Vermont’s Fish and Wildlife Board voted 11-1 last week to reject two controversial bids from hunters to establish a season for hunting black bears with bait.

The vote comes as state wildlife officials revisit Vermont’s bear regulations in light of what state scientists say is a growing bear population and a rise in bear-human conflict in recent years.

“I think everybody in this room tonight wants a similar outcome, which is a healthy population of black bears in Vermont,” said John Austin, who leads the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department’s wildlife division, speaking at the May 20 board meeting.

The first petition, filed by the Vermont Bowhunters Association, called for Vermont to establish a fall baiting season similar to those in Maine in New Hampshire.

A second petition filed by hunters Kevin Lawrence and Bert Saldi echoed that request and asked regulators to extend the regular bear season in the fall and allow hunters to get two bear tags instead of one.

Right now, Vermont has two bear seasons — one in the spring and one in the fall. Hunters can pursue bears with rifles, by archery or using hounds, though the latter has a separate season.

Baiting — setting out food with the intention of enticing an animal into a particular location — is not allowed for large game species like deer, bear and moose. However, the state does allow hunters to hunt coyotes with bait, and set traps with bait for furbearing species like beaver.

Black bears have made a remarkable recovery in Vermont since the 1970s, when Vermont Fish and Wildlife estimates there were fewer than 2,000 left in the state. Today, department scientists estimate there are between 7,500 and 9,500 bears in Vermont.

Vermont’s Wildlife Management Plan says the state should aim for a population around 5,000 to avoid depleting the bears’ wild food stores.

Additionally, human-bear conflicts appear to be on the rise in Vermont and cost the Department of Fish and Wildlife roughly $1 million each year, staff say.

“We are, in effect, victims of our own success. It’s gone beyond what we ever imagined,” Austin said. “It’s a great thing, a huge opportunity, and at the same time, it has become a growing challenge.”

The Vermont Bowhunters Association’s petition says baiting bears could address these population concerns more efficiently than with conventional hunting.

“Baiting allows you to be selective,” said petitioner Kevin Lawrence, arguing it would be easier for hunters to ensure they aren’t shooting a sow with young cubs.

Lawrence further argued baiting would allow hunters to kill bears that have been habituated to humans in more urban areas, where conventional hunting would be challenging. He said the department could require hunters share GPS coordinates for where they’re baiting so the sites can be inspected by wardens.

But state bear biologist Jaclyn Comeau says the science doesn’t support baiting as an effective solution for managing the bear population.

She says human behaviors — namely, how people store their trash and food and where they live — are major drivers of the rise in bear-human conflicts Vermont has seen in recent years.

“The more opportunity they have to take advantage of those food sources, the more chance there is that it can start to change their behavior over time, and now they may be seeking out those foods, not just when their wild foods are scarce, but they’re seeking them out as a regular part of their foraging strategy,” she said.

Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife

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Courtesy

Roughly 100 people and at least eight environmental organizations, including some town conservation committees, filed public comments urging the department to reject bear baiting.

Bear hunters themselves appeared to be divided over the issue.

Speaking at the April 22 Fish and Wildlife Board meeting, bear hunter Butch Spear of Newbury, a former president of the Vermont Bearhound Association, urged the board to keep baiting illegal.

“It’s against the law to shoot a deer over bait,” he said. “Why do you want to make it legal to shoot a bear over bait?”

Other hunters worried baiting would tarnish their reputation among non-hunters.

Linda Capucardo of Sheffield was one of several people who voiced concern about the ethics of baiting bears.

“We’ve spent tons of time in Vermont telling people to secure bird feeders, to secure their waste, to secure everything, so that we don’t habituate bears to human food sources,” she said. “And now we’re going to give them a human food source? That’s just inviting disaster.”

Many speakers questioned the narrative that Vermont has too many bears or will for long.

Black bears are heavily dependent on beech nuts for food, and their abundance is threatened by beech leaf disease and beech bark disease. Both are growing threats to Vermont’s forests.

After rejecting the bear baiting proposals, the board voted unanimously to advance Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife’s recommendation that the state allow hunters to purchase two bear tags each year, and to extend the fall bear hunting season into December, through deer muzzleloader season.

The board is expected to discuss other aspects of the bear regulations at its June meeting, including a potential ban on killing sows with cubs in sight and changes to the rules governing hunting bears with hounds.

Lawmakers will next get to review the proposed updates to the bear rule to make sure they comply with state law, at which point there will be further opportunities for public comment.

The session stretches on 

“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, the longest-serving member of the Vermont House and the chair of the House Corrections and Institutions Committee. 

She’s ready to adjourn for the year and tend to her garden. 

Emmons, who was first elected in 1982 and has been a committee chair for 20 years, said the longest legislative session she remembers ended in the middle of June, during the 1990s. 

“But to go until the end of May is, I hope that’s not going to be our norm,” Emmons said. 

As joint Senate and House committees continue to debate some of the year’s most significant bills — the state budget, education reform, property tax rates — the legislative session has dragged on longer than in years past. 

For Vermont’s part-time Legislature, adjourning late causes practical complications in people’s lives. Many legislators arrange for seasonal housing in Montpelier, like Emmons who said she rents an apartment and lives alongside two other representatives. Although Emmons no longer works full time outside the legislative session, other lawmakers have jobs they planned to return to and childcare arrangements that end soon. 

The Legislature has typically adjourned in the middle of May in recent years, so many lawmakers plan accordingly. 

Last year, the last day of the session was June 16, though most committees finished their work by the end of May.

