William J. Kemble is reporting in the Daily Freeman the state Department of Environmental Conservation has approved an early firearms season for bear hunting in the Catskills and western Hudson Valley. The early season will run from Sept. 6 to 21. It is part of a 10-year plan to reduce the number of complaints about interactions between black bears and people. State officials report there are between 6,000 and 8,000 bears across New York. More than one-third of those bears live in the Catskills. The newly approved plan says incidents of bear interactions with humans in New York more than doubled between 2006 and 2012. The new hunting plan states there are no non-lethal methods of reducing the number of bears. Read the full story in the Daily Freeman.