The Mountain Times - Volume 48, Number 46: November 13-19, 2019

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10 • JUMPS The Mountain Times • Nov. 13-19, 2019 Coriell: A friend, businessman and all-around great guy is grieved > from page 2 tently opened their store after hours and donated socks, helmets, mittens and jackets for the Boston children to use. “They’re just the nicest people you’re ever going to meet in your life,” Gross said. “(Fred) was very knowledgeable without being very boastful.” Before KMS had dormitories, Coriell also hosted several KMS children in his home while they learned to race. “Everything you can think of you’d want a friend to be, Fred was,” said Mike Hone, KMS’ board chair and a longtime friend of Coriell’s. “He was like the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.’” Outside of skiing, Coriell loved Porsche automobiles and maintained, repaired, and rebuilt many of them over the years. He was also the varsity baseball coach at Woodstock Union High School and involved in sports when his sons were young. “It was always a joy to be with the Coriells,” said Sheila Morse, who met Coreill > Bear hunting shock: Attack on hikers may be writing on the wall for bear-hound hunting from page 4 miles away from him, but he usually tries to keep them close —“within a mile or two,” he said. Bear-hound hunting is the only hunting sport that’s “catchand-release,” Spear explained. Once the hounds have driven a bear up a tree, the hunter has the ability to assess whether or not it would be appropriate to kill that particular bear. “If it’s a young sow with cubs, then no, we wouldn’t take it,” Spear said. “In that case I’d simply take a photo and walk away.” But the Humane Society of the United States, on its website, tells a different story. “Biologists have found that hunters misidentify the gender of approximately one-third of treed bears,” the society writes. “And in some pursuits, hounds confront bears while they are on the ground; in the melee, hunters may not take the time to try to determine the bear’s gender before shooting.” The Humane Society of the United States and other critics have insisted that hunting with bear-hounds violates “fair chase” ethics. According to the Montanabased Boone and Crockett Club, which was founded in 1887, fair chase is “the ethical, sportsmanlike and lawful pursuit and taking of any free-ranging wild, big-game animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper or unfair advantage over the game animals.” “Fred always greeted you with a smile. He was one of the most genuine people.” as a customer about 30 years ago with her husband Dick. “Fred always greeted you with a smile. He was one of the most genuine people.” Coriell spent his final days living live to the fullest. He hiked in Idaho in August and picked huckleberries with his grandchildren. In September, he attended his youngest son’s wedding in Vermont and in October, he continued to check in at the ski shop and was actively involved in KMS. Smith said he and Coriell drove Coriell’s Porsche to southern parts of the state this fall to meet board members together. “When he found out he had cancer, he said, ‘Before I go, I’m going to make sure I did the most I could for KMS,’” Smith said. In last conversations, Smith said Coriell was thinking about how he wanted to leave his family and his business. “He was always thinking about other people,” Smith said. “Right up to the end, he cared more about other people than what he was going through himself.” Spear answers critics by pointing out that hunting with hounds is the only hunting sport “where you’re telling the animal that you’re coming for them.” Vermont regulations Vermont’s bearhound hunters see themselves as carrying on a proud tradition that dates back to the arrival of the first white settlers. The state has two bear-hunting seasons. For state residents — with or without hounds — the early season runs from Sept. 1 through Nov. 5. Nonresidents with bearhounds may hunt in the early season starting on Sept. 15. The last bear season this year runs Nov. 16–24. A hunter may only kill one bear during the year. There is also a bear-hound “training season,” which runs from June 1 to Sept. 15. Killing bears is prohibited during training season. A list of bear-hound hunting regulations can be found by visiting eregulations.com/vermont/ hunting/bear-hunting. Over the last decade, Vermont Fish and Wildlife has issued roughly 100 bear-hound hunting permits per year, though recently those numbers have edged upward. In 2019, the department issued 113 resident permits and nine nonresident permits. Currently, Vermont’s black bear population stands at around 5,000, Hammond estimated, which is near the low end of the range that Fish and Wildlife has identified as ideal. In 2018, bear hunters — with or without hounds — killed 683 Vermont’s black bear population stands at around 5,000, Hammond estimated, which is near the low end of the range. bears during the two seasons. Bear-hound hunters typically account for 12 to 14 percent of those numbers. Bear management Bear-hound hunters are a critical tool for the Fish and Wildlife Department, said Hammond, who has joined many bear hunts and hound-training expeditions, and uses hunting season results to develop bear population estimates. State game wardens also call on bear-hound hunters to “haze” or drive off nuisance bears, using nonlethal methods. “Houndsmen get involved fairly regularly in nuisance cases,” Hammond said, especially when bears get into cornfields in August. “Bears love corn and they do well with it,” he explained. “If they get into a cornfield away from prying eyes they can basically live there.” Overall, Hammond says he Denise and Fred Coriell at a recent wedding with family and friends. has a great appreciation for bearhound hunters. “Houndsmen are an important part of our hunting heritage and I would hate to lose them.” Criticism Brenna Galdenzi, president of Vermontbased Protect Our Wildlife Vermont (POW), vehemently opposes bear-hound hunting. “It’s inherently violent and unsportsmanlike,” she said. “I wouldn’t even put it in the same category as ‘hunting.’” POW, which has roughly 2,000 members, was founded in 2015 with a focus on opposing animal trapping, but the organization has since expanded its activities to fight bear-hound and other types of hound-related hunting. “This wasn’t something that we wanted to spend our time on, but now that we know about it, we cannot turn a blind eye,” she explained. Galdenzi accuses Hammond and other Fish and Wildlife officials of being “apologists” for bear-hound hunting. “You are supporting a pastime that separates sows from cubs, causes bears to overheat and lose vital calories and hydration, as well as violates landowner rights,” she wrote to Hammond in an email last spring. “You should not be selling this to the public as a wildlife management tool when you have no Submitted science/studies to back it up. If bear-hound hunting was so well understood and supported by biologists, then why do the majority of states not allow it?” Currently 17 states, including Vermont, allow bear-hound hunters to kill bears. Protect Our Wildlife has begun to gather and organize bearhound-related concerns from citizens around the state, some of which, Galdenzi said, may not have been recorded by game wardens because “no laws were broken.” On Oct. 31 the Independent filed a public records request with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and expects to review and summarize those records in a future article. Public opinion about bearhound hunting in Vermont does not appear to be improving, and both Hammond and Spear said the writing is probably on the wall. “It may not happen in my lifetime, but my 9-year-old grandson — who really enjoys the sport — may see it go away,” Spear said with regret. Vermont’s land is getting divided up into smaller and smaller parcels, Hammond said, and more and more landowners are prohibiting hunting of any kind on their property, which doesn’t bode well for the sport. “I think that eventually houndsmen will lose their rights.”
