Bear Hunting Rule Opponents Leaving Controversial Couple Hopes Departure Will Help Initiative

The couple that started the controversial drive to change Idaho’s black bear hunting laws is leaving the state this month.

That should remove some of the stigma surrounding the bear hunting initiative and give it a better chance of passing, Greg Brown said.

Brown and Mare Rosenthal, his wife and partner in the bear project, are moving to Illinois. He is leaving a job at the University of Idaho and joining the natural resources faculty at Southern Illinois University.

“There is some baggage that appears to come with me that disappears,” Brown said. “If anything, it’s going to have a positive effect.”

Brown and Rosenthal started the Palouse Voice for Animals in 1990. The organization bird-dogged research on live animals at the UI and Washington State University. It pushed for better living conditions for some - such as grizzly bears - and the end to the use of other animals.

So when Brown and Rosenthal organized the drive to change black bear hunting last year, opponents seized on their animal rights efforts to discredit the bear initiative. The initiative calls for eliminating spring black bear hunting or the use of baits and packs of dogs to hunt black bears.

There is a similar effort under way in Washington.

“This is hardball,” John Watts of the Sportsmen’s Heritage Defense Fund told the Associated Press. “This isn’t just an anti-bear hunting initiative. This is anti-hunting.”

No way, Brown said.

“The Idaho Coalition United for Bears was always separate” from Palouse Voice for Animals, he said. Hunting is quite popular in Idaho and won’t ever be eliminated, he predicted.

His group purposefully avoided funding from major anti-hunting groups because “this isn’t anti-hunting. This is anti-unethical hunting,”

The spring season on major game animals was eliminated long ago because that’s when they are nursing young. In addition, it’s illegal to use salt licks or other enticements to hunt animals like deer and elk, Brown said.

“But with bears, anything goes,” he said. “It’s a double standard.”

His departure is strictly related to the job, he said. It has nothing to do with the harassment and threats which started almost the moment the initiative was proposed.

That included threatening telephone calls and 130 letters to UI administrators demanding Brown’s job at the computer center. People attempting to gather signatures in Salmon also have reported harassment.

Brown is handing the campaign over to Lynn Fritchman of Boise, a retired military man. Fritchman is a former Idaho Fish and Game volunteer who “knows wildlife issues, is older and well respected,” Brown said.

In Washington, the black bear hunting initiative is being organized by the Washington Wildlife Alliance.

If organizers are successful, the measure will appear on the 1996 ballot.

The Washington measure calls for elimination of bait to hunt bears. It also calls for a ban on using dogs to hunt bears, cougars and bobcats.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Ken Olsen Staff writer The Associated Press contributed to this report.