Lake Wanda conflict ‘unbearable'

Vernon n Jennifer Spadaccini calls herself an animal lover, but the day after she saw a succession of bears knocking on neighborhood doors like hungry pet dogs, she decided that enough was enough and begged New Jersey fish and wildlife officials to bring a bear trap to her Land Wanda home. The installation of the trap has provoked another battle in an ongoing neighborhood feud that some residents have started likening to the legendary feud between the Hatfields and McCoys of Kentucky. The quarrel centers on the passion of animal-rights advocates to save the bears and the equal passion of their neighbors to keep their property bear-free. Each side has accused the other of luring bears to their deaths either by feeding them or by irresponsibly storing garbage. “The bears I saw weren’t aggressive,” Spadaccini said. “It was as if they were saying, ‘Hey, here I am, play with me, feed me.’ The bears in this neighborhood know no fear of humans or dogs, and this street is their playground. But a line has been crossed. If I have to make this trap a permanent fixture in my yard until this bear issue is resolved, I won’t back down from people intimidating us.” The people Spadaccini alleges are intimidating her and others are animal rights advocates who live in the same neighborhood, and who she says have been making pets of the bears, and are taking photographs of people up and down the neighborhood in an apparent attempt to document negligent garbage-management practices or deliberate baiting. The advocates have a history of civil disobedience in defense of bears, and have mounted protests when the state has installed bear traps, and even stronger protests when state officials have shot bears classified as “nuisance animals.” Albert Kazemian, one of Spadaccini’s neighbors, was convicted of disrupting the December 2005 bear hunt. On Monday night Kazemian was arrested for tampering with the bear trap in Lake Wanda. Fish and Wildlife officials had been staking out the neighborhood for about a week, after Spadaccini and a neighbor had hidden in the bushes late at night last week and had witnessed a man entering the bear trap, apparently to disarm it. In a telephone interview earlier in the week, Kazemian denied feeding bears, and described the pleasure he takes in the animals he describes as shy, gentle and beautiful. “I tell people, there are bears here,” Kazemian said. “Where do you expect them to go - we are taking over their homes?” In June, officials shot three female bears in the Lake Wanda area, leaving seven orphaned cubs, which are being fostered at Woodlands Wildlife Refuge in Hunterdon County. A few days ago, state fish and wildlife officers shot another bear at Barry Lakes. Witnesses told the officers that they had seen each of the bears trying to enter area homes. Spadaccini and her husband Steve moved with their year-old daughter Gianna and three dogs and three cats to Lake Wanda at the end of March, just when hungry bears are emerging from wintertime naps. “The first week we moved in my husband saw the bears every morning when he walked the dogs at 5:30,” Spadaccini explained. “We are animal lovers and we even have animal friendly license plates. My husband has never hunted or even fished.” After a childhood in Ringwood, the Lake Wanda woman says she was used to seeing wildlife of all kinds cross her back yard, but had never witnessed anything like the apparent tameness of the Lake Wanda bears, not even in Highland Lakes, where the family moved in 2004. The bears, she said, would approach her as she walked, and seemed to be unafraid of her large dogs, a Labrador, an English bulldog, a Great Dane, and a shepherd husky. Spadaccini said that she and her husband were worried that it would be a question of time before a startled or hungry bear killed or injured a pet or even a small child. “Bears are so strong and they could hurt someone without meaning to do any real harm. We aren’t out to get the bears euthanized,” Spadaccini remarked. “We are out to protect neighborhood and ourselves. “The bears don’t belong trusting humans, they have begun to rely on the humans that feed them, and they are teaching their cubs to be nuisances too.” Nearby resident Carol Gramuglia said she knows just how much of a nuisance bears can be. They promenade through her backyard almost daily, she says. Gramuglia described an incident in which a neighbor left his car trunk open while he was unloading groceries, only to see a bear lumber out of the woods, snatch a bag full of meat and lumber back into the woods with its treat. Councilman Austin Carew, a Highland Lakes resident said that although he loves seeing the bears cross his yard, people protection must come first. “It is a state decision about how to handle bears that intrude into people’s homes, and there appears to be no intention on the part of the state to kill animals wantonly. Humans have entered into the chain of events. Bears look so benign. But they are potentially dangerous wild animals.” N.J. Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Darlene Yuhas said that the majority of reported human-bear encounters in the state have occurred in Sussex County, and the department has visited over 1,200 homes in an effort to teach people how to manage garbage and avoid tempting bears with it. “The current law addresses intentional feeding, “ Yuhas said. “The real challenge is that the law as it is currently written doesn’t really address garbage issues. Careless storage of garbage can have serious consequences for a whole neighborhood.”