The grant received by the township to purchase bear-proof garbage cans has reached the bidding stage almost a year after the award of the money. The Statewide Livable Communities Grant of $200,000 may finally provide the town with the much anticipated cans but New Jersey’s black bear population is unlikely to be able to test their full effectiveness until next summer. Producing a bear-proof receptacle was cited as the main reason for the delay. Township Clerk Antoinette Battaglia said this week, “The delay in getting specifications out was primarily due to the fact that this is a very new concept and developing the specs required an unanticipated amount of research.” Battaglia added, “The bids were opened at the end of August and they, too, seem to contain a lot of variables which require the engineer to research and compare the responses.” While the debate over the legitimacy of bear hunting in the state has raged ceaselessly over the past three to four years, the consensus remains that a somewhat agreeable solution for all might be found by diminishing human-bear interaction. This is where the garbage can which withstands the persistence of a hungry bear comes in. Fiercely anti-hunting advocates, such as the Bear Education and Resource Group, believe that by deterring bears from finding food in the backyards and driveways of residences, it decreases the bears’ likelihood of wandering into built-up areas. The bear group also argues that the reproductive rate of the animals will also drop if the bears are limited to natural food found in their own environment. There has been a drop in the number of reports called into West Milford Police about problem or nuisance bears. Dot Link of the chief’s office said, “In the period of June through August of this year, West Milford Police received 73 reports from the public regarding bears. In the same three-month period last year, we received 94 reports.” Whether the decline in reports is due to existing preventive actions taken by the public to render their garbage inaccessible to bears, or to the culling through successive bear hunts, or due to both, is unclear. The new garbage cans, however, will add another dimension to the ongoing analysis of what to do about bears. Town Clerk Battaglia said, “We hope to have a recommendation to the council for the next workshop meeting with an award at the October fourth meeting, if all goes well.” In the meantime, the township has an information leaflet available to the public on how to be “Bear Aware.” This includes such recommendations as putting out garbage on collection day rather than the night before, cleaning outdoor grills thoroughly after use and picking up any fruit that may fall from trees and placing them in tight-fitting garbage cans. The leaflet can be picked up at the clerk’s office in town hall or downloaded from the township’s official Web site.