Recreational harvest and incident-response management reduce human-carnivore conflicts in an anthropogenic landscape

Conserving viable large carnivore populations requires managing their interactions with humans in increasingly anthropogenic landscapes. Faced with declining budgets and escalating wildlife conflicts, agencies in North America continue to grapple with uncertainty surrounding the efficacy of socially divisive management actions such as harvest to reduce conflict.
We used multistate capture–reencounter methods to estimate cause-specific mortality for a large sample (>3500) of American black bears Ursus americanus in north-western New Jersey, USA over a 33-year period. Specifically, we focused on factors that might influence the probability of bears being harvested, lethally managed, or dying from other causes. We further analysed temporal correlations between >26 000 human–black bear incidents reported between 2001 and 2013 and estimates of total mortality rates, and specifically, rates of harvest from newly implemented public hunts and lethal management.
Adult females were twice ...