By Faith Montalvo
TAMPA, Fla. — The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is considering a regulated black bear hunt for 2025, nearly a decade after 304 bears were killed in the last hunt. The FWC will decide in May after hearing potential hunting options from staff.
Even though FWC staff said no action was needed regarding black bear management during the agency’s December commission meeting, Commissioner Gary Lester said he wanted staff to work on a proposal for a bear hunt.
“A highly regulated bear hunt would provide access to a renewable resource while managing the population,” said FWC in a statement.
The FWC estimates that the statewide black bear population is over 4,000 — a 53% increase since 2002 — but its ongoing population study is not expected to be finished until 2029.
The agency estimates the number of bears in each subpopulation every decade, and they use hair samples that take time to gather and analyze to count individual bears.
The agency stopped the last black bear hunt in 2015 after the second day when the number of killed bears approached the state quota of 320. Two black bear subpopulation areas in the state were closed just after the first day.
Joseph Guthrie, a research biologist at Archbold Biological Station, said the black bear conservation in Florida has primarily focused on habitat protection, minimizing conflicts, and population monitoring.
Florida has seven black bear management units across the state. Guthrie said each one has differing population sizes, mortality factors, human conflicts, and habitat bases that the FWC will need to consider as they deliberate on the hunt.
“When it comes to designing hunting, you have to align all those things and tailor the hunt to whatever population you’re trying to have a hunt in,” Guthrie said.
The 2015 hunt excluded three bear management units that Guthrie said had lower numbers and dealt with more bear removal due to nuisance issues, more car collisions, and lower cub survival rates.
Guthrie said that hunting often works to manage wildlife populations and provides funding for conservation efforts, especially through license sales. The FWC sold 3,776 permits in 2015, according to their hunt report, despite the hunting quota being just over three hundred. This totaled approximately $388,000 in funds, which the plan stated would go toward waste-management efforts to reduce human-bear conflicts.
“Hunting is not a thing to oppose per se,” Guthrie said. “We have lots of examples of hunting being used effectively to manage populations.”
Guthrie said he’ll be watching what models the FWC uses to monitor the population growth rate in the subpopulations they consider in the hunt, including how those models are applied and any limitations they have.
“Until we see those proposals, we just can’t know,” Guthrie said. “But I have faith that the agency’s going around and collecting as much feedback as they can.”
Adam Sugalski, founder of animal advocacy organization OneProtest, said the agency is missing essential data in their considerations because their population study will not be completed until 2029. The FWC’s current estimates are based on the 2014-2015 study.
Sugalski said he also does not see a reason to hunt the black bears even if there are regulations to prevent the population from being greatly impacted.
“Why are you killing this creature when they’re already under pressure from development [and] overpopulation of humans,” Sugalski said.
During the last hunt, hunters in the East Panhandle reached about three times the area’s objective on the first day. According to the FWC’s website, one reason why this happened so quickly was because the number of bears in the East Panhandle had increased by 86% since 2002, which was the year they used to calculate the area’s objective.
Sugalski led the “Stop the Florida Bear Hunt” campaign in 2015. He said that as hunters brought bears to the FWC check stations, the campaign counted them and contacted the FWC as the number grew close to the quota. The FWC said it was fully prepared to stop the hunt and kept track of the bears.
The FWC will host three public virtual meetings via Zoom in April:
April 2 from 12-3 p.m. EDT, April 3 from 5-8 p.m. EDT, and April 5 from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. EDT. The public can also email comments to BearComments@MyFWC.com.
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Photo courtesy of Thomas Fuhrmann, Wikimedia Commons.