Fifth wheel
Undefeated
SB school board won’t fill vacant seat
Field hockey team makes it 10 in a row
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the OCTOBER 12, 2023
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Electric car charging stations prioritized in climate action plan COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
Electric vehicle charging stations, a new park and ride, car-sharing programs at multi-family housing buildings and other proposals are being considered as part of the city’s climate action plan, which calls for replacing 75 percent of the city’s gas vehicles with electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles to reduce carbon emissions. These “high-action items” are part of a wide-ranging blueprint called the transportation implementation plan, which was first presented to the city council this month, to meet goals laid out in the city’s climate action plan. The climate action plan offers hundreds of recommendations, but this month’s transportation implementation plan begins to
VOLUME 47, NO. 41
Fire safety
focus the scope of where to start within the transportation sector and would work as a planning tool that city staff can then bring to city council for approval and outline how to best implement the actions. The full plan can be read at bit.ly/3PO3gxp. The plan lays out “how we’re going to implement the policy that the council has developed,” city manager Jessie Baker said. “When the council adopted the climate action plan just about a year ago, one of the things we talked about at that point was that the implementation of that policy would then move to city staff,” Baker said. The city is still working to development similar implementation plans for the building and See CHARGING STATIONS on page 19
COURTESY PHOTO
South Burlington Fire Department personnel visit Rick Marcotte, Orchard and Chamberlin schools to talk to kids about fire safety. Read more school news on page 12. See page 3 for general fire safety tips in recognition of Fire Prevention Week.
Vermont’s bear population hits a 5-year high K. FIEGENBAUM VTDIGGER
The number of black bears in Vermont has reached a fiveyear high, according to new data released by the Fish & Wildlife Department. The 2022 population of the state’s only bear species is estimated at 7,000 to 8,500, spread throughout the state except for the Lake Champlain Islands, the department found. The figure lags one year behind the current year, as the population model relies on annual data from hunters.
According to Jaclyn Comeau, black bear project leader and wildlife biologist with the department, the bear population fluctuates as part of a five-year cycle of growth and decline due to factors such as reproductive cycles, food availability and vehicle collisions. However, she says, the bear population has remained relatively stable since the 1990s, generally ranging in size from around 4,000 to 7,500 in consistent cycles. “There’s a lot of variability that’s driven by their ecology, their behavior and natural food availability, and those factors can
also influence the hunters’ harvest each year,” Comeau said in an interview. “All of these factors playing together, we believe, is what has been kind of keeping the population in check. As the population gets to these larger numbers, usually you’re going to see more bears harvested and you’re going to see more bears killed crossing roads.” Vermont’s robust population of black bears today lies in stark contrast to the early 1970s, when they were found only in mountainous areas of the state and in the Northeast Kingdom and likely
numbered between 1,500 and 3,500. The decline in the state’s bear population began much earlier than the 1970s, according to Comeau, who dated it back to when European settlers converted much of the landscape from forests to agricultural land. This, coupled with a fairly unrestricted ability to hunt the animals, drove the bears into remote and mountainous areas. The bear’s population recovery followed farm abandonment — which allowed land to grow back into forests — and the estab-
lishment of sustainable hunting regulations. “We really do feel like, overall, it’s a huge conservation success story to now see that we have bears distributed throughout most of the reaches of Vermont again,” Comeau said. An uptick in bear sightings in more densely populated parts of the state prompted the department to issue a press release over the summer, calling it “a dangerous situation for these bears and See BEARS on page 23