If the worst happens next November and Maine voters torpedo Maine’s time-tested bear management program by voting to ban traditional bear hunting over bait, there will be consequences. Some of these anticipated consequences are obvious; some are not so obvious.

The most obvious, of course, will be the immediate blow to the state’s rural economy. There will be a loss of an estimated $12 million in jobs and cash flow to guides, outfitters and a multitude of small, mostly rural businesses.

Many of the state’s established sporting camp operations will be forced to downscale or close altogether. The Maine Department of Fish and Wildlife – already struggling financially – will suffer a sudden loss of license revenues as 15,000 bear hunters migrate to the Canadian provinces for their fall bear hunt. The irony of this loss of revenue to the Maine Department of Fish and Wildlife is probably missed, not only by the average voter who thinks that his vote is protecting black bears, but by the referendum’s sponsor, the Humane Society of the United States.

It is and has been for a long time the hunters’ dollars, and only the hunters’ dollars, that have underwritten the cost of state wildlife management. It has been hunting license fees and taxes on firearms that have bankrolled Maine’s bear management program!

Once the economic damage is done the less apparent consequences of a bear bait ban will begin to manifest themselves slowly but surely.

One of these will be to the state bear population itself. Maine has a bear population that is conservatively estimated by the experts to be 23,000.

The bear management program has deemed that this is a socially tolerable level that takes into account carrying capacity of habitat and minimal public conflict. Even with an annual bear kill by hunters of about 3,000, the state’s bear numbers have remained fairly static.

In a 1999 bear study by state biologist Craig McLaughlin, he reported that “Maine’s female population growth rate, in the absence of hunting, would result in the doubling of the population in 5 years.” Given this projection, Maine could conceivably be dealing with bear numbers exceeding 50,000 in less than 10 years after the banning of traditional bear hunting.

With numbers like this, it is not alarmism to foresee unprecedented levels of conflict between nuisance bears and humans.

There is another even more subtle but worrisome consequence that to my knowledge has yet to be mentioned in discussions of the bear referendum issue: predation on Maine’s whitetail deer population. That’s right. Male black bears prey, not only on their own, but they will kill fawn deer.

Here is an excerpt from McLaughlin’s 1999 study. McLaughlin gets some of his information from a previous study by Maine’s respected deer biologist Gerry Lavigne. “Black bears can be important predators on newborn young of deer, moose, elk and caribou. The role of bear predation in limiting deer populations continues to be debated and probably depends on the density of bears. Several studies have documented black bears killing up to 50 percent of moose calves ( in their range). Black bears are known to kill moose calves and deer fawns in Maine…If bears affect deer populations in a manner similar to that documented for moose, they would have the greatest impact in northern and eastern Maine, where deer densities are low.”

You get the picture. It has become a Maine saying: Just when you think things can’t get any worse, they get worse. As a result of serious declines in deer wintering areas in northern and eastern Maine due to spruce budworm infestations and overharvesting, deer populations have waned in these areas. Low deer numbers are already struggling against winterkill and, as of this fall, uncontrolled coyote predation. Add burgeoning black bear numbers to this equation and you have a recipe for a disaster in deer management.

Rural Maine has good reason to be fed up and angry with the political realities of this state. The record is not good. The fate of the bear referendum, like so many other pivotal economic issues will rest, say the pollsters, with Maine’s urban voting bloc. At stake are jobs for rural Mainers, the sovereignty of our state wildlife managers, the hunting heritage itself, and the very integrity of our wildlife populations.

The challenge in the remaining eight months will be to get these points across to Maine’s urban voters, many of whom don’t even know that there is a bear hunt in Maine.

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In the months before the fall bear referendum, state bear biologist Jennifer Vashon will be speaking to clubs and organizations around the state in an attempt to educate the general public about the important relationship between Maine’s traditional bear hunt and the state’s widely respected bear management program. I recommend her presentation to any organization that wants its members to be informed. Organizations wishing to contact Vashon for a possible speaking date may contact her at the Bangor Fish and Wildlife headquarters at 207 941 4238. Her e-mail address is: jennifer.vashon @maine.gov.

The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected].