s the recent graduate of Hartford Public High School who is suing the city because, despite the diploma the school gave her, she was illiterate. She’s suing for damages, and last month her lawyers offered to settle for … $3 million.
If Ortiz wins she’ll have invented a great racket for indifferent students and their neglectful parents. Fail to learn in school, say nothing about it publicly until social promotion graduates you, and then sue and cash in for life. By comparison the “baby bonds” about which state government is so proud will be chump change.
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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)