Like many others, I am outraged at the blatantly partisan role that the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries &Wildlife is playing in the bear referendum, siding, as per usual, with the hunting lobby it consistently supports.

It’s one thing to offer “fair comment,” as the law allows; it’s another to blitz the airwaves with uniformed personnel using scare tactics, all on company time and with the use of public resources.

One wonders how many of these state employees are also professional guides, hunters and trappers themselves as well as members of other organizations that oppose the referendum. If so, one also wonders how they can be impartial in what is clearly a conflict of interest.

Trust your bear biologist? Not until their objectivity is no longer compromised by Maine’s hunting lobby, with which they have been far too cozy for far too long.

Don Loprieno

Bristol

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