JAMESTOWN, N.C. — The North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission held a public hearing Thursday night on allowing black bear hunting in the Piedmont.
Wildlife officials are considering adding more hunting because bears are becoming more common in urban areas.
“For the most part, we don’t trap and move the animals, because, first of all, we have bears in almost all of the state. So, there aren’t a lot of areas to move bears where you don’t have people. The other is, in most of these situations, if the bear is left alone, especially overnight, they’ll come down out of a tree,” explained Dr. David Cobb with the Wildlife Resource Commission.
The meeting was one of several held across the state.
A survey from 2005 says 72 percent of people in the Piedmont support regulated bear hunting