The Mountain Times • Nov. 13-19, 2019 JUMPS • 11 Climate protest: Woodstock students lead effort to pass emergency declaration on climate change with a petition to get a vote on Town Meeting Day. > from page 1 “CTWK is involved because its members in the Woodstock area see it as a priority but feel that it is not being acted on,” said CTWK facilitator Pieter Bohen. “Now, we’re bringing it to a new level of concern.” Local residents Anne Macksoud and Richard Schramm were inspired in the late summer to ignite the Climate Emergency petition drive in Woodstock and enlisted CTWK members to actualize it. “The climate crisis is real, serious, and impacts the world,” said Schramm. “These impacts can be seen in Vermont and hurt many groups unfairly. It’s getting worse, and we have limited time to respond. It is truly a climate emergency.” When the Climate Mobilization was founded at the People’s Climate March in New York City in 2014, there was no climate group publicly organizing around the need for a WWII-scale emergency action on climate. Thus, the Climate Emergency campaign was founded in the U.S. (Hoboken, New Jersey) in 2017 and has worked with grassroots activists, political leaders, and organizations around the world to pass local Climate Emergency Declarations. The campaign originated in the city of Darebin, Australia in December 2016. Over 1,170 local governments in 23 countries have declared a climate emergency as a rallying cry for the next phase of the climate movement. Current strategic priorities for local campaigns include passing declarations of Climate Emergency with a commitment to reach zero emissions and begin carbon drawdown at emergency speed (10 years or less); local elected leaders to become advocates for emergency climate mobilization to the public, other cities, and state and national governments; and to develop and implement a mobilization policy locally after a declaration is passed. With a goal of 500 local signatures, CTWK members had 78 as of the end of last week. Once their target is reached, the petition will be given in early December to the Woodstock Select Board whose members in turn will present the document at Town Meeting in March 2020 for approval. “This has been a great opportunity for us to get out in public, have discussions and good experiences,” said Bohen. “It’s been great for the kids.” Of its 45 members, 10 have been stationed at the local post office with a few out and about in town. Members arrive right after school lets out at 2:45 p.m. and stay until 4:30 p.m. “It is with hope that, as a town, an emergency is declared for a few reasons, one of which is that we are leaders of the conservation movement beginning with (19th Century environmentalist) George Perkins Marsh,” said Woodstock Union High School senior and CTWK member Erica Kurash. “It’s our responsibility to uphold that dedication to conservation by declaring an emergency and putting measures in place to ensure that, as a town, we are climate resilient.” CTWK member and WUHS By Pieter Bohen Aidan Reed and Erica Kurash of Change the World Kids petition in front of the Woodstock Post Office. By Pieter Bohen Mateo Bango and June Dodson of Change the World Kids meet with Ana DiNatalie to discuss the Declaration for a Climate Emergency. freshman Mateo Bango noted that there is much to be done in little time, and that the petition is a good step to slow down CO2 emissions. “It’s important to cut down on our carbon emissions as much as possible,” said Bango. “The police cars loitering around town all day are putting out a lot, along with most of the town. If we could make sustainability a priority for the town, things like new police cars would be easier on nature.” Kurash and Bango were part of the student strike last March to demand climate change. Organizer and student activist Kurash was inspired by Thunberg and, when Kurash learned that Thunberg’s movement was going global, she gathered other students to bring it to Vermont. In Woodstock, students walked from the high school into town. Community members were invited and encouraged to participate in the strike. In mid-September 2019, Woodstock Union Middle and High School Principal Garon Smail and student organizers came up with a different plan for another strike. Instead of Over 1,170 local governments in 23 countries have declared a climate emergency. leaving campus and facing inschool suspensions, students participated in workshops centered around climate change during a two-hour delay before regularly scheduled class time began. At the time, Kurash said the alternative plan addressed both safety concerns and engagement issues she witnessed at the March strike. “With the strike in March,” Kurash said, “people (were) walking out but they didn’t know what they were supporting.” Thus far, in Vermont, the towns of Norwich and Burlington have passed the Climate Emergency Resolution. “The idea for a climate emergency declaration came from a member of the community,” said Burlington Select Board member, City Councilor (Ward 6) and certified public accountant Karen Paul. “I was inspired by his arguments, and we discussed other communities who are issuing (them). The more I learned about a declaration and the reasons for such a resolution, the greater my resolve to bring this about. Burlington is and has been a national leader in energy efficiency, clean renewable energy and being a responsible steward for the environment while also being mindful of keeping our electric rates affordable,”she added. Burlington is currently working toward net zero energy use in 11 years, Paul said.
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The Mountain Times - Volume 48, Number 46: November 13-19, 2019

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