By Tim Binnall
A couple in Connecticut contend that the state government sent a bear outfitted with a camera onto their property in order to film suspected illegal feeding of wildlife. According to a local media report, the strange accusation has been made by Mark and Carol Brault, who reside on a 117-acre piece of land in the town of Hartland. For the last several years, the couple have been embroiled in a conflict with community officials over allegations that they have been secretly feeding bears that visit their sizeable property which operates as an attraction, dubbed Nature Havens, wherein visitors pay for the possibility of encountering the creatures.
The couple believes that, in an attempt to prove the allegations levied against them, the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) used a proverbial spy bear to infiltrate their property. That suspicion came about when Mark spotted something unusual on one of the creatures which frequently visits the land. "The bear now had not just an ear tag but a collar, and so he got on his camera and zoomed in on the bear, and not only did it have a collar, but the collar had a camera on it," their attorney John R. Williams explained, "so what does that say to me? That says to me that they're engaging in a warrantless search of his property."
He went on to muse that "it's like sending in a robot, I guess, with a camera on and you can't do that without getting a warrant." While Williams conceded that DEEP does outfit some bears with GPS collars, "never, never, never were there cameras." This understandably led the couple to conclude that the creature was enlisted to spy on their property in the hopes of catching them in the act of feeding the bears, which they insist is not happening. As such, they have filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction that would put a stop to suspected filming, which they argue is a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights, and destroy all materials that may have been obtained by the spy bear.