Bear Killer Found

March 4, 2008 at 8:44 am

Neck band helps collar alleged killer of 2 bears

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

BY BRIAN T. MURRAY

Star-Ledger Staff

When a mother black bear and her cub were killed in Sussex County, the culprit had one obstacle to a clean getaway -- a radio-transmitting collar state biologists had affixed to the elder bruin.

So, it was cut loose, nailed to a board and sent floating down the Paulinskill River in a ruse state Conservation Officers said was designed to lead any poaching probe down the wrong trail.

But the ploy backfired.

A month of backwoods sleuthing, said the state Department of Environmental Protection yesterday, led to civil charges against a 29-year-old Hampton man that carry more than $5,000 in fines.

Jacob W. Westbrook 5th is scheduled to appear in Stillwater Municipal Court next week on civil complaints that include illegally shooting a large female bear and year-old cub with a shotgun, hunting without a license and destroying property.

That property would be the radio collar -- which not only provided investigators the clue they needed to track down Westbrook. It alerted them to the killing.

Switches inside the collar let biologists know if a stationary bear is hibernating or dead, said Lt. Frank Panico of the state Conservation Officers.

"Members of our Bear Project knew something was wrong almost right away," he said.

The older sow had literally been on the state Bear Project's radar screen for seven years. Fewer than a dozen bears have been fitted with the devices in a bid to learn more about the habits and movement of bears in densely populated New Jersey.

A biologist was tracking the sow and the accompanying cub in a wooded area of Stillwater on Dec. 31 -- the day before they were apparently shot there. When the collar suddenly indicated the sow was dead on Jan. 1, biologists were perplexed that it also indicated the bear was still moving -- directly south.

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