John Bloomer, secretary of the Senate, said that he thinks of 2020 as one of the most memorable legislative sessions. That year the Legislature didn’t adjourn until September. And because government procedure was so disrupted by the pandemic, lawmakers had to pass multiple short-term budgets, Bloomer said. 

Other lengthy years include 1961, during which the legislature didn’t adjourn until Aug. 1, due to a budget stalemate between the governor and the leader of the Senate. 

Rep. Emilie Krasnow, D-South Burlington, said she collected signatures to run for reelection early this year, anticipating the legislative session might get drawn out. She’s heard from other House members that they have a harder time campaigning against opponents back home when the session draws on. Their opponents may be living closer to voters and have more time to campaign, she said. 

By having a session for only half the year, Vermont’s Legislature is made up of community members with occupations rather than professional politicians. That leaves plenty of room for legislators to have potential conflicts of interest in their area of expertise, or — on the flip side — lack thorough expertise in the committee work they are assigned. But Emmons said she thinks the pros outweigh the cons. 

When legislators have a gaggle of staffers doing work for them, they start to disengage, Emmons said. Whereas in Vermont, legislators are always talking to each other face to face. 

“You’ve got a problem with a piece of legislation that’s coming out of another committee? You go and talk to the members of that committee, you go and talk to the chair,” Emmons said.

In the know

A proposed change to Stowe’s charter that would allow the town to double its local option tax to 2% “will die on the wall” in the Senate Government Operations Committee, the committee’s chair, Rutland Republican Sen. Brian Collamore, said Tuesday.

The committee voted 1-4 against advancing the charter change, which passed the House last week. Only Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor, voted for it. 

The proposal, H.954, faced opposition from the outset this year because some lawmakers were concerned that approving it would set off a wave of requests from other towns to boost their own local taxes on meals, rooms and other purchases. Debate over Stowe’s change was further complicated when the House Ways and Means Committee revised the language that town voters approved, altering where some of the newly proposed tax revenue would go. 

Under Ways and Means’ plan, which that committee drafted Friday, half of the newly added 1% in local tax would be deposited into a new, statewide fund for town highway projects. That fund, which would also get revenue from other sources, has been proposed in the Senate’s version of the budget bill, H.951.

Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, called the changes to Stowe’s charter “an appalling precedent” ahead of the vote in Senate Gov Ops on Tuesday.

“We are not raising transportation money on the backs of visitors to Stowe and Stowe residents,” she said.

— Shaun Robinson

The House last week passed a version of the law enforcement masking bill stripped of its provisions penned in the Senate that were supported by anti-ICE activists. Lawmakers Tuesday reviewed a copy of the changed bill, S.208, on the Senate floor. 

Rather than voting on the bill — as changed by the House — legislators agreed to send the bill to a conference committee, made up of lawmakers from both chambers, in an attempt to reach a consensus. 

At 5 p.m. Wednesday, the House had not yet appointed lawmakers to the conference committee. If the House does not appoint members to the committee, or if the committee fails to reach a consensus, the bill will die. 

— Charlotte Oliver

On the move

The House on Tuesday passed S.71, a data privacy bill, after a landslide 129-3 vote. 

“This legislation limits what data can be collected, requires full transparency with consumers about how their data is used, increases protections for sensitive information, and bans manipulative data practices designed to exploit consumers,” House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, said in a statement. “Most importantly, it gives Vermonters real tools to fight back; the right to correct their data, opt out of collection, obtain a personal copy, and know exactly which third parties have received their data.”  

Two years ago, Gov. Phil Scott vetoed a more stringent data privacy bill, with supporters of the bill blaming tech industry lobbyists for spreading misinformation about it. 

Some of the House’s strongest data privacy proponents blamed a similar lobbying push for weakening this year’s bill. The amended bill now heads to the Senate for further consideration. 

— Ethan Weinstein

Dog days

What’s the end of a legislative session without some shenanigans?

As of Wednesday, there’s a new portrait up on the Statehouse walls — and it features not a historic leader but rather Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky’s dog, Laika. 

Vyhovsky brought her 13-year-old Samoyed to the Statehouse last Wednesday night, and captured the photo, which shows Laika seated dutifully at the Senate dais, to prove, should she ever be asked, how her dog “was acting lieutenant governor for about 10 minutes.”

What was supposed to be a clandestine transfer of power, however, turned out to be anything but. Laika left white hair all over the LG’s chair, Vyhovsky said — so much so that upon seeing it the next day, Vyhovsky explained, Lt. Gov. John Rodgers remarked that it looked as if “a sheep had died” there.

Investigation by Senate staff, including a review of security camera footage, soon exposed the two Vyhovskys as the culprits. Staff then had to lint-roll the chair and, apparently, shampoo it as well — two things Vyhosky said she never meant to happen.

“I have since apologized to the lieutenant governor for forgetting a lint roller,” she said. 

Vyhovsky said the LG was amused by the story, however, and asked for a framed version of her photo as penance for the hairy inconvenience. The photo was tacked up, in a well-appointed gold frame, in the Statehouse on Wednesday. Vyhovsky hopes the location will stay a secret, until The Powers That Be find out.

In exchange for this hot scoop, VTDigger agreed not to reveal its location and spoil the fun.

Here’s one hint, though: “I just have fun trolling John Bloomer,” Vyhovsky said.

— Shaun Robinson

Department of corrections

Yesterday’s newsletter misstated which chamber Tim Ashe led. He was, of course, the Senate pro tem. It’s been a long session …