Letter: NDOW needs to change its policy

To the community,

The sow of which I speak was treed and tranquilized in the tree at Incline High School on Sept. 16.

The trapping of this sow is a travesty. This sow could have easily been handled by the book from the bear aversion training manual entitled “Responding to Human-Black Bear Conflicts A guide to non-lethal Bear Management Techniques” used by many law enforcement, wildlife agencies, and forestry bear managers in a multitude of jurisdictions here in the U.S. and Canada. It was first developed and applied in the national parks of Canada and the United States.

Walking this bear off into the desired direction could have easily been achieved with the NDOW officers present. Instead they decided to trap a lactating sow and hold her for three days. Not only has that cub gone three days without mother’s milk, that three days could slow or end the production of milk for her cub. Add to that the stress this bear and her cub have suffered to this point!

NDOW is trap/kill happy. Talk about a serious overreaction to an easily remedied situation. Carl Lackey is completely out of control and operates by the seat of his pants with no real operational plan or standards in place. And they keep little or no documentation on each trapping, release, or depredation, or so they tell us at the Bear League, other than blood draw and tagging.

On Sept. 18 criminal complaints were filed against IVGID Public Work’s Director Joe Pomroy and NDOW Deputy Director Jack Robb for violations of the Public Records Act including concealment of documents, the later of which is a Class C Felony. The Washoe County Sheriff’s Office is investigating.

And the vast majority of bears he actually releases, as opposed to killing, he releases in the Nevada bear hunt zones, by his own inadvertent admissions now and again. And I find it interesting that many of those he kills are far too small to be considered trophies to hunters. This man doesn’t even possess a degree in biology, so how exactly is he the NDOW state biologist? As far as I know being a sustainability major in college does not qualify him in any way, shape, or form to hold that title.

People need to start calling him out on the carpet and hold him and NDOW to a higher standard of professionalism, which seems to be set to a very low bar within NDOW.

Toogee Sielsch, member and bear aversion specialist for the Bear League